Tired Every Night

I have a friend who is very tidy. When I happen to call her at random times, she is almost always cleaning. Before she left on vacation last week she was spic and span cleaning her house top to bottom. I admire her energy. She told me once that she spent three hours ironing a few weeks ago. Um, an iron? I'm pretty sure I have one of those...somewhere. In many ways I want to be like her, minus the somewhat obsessive compulsive part. Her key to clean is "clean as you go." I'm working on it. Clean up breakfast right away. Put away toys right away. Empty the dishwasher right away. Make bed right away.

Tonight it feels like doing things "right away" is just making me tired and crazy because in reality many things don't happen "right away." It usually happens at about 10:30 at night when I'm just so tired and really feel like the house must be tidied before I get into bed. This week while my husband is on the swing shift I've been doing it all by myself. How does it seem to turn into an hour long project just to tidy up every night, especially when I do it every night? How do we accumulate so much stuff in one single day. My house has a very lived in feel right now. It's not crazy, but it certainly isn't organized and totally picked up.

As I was cleaning the kitchen I saw a spot of tomato sauce that I spilled and hadn't cleaned up earlier. Funny, I was just so tired and so frustrated that I seriously considered leaving it there just out of stubbornness.

More sleep and less complaining will help this cleaning and de-cluttering. Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I suspect I will wake up to my house halfway clean and wonder all over again how I train myself, my husband, and my children to be better about picking up after ourselves and solving the paper clutter problem.

Reclaiming the basement...

When we first moved into our house, we loved the basement. While the ceilings are low (less than 6 feet under the braces), it spans most of the footprint of the house. It was open and had a lot of possibilities. Plus, there was a large work-bench area for projects.

Then, we began moving our stuff in. We found that with the basement partitioned into a few smaller spaces and a larger one, we could easily hide all of the stuff upstairs into the large room in the basement when company would come over. Or whenever we'd stock up on our food storage, we could easily dump all of the food in the basement without having to organize it! And all of those Sam's Club boxes that we'd pick up? Yep, you guessed it--right into the basement (who knows? You'll never know when you need to box up and move on. Besides, cardboard makes good fire starter material--always important to have 10x as much cardboard as you'll ever need during the winter!). We're also big into canning (or, at least I think that we ought to be). We picked up several dozen of Mason jars that we'll use someday, when we have more energy or time or willpower.

When the piles of stuff began migrating into the other rooms in the basement and when I had no more room to work on a small table project, I decided that it was time to clean up a bit.

Wow! It is amazing the kind of junk that we've been storing. After working for about an hour and a half, I managed to reclaim a third of the basement storage area. I was surprised at how much we had been storing that we'll never use. I also realized how much cardboard we had--an exorbitant amount.

Its a liberating feeling, getting rid of stuff that's been piling up for years. While there is still a lot to do in the basement, it feels like we're making great progress.

Major Desk Success

One of the hot spots in our house is our computer desk. It is just the catch all for everything. It is in a central location in the kitchen. It collects paper, mail, books, pens and pencils, dishes, toys, tools, and every other little knickknack. Friday we cleaned and sorted out baskets that were supposed to help prevent that clutter build up and reassigned the baskets new jobs. We cleaned off the desk surface and moved the computer tower to a place where it will be less likely to have stuff piled on top of it. I dusted everything and feel confident that we are in good shape to keep it clear.

Our hope is to find a nice secretary desk that can accommodate our computer monitor and that had a door that closes. That door will serve several purposes: (1) Prevent us from having an open surface upon which to immediately think we can put something, even just for a minute--it is never just a minute (2) Curb our mindless computer use a bit. I find my self on the computer just because sometimes. I would like my computer time to be a little bit more deliberate. I think it will be one of those out of sight out of mind sort of things.

Running out of Steam Sometimes

This decluttering crusade is very liberating. I'm really enjoying it. However, there are many moments when I just run out of steam before the job is done. The crux of a clutter-free home is the day to day upkeep. It is so challenging when I'm exhausted and the house looks as if a small (or large) typhoon has left a path of destruction. We try hard to do small room rescues every night before bed. But, it is just the little stuff that is scattered about that builds up.

So, the question of the week: how do I get things picked up and straightened up before I'm just dragging my feet and can hardly keep my eyes open.

06/13/09

Mark this date. We will have our home decluttered on or before this date. It is the date of the annual town-wide garage sale. And we will be active participants in the cause. Someone will value our junk more than we do. And whatever isn't sold will be donated to charity. Clutter will be out of our way, out of our home, out of our lives. This is our goal.

A liberating endeavor

It's been a couple of weeks since we've started on our crusade to reclaim our space and our lives. Fueled by Peter Walsh's book, It's All Too Much, we've begun the process.

It's amazing how attached we are to our stuff. Frugality and resourcefulness have always been our fortes, but now are our biggest hurdles. We can think of a million uses for the various trinkets and paraphernalia that we've collected over the years. We hang onto things, believing that someday we'll make use of the items when we have more time. Who knows? Maybe if everything was put on display, people would pay fortunes just to learn who we are and why we've hung on to such an eclectic mix of junk. $100 a head. Any takers?

The sad thing is that the stuff that we tenaciously have hung on to do not really define who we are (other than resourceful pack rats, because, who knows? we might get around to making use of the three mismatched glasses that we have in our cupboard).

The past several weeks have been liberating. It is amazing how much peace comes with getting rid of the extra baggage that we've been carrying around for years. We've spent fortunes acquiring junk that really has no value and doesn't serve a purpose for us any more.

For any who may be considering decluttering, do it. You'll be amazed at how much better you feel about your life as you clear out the cobwebs of yesteryear.

The things you own end up owning you

We're the typical American family: two cars, two kids, two credit cards, two 401Ks, and too much stuff...probably not that different from everyone else that we know. While we're not always up on the lastest and greatest, we're certainly stuff-magnets. We've got lots of it.

We've got to find a way to declutter our lives and reclaim our independence from the piles of stuff. We're on a decluttering crusade. As a way to motivate us and keep track of our progress, we're logging everything (or most everything) that we get rid of (and letting all of our junk get uploaded onto the world's greatest collection of junk).

But we won't stop there. As most of us know, de-junking and reaccumulating are cyclical. We're out to discover what keeps us accumulating junk and figure out how to keep it at bay.

So, here goes...and let's hope that our next move doesn't require the 26 footer...