This week I am going to walk you through the process I went through in order to simplify the physical chaos in my life… my house! I will also fill you in on how I continue this practice and how I keep this place clean and visitor ready at all times, even with four kids. It sounds crazy, but it can be done and you don’t need a lot of time to do it.
We live in chaos. The world is pulling at us in all different directions every moment of the day and it isn’t always easy to say no to someone or something. This leads to over scheduling and exhaustion in many circumstances. Trying to then raise children on top of the day to day is enough to make a person shut down sometimes. The last thing we need when we walk in from a busy day, or walk downstairs when the kids are finally all asleep is a muddled mess of a home. The home is a shelter, a peace of mind and escape from the world out there. It should be a place you find rest and comfort. If this isn’t the case maybe it is because you feel like you are encased in walls of stuff. Maybe you have just accepted this or the thought of going through and tampering with it is just too much and makes your head hurt.
(Our playroom after a day of play!)
Well, I am here to tell you to buck up and bit the bullet. The first step to simplifying your life is to declutter, declutter, declutter!!! Do you still have those wedding gifts that have never been used and your ten year anniversary is coming up? Do you still have bins and bins of baby clothes even though you are done having children? What about movies and books from the college days that are collecting dust on your shelves? Or the clothes you have that haven’t fit for the past 5 years or so? This is all STUFF!!! This stuff takes up space in your home, is unnecessary and only serves a negative purpose in your life at this point. Get rid of it! Chances are you have been building up things for a while and you range from a fairly simple person to someone that is fringing on hording. The trick is to take a small area at a time. Pick a room.. and start.
That is the first and biggest step.
Just start.
I started with my bedroom and my closet. My husband thought I was crazy when he came home and saw the Goodwill pile that day. I think it rivaled his own 6’4” stature. It was to the point in our closets that I had to push with all I had just to hang things up after laundry and I didn’t wear most of it. I had size ranges all over the place and styles (oh, the styles) all over the place. After I was done that afternoon, I could actually move my clothes a good 10” from side to side when hung. I think I stood there and marveled at that for more minutes than I care to admit and just moved it back and forth.
Now, I am a person that once I start doing something it is hard for me to stop. So, I gave myself a month to do this, but was really done in a week and a half with the whole house. When you start being able to breathe in your own home and see those piles of things leaving it is an addictive drug! But, you should give yourself a nice cushion of time so that way you can surprise yourself when it gets done before that or just enough time to do a bit a day (and if you miss a day or two it is OK). My rule was simple… Does this add to my life? The exception was, of course, memorabilia. I have a chest at the end of my bed those mementos and keepsakes fill and I am a sentimental gal, so I am sure it will fill at some point and I will get another. But, the point is that all of the memorabilia is consolidated to this one area and I know where it is. I did find, however, while going through it that some things I kept and had NO idea what they were and those I was ok parting with.
I couldn’t believe how much stuff I had that we didn’t use or need. It went from claustrophobic to openness over those weeks.
The things I could I recycled, but about 90% of what I got rid of I gave to Goodwill. I had great tax returns in that donated section that year! There are many awesome organizations out there, though, that take your new and gently used items. I keep a Goodwill bin in our closet and as soon as we don’t need something anymore, our youngest has grown out of it or I find something we don’t use it goes in there. When it is full I make a trip. This way the clutter is always on its way out and I don’t have to be surrounded by it. Another way to get rid of things is a garage sale. The bad side to a garage sale is that you have to keep it until the sale, go through everything and price it and actually sit at the sale. But, you do get a monetary pay out much sooner than waiting for Uncle Sam to give it to you. There is always ebay and craigs list as well. It all depends on your personal taste and patience levels. My patience wouldn’t fill a thimble and I like the stuff out.
Look at your tables around the house? Do you need all of those things on there? Come to think of it… do you need the table? Seriously, think simple. Think what makes you comfortable and what makes things easiest for you. When you go to dust in your house what is your most troubled spot? Try and free up some of that. See if the pictures of Aunt Mildred and the ten pictures of your kids and parents can be put into a collage frame and hung on a wall somewhere or just hung individually. Then dusting would be easy.
