Declutterization!

Yes, I'm Still Achieving!

2010-04-17T15:14:00.000-05:00

I have been quite remiss in logging my progress, but progress I have had!

I finished last week in the kitchen, all the way through. My poor kitchen is still a disastrous mess, but I cleaned out the refrigerator and got rid of some stuff. I cleaned out my pantry closet, and a lot of time was spent catching up on cleaning dishes and sorting through boxes.

This week has been the bathroom, so I've come full circle. It has been a full month that I've been doing this, and I know after another month, two months, three months, my house will look completely different.

I've gotten 15 minutes done every day except last night, when dishes needed washing and I've been working under a teething-baby deadline. James helped me load the dishwasher after I put Bean to bed, then we watched New Moon. Bean woke up after only an hour or so, and only wanted to sleep on me. I categorize yesterday under the "illness" category of acceptable excuses, even though the illness wasn't mine. :D

Great strides in the bathroom. I went through my train case full of old cosmetics, cleaned out a cabinet under the sink, went through a little box that had been holding some of my old beauty stuff, and nearly finished the closet. If Bean will let me today I'll do the other drawers on the other side of the sink.

Next week: Master Bedroom again. There will only be three days of this room, because on Thursday morning James, Bean and I are leaving for Salt Lake City. We're attending the LDStorymakers conference next weekend.

I'm really enjoying seeing the difference on this second go-round of the house.

Last Week, This Week

2010-04-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

I was terrible at posting last week, but knowing I was going to kept me going.

15 minutes Wed, Thurs, Fri and Sat. Booyah!

The couches got cleared out underneath, piano cleared off and dusted, the cobwebs are gone from the walls, and the biggest layer of dust is gone from the pictures. Perfect? Not yet, but much better!

The kids forgot a couple of days (meaning I forgot to make them do it), but under Lion's bed is finally clear. A few bits to sweep once we pull his bed out, but it is amazing! A couple of weeks ago things were stuffed so hard under his bed they were completely spilling out.

This week is the most cluttered, un-functional place in my house: the kitchen.

Living Room: Days 1 and 2

2010-03-31T00:39:00.000-05:00

15 minutes, both days.

Not much to report, but the couches have been cleared out underneath, and it's much clearer. The five loads of laundry have been reduced, and tomorrow should be eliminated.

The piano is next on my list for tomorrow! (Actually today, since it's past midnight. I'm getting the baby to sleep as I type this.)

Onward, ever onward, my friends!

Master Bedroom: Days 3,4,5 and 6; Sneak Peek for Next Week!

2010-03-27T21:26:00.000-05:00

Wow. I thought I had at least posted Wednesday! Time flies when you have a fussy baby. Well...not really, but it does pass.

I am very glad this week is over. My bedroom isn't finished, but it looks so much better! Here's the breakdown:

Day 3: Began decluttering the pile residing on the dresser
Day 4: Finished dresser, found odds and ends including a car title, various earrings, and my husband's lost scriptures. (Yes, it was really that bad.)
Day 5: Put stuff I didn't know what to do with yet into a couple of boxes already containing that variety of stuff, moved those and a humidifier that we have to take back to the store under the crib. It's out of the way now, and the floor is clear. Well...except for the dirty laundry, I need to fold some to empty a basket. I also need to get back to the awesome laundry system I had last year. It's posted here somewhere.
Day 6: Worked on the bookshelf. It's one of those short, small ones, but it has accumulated a lot of stuff, and not many books. The top looks pretty good now.

What a difference six days make! My room, though still needing another week at least, doesn't look like a tornado hit it. I actually feel like I can relax in there now. Ahhhhhh.

Next week: the Living Room. Dun dun dun....

Master Bedroom: Day 2

2010-03-23T23:21:00.000-05:00

So today I started getting sick. Felt nauseated part of the day, but it got better pretty quickly. I was surprised, because for a while I was sure the flu was coming on. I think it has to do with the green smoothies and healthy food I've been eating. (The feeling better part, not the sick part.)

