Decluttering

The biggest issue we have in this family, related to cleaning, is not putting away things when we are done with them.  This includes dishes, food, clothes, trash, games, books, DVDs, and a host of other personal belongs.  We can take a clean and orderly house and trash it in less than 24 hours.  No joke.

The best solution to this problem would be to train people to put things away when they are done, but would you believe that is harder than it sounds?  I just don’t think I have the time or the energy to do that for myself right now, let alone 3 kids and 1 husband.

One thing I do that helps this issues is to grab a laundry basket and go room to room, on one floor (we have 3) picking up personal belongings.  Once I’m done I call for deliveries to be made.  I either give the chore to one child or I will have them pick out their own belongings and take them away to their rooms. 

If I do this consistently every day, we have a much easier time of it.  It makes it easier to see what actually needs to be cleaned and makes it easier to clean.

I recently moved a toy chest/bench from my son’s room down to our living room near the entry.  It has helped with this issue.  That area is a catch all area anyway. It’s a main kid entry form coming in/going from playing and where the stairs lead up to the bedrooms. This has helped us have a place to tuck things out of sight which has helped us keep our common rooms more orderly.  YAY for order!

The second biggest issue we have is that we own too many things that we don’t need.  The last few months, since my mom’s death, I have been trying to purge our belongings of unnecessary things because we have so many of her things that we need to bring into the house.  She had a lot of really nice belongings, much nicer than most of the stuff we own, so we are upgrading I guess you could say. I have a pile on the front porch ready to go to Goodwill, but our front yard is too wet to pull the truck up or even to walk items out to the car. We could haul them through the house, but really…I’m too lazy. I’ll just wait for some dry ground.  Until then, call us the Sanfords.

Honestly, the purge has been good for us.  I have spoken to the kids many times about getting rid of things they don’t love to make room for the things from Grandma that they do. We’ve also talked about how my mom had so many things and it has really left us with quite a burden.  I’ll post on that sometime soon.  We discuss how material possession can’t go with you.  You don’t store material treasure for yourself in Heaven.  Your treasure in heaven is righteousness.  Better to build relationships and share the Gospel than to spend your time maintaining your personal belongings. 

I know I am going to look back on this post in a couple of years and wonder how I could have even written those words right now. I’m certainly putting far more time into maintaining possessions than I should; and since I know God is doing a work in me right now, I am certain he will have brought me a long way in 2 years.  Something to look forward to.  But for now, we’re in training.

The two best tips I can think of in the area of declutter are:

Lazy Girl Tip #1: Purge things you don’t use and don’t love. You can’t take them with you.
Lazy Girl Tip #2: Declutter every day, even if it’s just one room.

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