De-Clutter Your Home in Time for the Holidays!
By Malia Russell
Several years ago I realized I was outnumbered. There were more people bringing clutter into my home than I could control. With five children in the house, several sets of grandparents, and lots of generous friends who would give us their hand-me-downs, my children rarely saw a day where they were truly in need of something. For that, I am truly grateful. What that also means is that everything brought into our home needed a place, or we would quickly drown in utter chaos. Add to that the fact that my husband and I both have things we love to collect. For me, it is books. He has what we affectionately call “The Cord Hoard.” He loves electronics, and sometimes decades after an electronic device is no longer functioning, we will still find its cord tucked away someplace unexpected. By themselves, cords do not take up much space, but after twenty-one years of marriage, we have lots of them. I secretly think that some other families have been leaving cords here too.
In any case, when I had only one or two children, I simply went through their rooms each month or so and would make sure things were back in their proper places. A little excess never really bothered me because it was tucked away in the privacy of their rooms, which I needed to see only in the morning and at bedtime. However, once children started sharing rooms, the excess began to spill out of the closet and onto the floor, under the beds, into my room, and into the main part of the house. Before long, I felt like I could never get the house clean. There was too much stuff to move around, organize, and dust before I could begin to vacuum, scrub, and polish.
Now that many of my children are older, I have found that having frequent de-cluttering days with challenges and prizes has been a fabulous tool.
Here is how we do it: (more…)