I really didn't want to do my 15 minutes today. I mean, really.

I forgot to make the kids do it. Both boys weren't feeling so hot today, so since they're kids I kind of let it go earlier. Then I forgot about it later, completely. They were running around like they usually do and ate a hearty dinner, so they could have done it. They'll get back in the saddle tomorrow.

There was nothing exciting about today, except that I found a book a friend loaned me. I had lost it while in the middle of it and have been wanting to read the rest. (It had snuck under the bed somehow!) I just continued to clean up my floor and now we can get into the closet. Our room becomes the receptacle for things we don't know what to do with, like boxes of stuff and odds and ends. Those are mostly out of the way now, stacked and waiting to be sorted through, instead of blocking part of our closet door.

It does look better in there. I'm so glad I just did it anyway.

Master Bedroom: Day 1

2010-03-22T20:22:00.000-05:00

Well, I took the plunge. Our room is such a wreck, everything on the floor everywhere! The 15 minutes were spent picking up dirty clothes, throwing away trash, and tossing the shoes into the closet. I didn't even touch the boxes filled with things under the crib and the bed.

Those clothes are now mostly in the wash. Yay!

Princess threw some of her dirty clothes in the hamper. The boys mostly played catch-up from the weekend for their 15 minutes, but their room is ready to get cleaned further tomorrow.

I'm happy to have gotten some things accomplished, especially since I could hardly put Bean down at all today.

I like it that he's snuggly when he's not feeling well, poor little guy.

I hope to see a major difference in my bedroom tomorrow!

Days 3&4: Bathroom

2010-03-20T19:19:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I in fact did do my 15 minutes yesterday. Pacific time instead of my current Central, but it still counts because it was before I went to bed!

I had a full day yesterday, and by the time I got the teething baby settled down on Daddy (he was still working from home) and remembered about my 15 minute commitment, it was nearly 1:00 am. What's another 15 minutes when you've already been up that late, right?

I got another two baskets cleared out last night, and another two today plus two small ones. I'm going to have to do some reshuffling of some of them. One of them is going to be divided into two baskets, but that's going to have to wait until the next Bathroom Week. I also cleared some dirty clothes off of the counter and emptied out the wastebasket. I've thrown out a whole lot of expired, empty, or no longer wanted bottles, jars and tubes. The closet looks so much better! I found a lot of hidden dirty laundry behind my diaper pail that is waiting to be washed. I actually found my wetbag! (I do cloth diapers, and a wetbag is a small travel bag to put wet diapers in.)

The boys have done a fantastic job with their room, and they're not complaining as much about doing it. They're seeing that a few minutes of diligence a day is really going to make their room clean.

Princess has picked up all her clothes off the floor. Since her room is really a major mess, she's going to need my help. After all, she's only four.

I really didn't want to do it today since I've been running around cleaning other things and doing laundry. But, since I promised myself I'm glad I did!

Next week, as Flylady has scheduled: Master Bedroom Week. Yikes. I admit, I'm not looking forward to that one. I am looking forward to the results, though. The kids will continue on with their 15 minute cleaning in their rooms as well.

I'm doing all I can today to make Sunday an actual day of rest. It hasn't been for me in a long time.

See you Monday!

Day 2: Bathroom Closet

2010-03-18T23:55:00.000-05:00

Well, this 15 minute thing is my last hope, and by golly, it's going to work!

We have a decent-sized bathroom closet, so tonight after I got back from my Church activity and present-shopping for my daughter's friend's birthday party tomorrow, I did my 15 minutes in there. James had the kids do their 15 minutes in their rooms while I was gone.

There are several shelves in the closet filled with plastic baskets. It looked great when I first organized it...two years ago. I took one basket out and went through it. I tossed a bunch of junk and semi-organized it. Now we know where the bandaids, rubbing alcohol, Q-tips, sunscreen, and various other health-related or first-aid items are. It isn't perfect, but its SO MUCH BETTER! (Yes, I'm yelling with excitement!)

