I vacillate between a sort of cheerful, lazy acceptance of the state of our little home, and a soul-crushing level of frustration, guilt and shame. I have never been the world's most terrific housekeeper, probably, and having two little boys adds exponentially to the clutter. The result being, OMG look at this house I can't believe a person (neighbor, family) just came in here with it like this. Sometimes I'll post a candid shot on Facebook of the boys doing something super-cute, and then later I'll look at it and think, OMG look at our house I can't believe .... etc.
My younger (by 3 years) sister has been part of my inspiration on this. She does not have any kids, but even before we had the boys, her place was much neater than mine. I recall this very specific instance maybe 10 years ago when she'd moved into a small one-bedroom apartment, and she was simply puttering around the house, and I was idly watching her, and all of a sudden it hit me, this exact thought: OHHHHH! She.Puts.Sh*t.Away! I'm a little embarrassed to admit this was such a revelation, but yeah. She puts things away when she is done with them. I do this well while cooking, but that's it. Then a couple of years later, she moved into this really cute but very small house, and mentioned that she'd simply had to be intentional about living with fewer possessions, making difficult decision about parting with a lot of her belongings.
Then about six months ago I began following Joshua Becker at the blog Becoming Minimalist. He has convinced me that it's time to get rid of a major amount of stuff. One of the themes is de-cluttering, which is exactly the correct term for what I need. He is basically anti-organizing - to him organizing is just moving your stuff around, and it always has to be repeated, and for goodness' sake don't buy things to (theoretically) organize the stuff you have : Have Less Stuff. I have re-branded this as, Have Less Crap. Because that is a lot of what we have - crap. Arts and crafts crap. Kid crap. Paperwork crap. Etc. Another blog I just found is 365 Less Things; this is not an official recommendation because I'm still checking it out, but the titles of the posts seem promising. Also, unclutterer. And our family's birthday season is upon us - all four of our birthdays are within a six-week period, and I'm going to try my best to keep everyone to one toy, one book, one outfit. Making a concerted effort to keep anything new that's not really necessary (pens, stickers, birthday party favors, etc.) from coming into the house in the first place.
I'm also trying to de-clutter my mind and my to-do project list; there's an e-mail and social media component. Pretty sure I'm going to delete my twitter account, I'm deleting Pins like crazy. I've made a list of projects I've undertaken over the years that I never finished, and have established an order in which to complete them. My office, which is actually pretty good (that's likely 90% due to the fact that I share it with someone). Our spare bedroom is atrocious, but we're slowly making progress. I think I finally have my husband on board; initially he was concerned that I was going to give away everything we have. I explained it's not my goal to get rid of it all, just about 50% of it all :). (Yes, really). I got pretty discouraged over the weekend - we've done so much, and there's still so much to do. But today I'm feeling more hopeful. We are climbing out - slowly clawing our way to the top of the heap. My ultimate goal is to feel more at peace in a cleaner home, which will be easier to keep clean once there's less stuff collecting dust bunnies, and I won't be hunting/swearing/mentally collapsing every time I need ... anything :).
In case you're wondering, 2,015 items breaks down to:
168 per month
39 per week
5.5 per day.
I'm sure you're thinking, 2,015 items is a lot, especially given the above-referenced blog titled 365 fewer things. I've been unsure what a fair way is to count things - like, if I donate a box of 24 crayons to Simon's Sunday School class, is that 24 items or is it one? I have been sort of splitting the difference, doing half one way and half another. You know, approximately. A pair of shoes is 2, a set of plates and bowls is whatever number of individual things; paper and other stuff gets a lowball estimate. Hey, if you can do it better ... go do it your way :). By the end of February, we'd given up 292, which is 44 short of the goal of 336. But on March 1st, we'd boxed up 77 kid items (toys and books) for the consignment sale (see below), tossed 26 Happy Meal-ish type toys and 1 old makeup brush, and donated 7 glove/scarf/hat items to Goodwill (here, counted a pair of gloves as 1). So that's 111 items in one day!
"Divest" in our case means get out of the house, period. We are donating a lot to various places, we'll sell a ton of kids' toys and books at our church's consignment sale (and what doesn't see automatically gets donated), paper is being recycled and shredded, and various junk items are simply trashed.
Here are some projects I have completed (three Pinterest wins):
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| Cupcake "bouquet" for my sister's birthday |
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| (She loved it) |
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| Mason jars painted on the inside |
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| I did these quite awhile back but the photos I took were awful. |
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| Why three shots of the same thing? 'Cause I'm like that :) |
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| This is a melted-crayon project. I started out with the usual vertical drippy lines, but then saw some like this. Tip that I include for no particular reason at all - melted crayon will come out of light-colored carpet easily, just using Resolve. Other tip: use your brains and don't do this project on light-colored carpet. |
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