Clear The Clutter With These Easy Tips
Well 2010 is now upon us. The Christmas decorations are put away, the tree is gone, the New Year has been duly reigned in, the kids have gone reluctantly back to school and the house is quiet. I have flipped my More Time Moms Family Organizer to January where it is surprisingly empty.
I love January. It’s like a clean slate. White snow everywhere, no pressure to go anywhere. Just stay home and nest. This is when I take a good look around and realize that between the five of us, we have accumulated so much stuff over the course of the last year and now it’s time to clear the clutter. Did you know that the average person loses 29 minutes a day just looking for paperwork on his/her desk? Now can you imagine how much tine you spend walking over clutter, moving clutter, cleaning clutter and searching for items like keys and sunglasses.
Reorganizing your home so it works for you is a project that you might want to do eventually. Not today perhaps, and definitely all at once, but sometime – for this is a super time-saving project. Even if your home works well for you, here are some good ideas.
You can tackle your house one room at a time. In general, all you need to do is:
- Determine the use, purpose and activity for the room.
- Rid the room of all superfluous furniture and clutter: cleaning as you go.
- Reorganize the room and furnishings to suit the use and support the activities in the room.
- Find a place for everything you are keeping, taking the time to find a permanent home for the time-wasters that you can never find: keys, sunglasses, purses, etc.
Start each room by sorting clutter with zest, eliminating everything that you can. You will need basic cleaning supplies, a garbage bag and three cartons labeled:
- GIVE AWAY: It is easier to get rid of things if you know they are going to someone who could use them. Take these boxes out to the car when you are done so that you can dispose of them on your next trip. Consider selling these items to a consignment store, on Craig’s list or putting them aside for a spring garage sale. Personally I like to get rid of things as soon as I can.
- STORE AWAY: Designate a storage area in your home and create an easy storage system using cartons and shelving units. Get new cartons, uniform in size and that fit onto your storage shelving unit. Clearly label the boxes in general categories such as Christmas, Children’s Artwork, Camping Supplies, etc and bring them to the storage area when they are full. If you need help clearing a space in your garage, enlist a friend or hire a professional for quick garage decluttering help.
- SOMEWHERE ELSE: The items in this box belong to another room in the house.
CAUTION: Do not nag or force everyone in the house into this project. Do your children’s rooms with them and be respectful of their choices. When I work with the kids I usually give them a number to work with for example: choose three stuffed animals to keep and let’s give the rest to some other children. If your spouse is not interested in
I enjoyed this post. Regarding clutter – and cleaning out – our family has had a great mechanism for this for the past several years….
At Thanksgiving time, we go through the kids rooms (two daughters, now ages 12 and 10), and then get all the things that they no longer want/need/use that we give to a local shelter. This is GREAT because their toys and things are always in great shape, and they know that the kids at the shelter don’t have much, and so this giving at the holidays will be well appreciated. (If there is stuff that doesn’t seem appropriate for the shelter population, we take the rest to Goodwill.)
In the spring, right after school is out, we do another major clean-out, but this time for our annual June garage sale. We always buddy up with our neighbors, and let the entire block know so that sometimes there are several families involved. The girls get to keep the “profits” from anything of theirs that is sold. They also usually bake cookies and make lemonade which they sell at their table. It’s a great way for us to clear clutter, spend a captive day in the driveway with our neighbors, and the girls have fun with it too, negotiating prices and counting the money at the end of the day (and trying to not eat all the cookies themselves!) If we’re collecting money for a cause, they’ll put some of the money toward that (last year they put half the money they “earned” into our collection for the Smile Train, which we sent once we’d accumulated $250.)
Cleaning out the old books, toys, and collectibles twice a year really helps keep things under control!