One of those talks I went to a while back said that you should try and have the minimal amount of horizontal surfaces in your home. Now, the woman I spoke to said she had hardly any, but I am pretty sure a few are good to have. I have my dining room table, a small table in my family room and one in my living room and then the desk and those are all the ones in the downstairs of my house (besides kitchen and bathroom counters) and they are mostly empty and easy to wipe down each week.
For those of you that may struggle with this a bit here is a list I found on a website I found useful called http://www.zenhabits.net/ . These are ways that may help you along in this process.
- Declutter for 15 minutes every day. It’s amazing how much you can get through if you just do it in small increments like this.
- Don’t allow things into the house in the first place. Whether you’ve begun decluttering the living space, or you’ve just completed it, stop bringing in new stuff NOW. Even if that’s ALL you do and don’t start decluttering immediately, if you can only establish one habit at a time, establish the no-more-stuff habit first. This way, when you do get to decluttering the existing stuff, you’ve already stopped making it worse. Think of bailing out a boat with a hole in it. You can bail and bail, but it won’t do anything for the leak.
- Donate stuff you’re decluttering, so you don’t feel bad about wasting it.
- Create a Joe’s Goals chart with decluttering on it — either daily, or 3 times a week. Check off the days when you declutter, and you’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment.
- Start at the corner by the door and move your way around the room, doing the superficial stuff first – surfaces, empty the bin etc. Repeat, but do more the 2nd time around – ie. open the cupboards.
- Whenever you’re boiling the kettle for tea, tidy up the kitchen. If the kitchen is tidy, tidy up the next room – it’s only 3 minutes but it keeps you on top of everything (helps if you have an Englishman’s obsession with Tea as well!)
- Use the “one in, two out” rule. The rule: whenever you bring in an item, you have to throw away two other items. First you cheat, by throwing out two pieces of paper, but soon you will have to move to big stuff.
- Make your storage space smaller and more minimal. If you have lots of storage, you’ll fill it with stuff.
- Clothing rule: If you haven’t worn an item in 6 months, sell or donate it.
- The One-Year Box. Take all your items that you unsure about getting rid of (e.g. “I might need this someday…”), put them in a box, seal it and date it for 1 year in the future. When the date comes, and you still didn’t need to open it to get anything, donate the box WITHOUT OPENING IT. You probably won’t even remember what there was in the box.
- Declutter one room (including any closets, desks, cabinets, etc.) before starting on the next one. Spending time in that room will feel *so* good, and it will be so easy to keep clean, that it will motivate you to do more!
- Keep a list in your planner labeled “Don’t Need It – Don’t Want It.” When you’re out shopping and run across some kind of gadget or other item you crave, note it down on the list. This will slow you down long enough to reconsider. Also, seeing the other things on the list that you nearly bought on impulse really helps.
- Internalize that your value is not in your “stuff”. It is just “stuff”. And realize that your value grows when you share your “stuff”. Hoarding is a selfish act.
- Have someone else (who you trust!) help you go through things. They don’t have the (sometime’s irrational) emotional attachment that you might have, but can still recognize if something should be kept.
- Gift everything. Books you’ve read immediately get recycled among friends, family or local libraries. If you buy a new gaming system, donate your old one – and all the games.
We do not have a basement in our home and we don’t need one, for storage anyway. We have a practically empty attic that has holiday things in it and that is it. Just keep asking yourself “Does this add something to my life?” The answer is a clear yes or no most of the time. Let go and let it add something to someone else’s life. Make a trip to the Container Store and organize those rumpled piles of things in random corners. Once you simplify your living area you can breathe a bit easier and things seem a lot less complicated, your cleaning time is more than halved and you have a peace of mind you didn’t know you could have in your home.
(The good kind of chaos you like to see in the house)
Once you have been through this step of the process you can come up with a plan that continues the simplification trend and eliminates those dreaded cleaning days that steal time and energy from you and your family. I will cover the plan I have used for over two years and how it has changed our family dynamic in many ways in my next blog post.
What are some fun tips you have used to organize a part of your home?
Happy Decluttering!
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