Hello! It's really day seven, but I missed a day. Sorry!! We'll just pretend it's day six. ;) Today we get to talk about my least favorite subject! Clutter!!
Hannah asks us some tough questions. The first is: Do you have time for clutter? One study says that americans spend over 9 million hours looking for things that are lost or misplaced. I know I have been late on more than one occasion due to lost keys, coats, or especially shoes! We waste precious time playing hide and seek with our stuff rather than our kids!
Second, Do you have the money for clutter? We not only pay for clutter, but then we pay to keep it. Do we have furniture or exercise equipment that just take up space and collect dust? How many clothes do we have in our closets that we don't wear? This is valuable real estate! Instead make your clutter work for you. Sell or donate it and with the tax-write off/ profit re-do a room or organize a closet with one of those organization kits and shelves.
Third, Do you have the room for clutter? Look around you. What else could be done in those corners, closets, and spare rooms that are now filled to the brim with clutter? The possibilities are endless!
Fourth, Do you have the energy for clutter? How much time do we spend picking up, organizing, and shuffling around clutter? How much easier would housekeeping be if there was no clutter?
And fifth and most importantly, Do you have the attitude for clutter? I know how much better I feel when a room is clutter free. I stated in an earlier post that a cluttered room is a cluttered mind. Your home is where you should feel at peace and be able to escape from the world. It is tough to do that when everywhere you look there's trash, stacks, and piles.
Let's plan our attack! First, we need four containers. One for trash, donations, put away items, and a box for "I can't part with it yet" stuff. Second, choose one area to work on and make sure you have enough time to complete it. This weekend I did my food storage space, and now it is like my favorite room in the house! Next, make sure that every item we pick up goes in one of the containers. Don't just pick it up and not know what to do with it so you put it back down. Then when the containers are full, put everything where it belongs. Trash goes in the trash. The donation box in the car to take when the job is done, put the keep items where they belong, and label the stuff you can't part with yet and put them in the garage or attic. Put a note on your calendar for 4 months from now. Go back to it and decide if you have been fine without it. Take that stuff and donate it or sell it. If it still has value, find a place for it. Once you are done, Reward yourself! Take a bath, give yourself a mani/pedi, make some cookies and eat them before the kids get home! You've worked hard for them!
Now, repeat after me. "Clutter in, Clutter out". This is our new mantra!! We are always going to have stuff start to collect in the nooks and cranies and dark corners of our homes. So lets declare war on the clutter! Have a place for everything and everything in its place. Keep a box somewhere ready for things that we grow out of, or don't use anymore for donation. Throw out garbage right away. Everytime you buy something new, the old thing it replaces goes out.
So, in our journals, lets divide up our houses into zones. Zone one might be your kitchen. Zone two, the living room. Zone three could be the bathrooms or office. You get the idea. Then use tomorrow or the weekend to to begin de-cluttering your first zone. Practice building it in blocks from our action steps to make it seem more managable. And don't forget your reward!!
No comments:
Post a Comment