Do you sometimes stack things on top of other things? Do you ever add a dirty dish to another dirty dish in the sink?  Do you throw a coat on the floor or the banister because you know you’ll put it back on soon anyway? Maybe you find yourself stepping on kids toys. Are you ever looking for something that you literally JUST put down!

OMG!! Me too!

I can’t stand it!! “I know I put my list right here…somewhere…” *cough cough…by all these other papers, how could it possibly get lost there!

I get tired of wasting my time looking for things! Nothing kills my productivity more than spending 30 minutes looking for my keys! I can’t possibly be the only who will sometimes head to the dollar store or the local department store to pick up a second, or third or fourth of something just because I can’t find the original one, or second, or third inside my own home!! How crazy is that!?

For years, while I’d be walking around the house I would question myself about my stuff!

But I love my stuff…don’t I?

NO! Its actually consuming most of my day! Its getting in the way of my ability to have a great life! My time is spent moving my stuff so I can clean underneath it! Or sorting it into bins only to have those bins take up the space. Or not being able to find the things I want to use, so then I don’t even enjoy my beloved hobbies. Read below for an interesting time test challenge!

I once took a pile of pictures, of almost every room in the house. I took them because you can see your things from a different perspective in a picture. In my own home when I see things that are not in their place, I know I can move them to where they belong. But in a picture, that mess is frozen in time. Anyone can see it in that messy state! You start to see your stuff the way that other people would see it. As I looked through the pictures, all I could see is one of those hoarder style shows…It may not seem as bad as that quite yet, but by-golly it could easily go that way if I don’t kick out my stuff!

I mean, it doesn’t even pay rent!

The only way I could ever truly conquer my clutter is to visualize the organized room or space. Then for me, I could see that most of the stuff already in that room or space doesn’t belong at all. I discovered that most of the time when I am cleaning an area, I clean the mess, but I don’t fix the problem. Why are papers ending up in the kitchen? Why are there shoes all over the front hall? Why are there books all over the bedroom floor? Why aren’t the dirty clothes going into the hamper?

I needed to start questioning WHAT I was cleaning and if there was a way to deal with a mess BEFORE it even got messy!

I needed systems!

The only way I’d be able to set up my systems is to go through EVERY SINGLE thing in the house! It’s the only way I could clump my stuff together so that the organization and usefulness of my stuff could be maximized.  Believe it or not, I thought about pretending I was moving and boxing up everything. Then pulling out my stuff one box at a time and putting what I wanted to keep away and dealing with the rest of it. I immediately got overwhelmed with the thought of how many boxes I would need, and how to actually organize the boxes so that like things were together in order to sort the stuff when opening the boxes!

How do you go through decluttering your entire house, and making an enormous mess, and still live in it, and watch over kids, and feed them like 20 times a day all at once!?

We called Budget Bin and ordered a large bin to be delivered to our house!

This…just…got…real!

Stay tuned for my next post on Wednesday; The Purge!

Thanks for coming home!

Ok so listen up, here is my time challenge!

1. Go and vacuum a room, any room, you pick…I was going to make it the whole main floor but I think my point will still be made!
2. Before you start, set a stop watch. That’s before you even start tidying the room!! No cheating!
3. Check out how long it took and pat yourself on the back for vacuuming the room!
4. Before you put that vacuum away though….try vacuuming the same room again!! Be as thorough as you were before.
5. Set your stop watch again!

If you had clutter on your floor I guarantee it took you less time the second time! I would bet that you put a couple things away even if you moved some stuff with your vacuum!!*Not that anyone does that…right? Think about how much less time it would take you to clean, if you didn’t have as much stuff! You could try the same thing with wiping a counter!