It's the enemy of the small house: STUFF. SO MUCH STUFF! There is no room for extra stuff in a small house. "Oh, that's great," you say, "oh it must be so nice to live without all that extra junk." Oh no, we live with it. It comes out our ears, out our drawers, out the closets, it creeps across the floors...any flat surface gets covered in STUFF. How in the world can I lose so many things in 850 square feet?
Christmas season is upon us (quick Thanksgiving tip for holding a big family meal in a little house: don't. Go to someone else's house, maybe two different houses two days in a row, then you get to have Thanksgiving leftovers without storing the leftovers in the fridge!). We are also blessed to have some fantastic Jewish friends who let us in on their Hanukkah and Passover celebrations each year, so we get twice the holiday fun. We have some Hanukkah decorations (TJ particularly loves her Noah's Ark menorah). Where does all this go? Each year I've been "editing" down our Christmas decorations and putting up less. We're down to a 1.5 foot high fake Christmas tree. Which is surrounded by stuff.
I would like to pay someone to decorate for me. I know there are people that do that. And someone to edit all the stuff in my house. I know there are people that do that, too.
Want to de-clutter your house? There is plenty of advice on the internet. So much, actually,that you could spend those two hours you set aside to de-clutter your house cluttering up your mind with systems, tips, goals, charts...or reading this blog!
One of the experts on making yourself a more organized person is
Flylady, but I have to say, just reading her "
Getting Started" page makes me stress out and want to cry. She advocates getting fully dressed all the way down to your shoes, for heaven's sake! I don't think she has infants or toddlers. Somedays getting dressed before noon is an acheivement.
But she has one suggestion that we have implemented in our family in the last two weeks: 15 minutes of clean-up time. We try to eat dinner as a family together every night if possible, and immediately after dinner, we have 15 minutes of clean-up time. I put the focus on three things: cleaning up toys, clearing the table (not necessarily cleaning the kitchen), and sweeping the dining room--that last one is most important right now as we have a little one who shows us she's done with dinner by plopping her leftovers on the floor. We set the timer, we go. Sometimes I go a little longer than the timer. Hopefully it means good habits for our family and our kids. Time will tell!
For de-cluttering: if you have small kids, it doesn't matter how often you do this, you will never, ever get ahead. So just accept it. Accept the clutter, the clutter you have not necessarily made yourself (all my shoes get put on their rack, but they don't stay there, especially the fancy high-heeled ones). So many of the suggestions for de-cluttering do not involve frequent interruptions. If you get a few hours to focus on de-cluttering, lucky you! So here's my tip: de-clutter just one thing that is really bugging you at a time. It may only happen once a week. I majored in literature in college, so I have two big bookshelves full of books, books I liked but will probably never read again. Books I didn't like but being on my shelf makes me feel smart (I'm looking at you Tolstoy and Joyce) and will probably never read again. So tonight, to make room for all the Christmas books, I spent 10 minutes going through just two actual shelves. I filled one paper bag with books that might be worth selling at the used book store, and one paper bag just for donation. Then I put them in the trunk of the car. Where they will probably live for the next month.
