The Great Purge

I began the new year with a pretty ambitious goal to purge our entire home. The house is small and feels stuffed to the gills, so my goal was to eliminate the clutter and free up our space. My hope was, this would make it easier for us to keep the house in order and take less time to get things in their places. Because I always make myself last, I decided to start with my bedroom. I don’t work on the tasks daily and the bigger tasks tend to take me the better part of a weekend, depending on what else we have going on. So, my room took me pretty much the month of January. I culled everything in my dressers, my make-up, the children and baby clothing under my bed, my book shelf and my over-stuffed closet (which does not hold any clothing, just other stuff). I also decided that a deep clean was in order before I could call the room “done.” Going in order, I moved onto the living room after my bedroom. There I had the clever idea, found on an organizational website, to use left-over boxes (cereal boxes, a tampon box and other boxes I randomly collected) decorated in pretty paper as drawer dividers. So, while the living room was not a hotbed of harbored clutter, it took me a considerable amount of time, thanks to my added task of drawer dividers and deep cleaning. Only a few weeks ago I declared the living room finished and moved onto the bathroom. Chica Marie insisted on helping me declutter under the bathroom sink. I found some nice clear plastic containers from Five Below (like a dollar store only, things are mostly under $5). Over the weekend I tackled the bathroom closet, which has been a nemesis of organization for way too long. I purchased more of the containers and soon had the closet wrangled into something that resembled order. During the snow day yesterday my plan was to finish the bathroom and move onto the kitchen. I did finish the bathroom, it is organized and clean, but I only began organizing the stack of paperwork and junk mail that takes up an entire corner of our kitchen counter. Then I ran out of steam.

 

I have been trying very hard to keep myself on task and not flittering from one project to the next when one starts to bore me or gets too hard (just wait until I get to my shoe closet!). The kitchen has been driving me nuts, but I haven’t been getting into the organizational aspect too much (I mean, I keep it clean!) because I wanted to make myself stay the course with the other rooms. Thus far it has been taking me roughly a month per room, with the bathroom being the quickest to date. The kitchen might be a two month project! There is just so much I have to do, so much that has been sitting around for the 10 years I’ve lived in this house. And I suffer from the “what if I need it someday” syndrome, which I know will be a big deal in the kitchen. I already have been internally fighting with myself about a bunt cake pan I have never used, but might someday need…

 

My mom, not knowing about my whole house purge, gave me a huge box of stuff she found in her house that she thought we might want. One thing was my old light bright. I loved this toy as a child! While a lot of the things in the box from my mom didn’t make the cut, I just could not part with the light bright! It needs a new light bulb and a good cleaning, but I think Chica Marie would have fun with it. Finding it a home is the only trouble.  

 

The last room on my purging journey is Chica Marie’s bedroom. My hope is by the time I reach her room I will be ready for two things. One, I’m hoping it will coincide with my semi-annual shoe migration. This is what I call the two times in the year that I switch my seasonal footwear from warm/hot to cool/cold. I love shoes. I have a LOT of shoes – as in over 100 pairs. I’m not a purse girl (although, I do have my fair share) or really big into gobs and gobs of jewelry, but shoes? Oh my! Roughly one half of my shoes are housed in Chica Marie’s bedroom closet (because the one in my bedroom is not large enough and full of other stuff as I mentioned above), the rest of the out-of-season shoes are stashed in Rubbermaid containers in the basement. Thus, the need for the migration from the basement to the closet. Ideally, I would like to do this and purge them all at once. Yes, it is as arduous as it sounds. The second thing I am hoping to happen whilst purging Chica Marie’s bedroom is to buy her the big girl bed I’ve been promising her. I’ve been waiting to use my income tax return so I could get her everything in one fell swoop. I’m planning on buying her bunk beds so there is space for her sister to sleep when she comes over. And, I will most likely need to get her a new dresser or wardrobe too. In essence, her room is getting a total over-haul and I’d rather do it all at once, instead of piece meal.

 

At first the purging was hard for me. It was easier to just hang onto things and try to find them a new home. As I have gone along, it has gotten easier to get rid of things we are not using or have no purpose. I hesitate to use the KonMari way of thinking based on the value of joy because it seems so impractical. And, I would probably get rid of too much paperwork and not enough shoes. Still, as we have hauled bag after bag to the local Goodwill store I find it is easier to breathe, easier to be. There is a lightness that comes with purging. Do my closets now look like the front cover of Better Homes and Gardens? No. But, they are so much more manageable than they were before. I think that’s why I’m simultaneously looking forward to purging the kitchen as much as I am dreading the actual task of doing it. I haven’t asked for the kids to help me, other than lifting things onto high shelves in my closet, because I’ve wanted to deal with my own letting go issues and not have to deal with the kids as well. Thus far, the hardest purge has been my bookshelf. I wanted to only keep the books that fit on the actual shelves and not stacked on top or under or alongside the bookshelf/desk. I ended up giving away a box and large bag of books. But, I actually felt good about it because a friend of a friend came and took them and she was so delighted to have new reading material. And now my bookshelf makes me happy because it’s not a mess!

 

You know, writing about this has actually given me a mental boost to get moving in the kitchen! Anyone in need of large metal mixing bowls that I haven’t used in 10 years?