Clutter Beware...

Our house is going on a diet...A clutter diet. I read this article last week and was called to action to reduce our clutter footprint in our house. We have a lot of space (3500 square feet counting our basement) so it is hard for me to understand how it could be full! I believe it has to do with a certain pack rat whom we all know (Jeremy). I have also contributed and so have the kids but now it is time to take action. Flat surfaces are meant to be flat!

The article summed up says you need to do one of three things: ART
Act
Recycle
Trash
That seems easy enough but it went on to say that if you just throw everything away and do not understand the reason it stayed so long you will just reaccumulate more clutter. That hit home with me because clutter is emotional baggage. And as with all emotional baggage it creates anxiety, anger and stress. In order to successfully combat the clutter we have to successfully shed the emotional baggage...

I started this on Friday night at 11:00 pm. I felt motivated and it must have rubbed off on Jeremy because he stayed up until 2:00 am cleaning his desk zone. I have everything labeled into zones at the moment because according to the article you need to break everything into micro zones and stick with it for at least 6 weeks so it becomes part of your routine.

Saturday I enlisted the help of my OCD mini-me Parker! He is always very tidy and puts things away but was willing to help organize our large cabinet in our formal dining room (the whole room is wasted space in my opinion). This cabinet is 7 feet long and accumulates clutter inside and out. Whenever I sit in our kitchen my eye goes straight to the top where junk is stacked high. With Parker's help we reorganized all the storage below and the top is free and clear of clutter. We filled an entire tub full of things for an upcoming gargage sale from this one zone alone. We found things we didn't even know we had-we also recycled and threw away alot!

Now after three days we have three zones that have remained intact. That is encouraging. Luckily, my kids do pick up their clothes and toys-I intilled this early on because if you set something done for now it takes more energy later to go back and pick it up and put it away-I think they get that and so it is one less battle. It is great to see Parker's good habits rubbing off onto Sophie so hopefully if we teach them that less is more they will be spared the clutter in their homes later on. I will post some photos as we go-there is still the master closet, hall closet and basement to go. So far we have two full tubs for our sale and I have a feeling when we are done it will be 10-whatever doesn't go will be donated as it will not come back into our house!