Since I didn't get to Walmart, I didn't get those small organizing plastic boxes for yesterday's drawer. Well, guess what? I found three small ones in the closet! So when my timer went off I took two of them and quickly sorted a few things. Took me maybe five minutes, tops.

Now I have a nearly clean, organized drawer and a whole basket done in the closet!

Since I knew I had to do this today, and it being past 11:00 pm with a wide-awake baby, I'm so glad I chose an accomplishable goal.

And since my baby just spit up all over my thigh, I will go now.

See you tomorrow!

Back in the Saddle...Again!

2010-03-17T22:25:00.001-05:00

Well, since my confinement and lots of couch or bedrest with my pregnancy, and birth of my velcro baby, my house looks like it was hit by a garbage-filled dump truck.

I have now hired (for nothing!) the services of one Flylady. (www.flylady.com)

We are going to clean up our monstrous mess in 15 minutes. You heard that right--15 minutes. Well, to be honest, 15 minutes per day.

I figured this out. If we do an extra 15 minutes of decluttering and cleaning 6 days per week in the next year, minus nearly 2 weeks of vacation time, we can have over 76 hours of cleaning and decluttering done. That's at that 15 minute bare minimum. 76 hours of intense cleaning and decluttering will get us a looooong way to our goal!

There will be no pics for a while, because of my sheer embarrassedness (yes, that is now officially a word because I said so). But there will, barring lack of electricity, be posts chronicling this for the next year. So, officially starting on St. Patrick's Day 2010, we begin.

This week, Flylady is focusing on the bathroom and office. Our office space is small, and yesterday I cleaned off the desk by throwing everything into a grocery bag and stuffing it under the desk for James to go through. Today I did 15 minutes in my bathroom. I cleared off the countertop, mostly, and went through my drawer that I could barely open or shut. It was filled with all kinds of old makeup, expired bottles, and samples. I found a lot of my earrings as well.

The drawer is not completely done, but nearly everything left in it is something I want. If I don't use it by the time Bathroom Week rolls around again, it's getting tossed. I'm going to get a couple of small bins at Walmart tomorrow to organize that drawer. Amazing what 15 minutes did to a drawer that was bugging me for about two years.

I'm excited!

The kids are doing it too. Princess got all her clothes picked up off her floor, and Professor and Lion (mostly Professor, because Lion was whining) cleared a HUGE area of their floor. Lion cried in my arms afterward, telling me he knows he can do it and that he will do it. I hope he remembers that tomorrow.

In another week or two the kids rooms should be completely clean.

Part of me is frustrated that it will take so long, but at least this way our house will get cleared out slowly, but surely!

Listen to Your Mother...At Least Listen to Mine!

2009-03-17T11:41:00.002-05:00

I have a decluttering post before/after to put up from last weekend, but right now I'm in the middle of cleaning my room. It's so bad that I'm not putting up pictures! I needed some motivation, and I got that in the form of three-year-old Princess. She came into my room, looked at the mess and stated: "Mama, I'll help you clean your room."

She has been a big help. It's so nice to have little feet to run and put things away for you.

While taking a break, I remembered something my mom said that I want to share with you. I was talking to her last night, and she gave me some advice that I think is profound for those of us who struggle with messiness. We were talking about floors that need to be swept and mopped like my kitchen floor currently does. She said (and I'm paraphrasing here):

"Having a dirty floor isn't the problem. When it's bad is when you don't notice the dirty floor because there's stuff all over it! If you notice the floor, you're doing pretty well."

How right she is. Mom, thanks for making me feel better.

Right now I have the energy to clean my room, and that is my cleaning priority today, along with washing towels and sheets. The dishwasher is running. I can sweep the kitchen later. I can assign one of the children to mop it.

Sometimes we have to adjust our priorities to fit what works for us daily, instead of adhering to what someone else thinks we should do. That's how I'm slowly getting all this done.

I have another one and a half big black trash bags ready for the thrift store! Go, me!

My other priority today is to take some time to lie down to rest, and read to Princess. She has this book of princess stories that she loves, and it's been a while. Lion and Professor are bound to sneak in as well.

Time to make lunch and get back to work!

Laundryitis

2009-03-09T22:42:00.003-05:00

Do you know what Laundryitis is? It's a common condition where your laundry multiplies out of control, no matter what you do to curtail it. You empty a hamper, turn your back and voila! Another pile magically takes its place.

I have tried many things to tame Laundry Mountain. None of them worked. Until I finally found a system that works for us!

I'm not saying that all the laundry is done at this point in time. I have a load in the washer that may need to be run through again as it's been there since Saturday. Today I was a wreck waiting for the sonogram and got nothing done at all. I have a load in the dryer to fold and, I'm going to do another load or two tomorrow. But the end of the upstairs laundry is in sight. (I say "upstairs laundry" because the things downstairs that need to be washed in order to sort them and get rid of them are a different story.)

It's so simple, that I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out. The biggest problem? Kids having too many clothes. Thanks to generous family and friends and yard sales, they had more than enough. The more they had, the longer I went without washing. I would find previously clean clothes on the floor because Lion took pants out of his drawer, hated them, flung them on the floor to find another pair, and there you go. The circle of pants never ends.

Every six months or so I go through their drawers with them. Lion's was done about two weeks ago. Lion's cousin is going to be thrilled with the pairs of really nice pants that Lion just couldn't wear. Thank you, sensory issues!

He has a handful of long-sleeved shirts, since he outgrew most of them in the last couple of months. I told him to pick his ten favorite T-shirts, which he did. Doing this with all the kids reduces the amount of laundry. Princess just got a set of clothes for the next size up, so we are going through her things to put some away for her cousin. Thankfully I started realizing the "too many clothes" dilemma before acquiring them for Professor last year, so he doesn't have a ton. It also helps solve the problem of putting clean clothes away into smaller, too full drawers.

That problem fixed, my only other problem was this:

I use the tall, thin hampers for laundry baskets as well as their intended function, hampers. They're much easier to carry up and down the stairs.

Why is this a problem? Well, I would take the full basket downstairs, wash and dry it, and bring it upstairs. (Hopefully I remembered within a few days.) If I didn't fold it right away, it would sit there and stagnate. Meanwhile, there was no place for dirty clothes in the boy's room so where would they put the dirty clothes? You guessed it--on the floor. I don't know if you know this, but clothes on the floor breed worse than rabbits. It's a scientifically proven fact. (Ok, I made that up. But you know what I mean!)

So we had missing hampers that would end up full of clean or dirty laundry, either downstairs or upstairs. When your laundry room is downstairs, it's easy to forget about what's lurking there. James is one of those rare guys who willingly uses a hamper. We kept it in the closet, but when I'd take it away he'd have to toss his clothes on the closet floor. I didn't look in that side too often, so before I'd know it he'd run out of clean laundry. The phrase "out of sight, out of mind" surely was true in my case.

The solution that took me over nine years to figure out is very embarrassing. You are probably shaking your head at my dimwittedness. The thing is, is that I'm hopefully teaching people what happens when you have the tendency to make things more complicated than they really are--by my example.

The solution is as thus:

Have a hamper for each room, out in the open. Sure, it's not as lovely as if it were hidden in the closet, but which is prettier? Laundry hamper or clothes all over the floor?

Keep a hamper in the bathroom for dirty towels and sheets.

Keep an extra one to trek up and down the stairs with.

Do not wait until the baskets are full. When you see them starting to fill up, take your empty basket around to the rooms and fill 'er up.

Go to the laundry room.

Here it helps if you have an "overflow" basket. I have a 3 tier thing, one of those sorting things. I probably don't need all three now that I have this system. The only reason you'd really need one is if you want to keep all laundry out of the hampers that are in plain sight at all times, then keep them sorted until you had full washloads. And if you're really that picky, I'll bet you don't have a laundry problem in the first place. Still, it's handy to have a place to put those whites that have snuck downstairs with you, or that bright red shirt. Unless you really want to put them on the floor.

Wash and dry the clothes.

Involve your children! Professor, at age eight, has learned how to transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer and start it, and bring clothes up and down the stairs. He has even run the washing machine by himself a couple of times. This from a boy who until a couple of months ago, was hardly required to do any chores at all. There is hope.

When the load is brought up, fold it as promptly as you can. Again, involve your children if they're there. If I don't do it within the first few hours, it's more likely to sit there for a long time. Sometimes I leave it until I take a break in the afternoon, and watch some "Clean House" or something as I fold.

If the kids are playing and I'm enjoying the relative quiet, I fold the laundry, then call them to come get their piles. When there are complaints I have threatened to throw the clothes away. This has worked every time with the older ones. Princess requires a little extra help sometimes, since she can't reach some drawers. But for those she can reach, telling her she's having her favorite doll taken away works wonders. Not that I'm recommending you traumatize your kids, but I have a certain tone that they know means "I mean it and you know that I will do it".

If you put the clothes away because you are home alone, this is a good time to do so. Do it now, before the kids come home and jump all over the couch and wreck them all. It's so disheartening to find previously folded laundry strewn everywhere.

Simple? Yes. Works? Yes. Laundryitis in our household has been cured.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed. I wonder what I'll dream about tonight. Washers with teeth, perhaps? Maybe fields of flowers with sheets blowing in the sunshine that I didn't have to hang? Ahh, lovely. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Weekend Project: Before and After

2009-03-06T20:36:00.013-06:00

Every weekend, I do a special project. Some weekends it's small, and some weekends it's pretty big. This weekend I am finishing up a bunch of loose ends. I have cleaned and decluttered some main rooms in my house, but there are parts of them that I haven't gotten to yet that are bugging the heck out of me!

Today I worked in the living room. Our bookshelf is our homeschooling bookshelf, with a few religious books on the bottom. It hadn't been decluttered for months, and was pretty awful! I did it in shifts, along with the rest of the living room.

Lion was eager for me to begin. Can you see where he's losing an upper tooth?

Before

After

There's still a lot there, but it's all necessary. Except I'm realizing I need to go through our marker/crayon/glue box sometime soon!

There are a few books on the middle of the third shelf from the bottom that are no longer there. Princess decided to "help" me by putting a stack of cookbooks there, and I didn't have the heart to remove them for several hours.

On to the rest of the living room decluttering zone:

Before

After

That striped thing is our dog's memory foam bed. We found it at Sam's, and since then have had no problems with him sneaking onto the couches when we leave! He loves it, but hates to be around when I'm cleaning. Oh, and after I noticed those fingerprints above the fireplace in the picture, I cleaned them off. Don't you love how I re-purposed the giant wooden salad bowl? It's perfect for the blankets!

I don't have a full "before" of the tv, just in parts of formerly posted pictures, but I wish I had remembered. It looks so much better now! I put candles in the holders after this picture but didn't want to get the camera back out. The kids thought it was hilarious that I got their movie on TV.

Looks like I need to stick those wires behind the TV. Hey, I'm working on not being a perfectionist, so I left them on purpose. Yep, that's it.

This piano was given to us, and we need to have it fixed as a bunch of keys don't work. Mostly it's been used as a catch-all. I took this picture in the middle of the day, so it's harder to see but there were a ton of candles and a huge stack of papers and stuff on top.

The kids loved the scent of the vanilla Pledge I used on it. It's an old piano so it has plenty of marks, but now no fingerprints! The glare shows everything, but it actually looks pretty good in person. I think some Old English is next on the list.

I have some papers to shred from that huge stack, but I may save them to do until later.

That's it for tonight. It's wonderful to be able to relax in here! I've noticed that my level of anxiety is very much related to how much clutter is around me. Now I have one room that looks great! Well, unless I turn around and see the office space, which is atrocious. I'll keep looking in this direction, thank you very much!

Tomorrow it will either be the top of the refrigerator and pantry cabinet, or my boys' dresser and closet. Decisions, decisions...

Wherever You Go, I WILL Find You!

2009-03-01T22:47:00.001-06:00

I knew I was in trouble.

The letter came not once, not twice, but several times before they gave up.

I was suspended.

Or rather, my privileges were.

"The nerve of that library!" I thought. Well, at first. Then I conceded that they had every right to demand the return of their books.

It was just that it was so embarrassing. They should have been returned in April of 2008. I was sure I had returned one of them. The other one, a small children's book, was hiding from me. I knew it was plotting against me. By October, I snuck into the library like a fugitive. That book that I KNEW I returned wasn't on the shelf. I was sure it was hiding on me. Nope.

So, I slunk up to the front desk where a nice young man was sympathetic to my plight. He insisted on trying to look for both books, even the evil children's book that was stuck somewhere at home. I wasn't surprised when the result was not to my advantage.

"Let's renew them to give you a few more weeks to find them." He did so quietly, under the radar of any of the...ahem...more elderly lady librarians around. Such a nice guy, I hated to disappoint him.

In the next few months the children's book turned up. When I straightened up my living room shelf, there it was--lying face up underneath a row of books. How it managed to slither under there, I will never know. It was punished by being returned to the library. The title, "Let's Go, Dear Dragon!" was oh, so fitting! Go, it did. Right down the mouth of the return slot.

The months have passed since then. I nearly gave up hope of ever finding that other darn book that has been lost for nearly a year. I was going to give in and pay for it until I realized something. I discovered that I really do want an organized home, and I'm going to do what it takes to get one. It's going to be a long journey. I started four weeks ago, and I haven't gotten that far--so I think, until I remember where it was four weeks ago. Now our main living area upstairs wouldn't be condemed unfit for habitation, it's just kind of messy. Except for our bedroom. That room is still a disaster, but I've already started on it.

Our bedroom is the last place I saw that book. I did clean it thoroughly once during that time and never found it. I think it grew legs and walked away. It's hiding, probably in some box of random junk that got thrown somewhere out of the way, probably in the basement. I know it's mocking me, giggling to itself with unabashed glee, spinning around with arms flung in wild abandon. How can I be so sure?

The title is "Organization for Dummies".

Yes, you read that correctly.

I may be hanging my head in shame, but I'm not going to pay for that book just yet. I know they won't arrest me for it because it was gone for six months and they didn't put out a warrant. They called me when it was three books that were overdue, but not for one.

Two more months, is that too much to ask? I'm giving it two months before I give up and pay for it. I feel so guilty. I love books! I used to volunteer in a library, for goodness sake! I want to run to the library, plunge my nose into the stacks and take deep breaths of booky goodness, roll around on the carpet between shelves in ecstasy while clutching longed-for James Dashner (um--his BOOKS, get your mind out of the gutter!) and load up my giant library bag like a maniac! It makes me so sad. Oh, the shame!

I used to get upset at the kids for losing library materials. I can't now or I'd be a hypocrite. Once this is resolved we'll go to the library again. There will be no deep, dark place for books to hide. If one is lost I'll merely have to check under the couch cushions or under a bed. I can't wait until that day.

I see a future Saturday morning in the springtime. Children scattered around the house reading, lounging in the cool breezes flowing through billowing curtains. Gleaming floors, sweet-smelling couches, unwrinkled beds. I'm in my room, smiling at the quiet and either reading or writing a book. There is no dust, only the smell of the crockpot meal I started for dinner and the knowledge that laundry is washing downstairs. Perhaps later that day we'll take a trip to the library, borrow a movie for nothing and have some fun family time. Ahh, sounds delightful!

Book, if you are reading this, I have only one thing to say:

I'm coming for you. No basket will be unturned, no surface left undisturbed. Eventually, if you are still in this house, I will find you! Be afraid, be very afraid!

So continues the great declutterizaton!