November 19, 2007 - Organizing the house...

I am learning to organize and downsize my entire home.  I love to organize.  I had all kinds of organized areas, but I never looked around at the entire house at one time to have the HOUSE organized as well.  Because of that, clutter was able to build up between these neatly organized areas.  I accepted too much of other's things and just filled in the blank spaces of the house.  Well, years of doing that added up and I am still continuing my journey of decluttering the house.  I have been at this nearly a year and I was getting frustrated.  Dh and I were talking yesterday and while he notices improvement... there's still TOO MUCH STUFF in this house! 

Having older kids, I'm finding it is harder to downsize certain areas of the home.  Also some things are sentimental to the girls and I want to respect this a 'wee' bit.  But it has dragged me down.  I talked with Dh yesterday about this.  I needed help focusing and I needed an overall goal to see in my mind, so I could work towards it.  From all sides everyone was saying ... we have too much stuff and the house is too cluttered... but it was soley up to me to decide what to do about it.  Which is fine, if no one will complain... but that is highly unlikely to happen IF I decide what to do with THEIR stuff!   I voiced my frustration over knowing that I would have not only no help in the matter, but also I would hear all the grief about it after I made the efforts to do something about the clutter. 

So, Dh helped me with goal setting... We talked about needed areas in the house and agreed upon where they should be.  The nitty details of what to get rid of to achieve the goals is still in my hands, but I feel more confident about not coming up against walls with a plan in place.  We are changing many areas of the house to make workable areas.  Some areas are temporary until we can get some areas remodeled.  And with debt reduction this is a slow process.  BUT, we were blessed with alot of wood, so it really isn't going to be as long as we originally anticipated. 

Today we were busy.  The two oldest girls combined their beds into bunk beds and entered the smallest room of the house for their bedroom.  While it is small.  It will fit the bunkbeds and two dressers and still have a bit of room to stretch if needed.  But, not much else.  We are moving things in stages, as we have to make room in a room to move stuff there but before we can do that, we have to move other stuff.  And so it went today.  We have two stairways to the upstairs and you can walk a circle through the house because of that.  Which today it worked well.  We'd start in one room, grab things, place them into their new home in the next room, grab other things and continue this way throughout the house. 

Today we moved the girls' beds into their new bedroom.  Right now they are moving one dresser into it.  We still have one dresser to move in the bedroom and we still need to move out 3 small file cabinets and my desk and some other misc. stuff.  They also moved some of their belongings into the room and placed it on the shelves on the wall near the ceiling. 

In a large room downstairs, we moved out the tv and the coffee tables from the second tv area.  We moved this tv area into my oldest daughter's old bedroom... which she disliked because there were no windows.  Should be fine for tv as everyone hates glare on the tv.  So, that is the plan.  It is actually temporary until we can fix the basement up.   We are waiting on moving the love seats up to that room until it is vacuumed.  She still has her clothes to get out of the room as well... which is waiting for my desk to move out of her new room.  Into the area we moved the tv from and the coffee tables, I was able to move my sewing stuff into that area.  This large room will once again be our bedroom.  It is rather large for just a bedroom, but combining my sewing area in the far end, it may work well.  When we had a little ones, I had a crib in the room, but right now we have no little tiny ones in a crib... so it was big and we moved to a smaller room... but we are moving back because my Dad offered us a King sized bed (they had a spare one in the shed, lol... they just bought a NEW one and don't want this one, I guess) anyways, Dh would love that and it won't fit into our smaller bedroom... so back we are headed to the larger bedroom.   We are waiting on the pingpong table and the foosball table to be moved back upstairs into a different room.  Then we will wait on getting the bed from my Father. 

Our current bedroom will remain as is, with the addition of the desk, the file cabinets in the closet and some bookcases along the walls.  This will be our guest bedroom/office.  I do all the paperwork for the house, and I love this room, it is restful to me and I love this queen bed and I couldn't bear to just put it out in the barn, so I am pleased to have a spare bedroom.  The rest of the family thinks it is silly since we are short on space, but I feel it is important to have a place for guests.  I hate having my Dad and Mom visit and have to sleep on a lumpy couch.  My nephews don't fit on the couch, so end up on the floor or a camping cot.  I think it will get used and hospitality is important to me, so they are letting me have this space (as a trial) to see if it is worth having. 

I was able to move two bookcases into the spare bedroom/our current bedroom... but the rest will have to wait until we actually move out of the bedroom.  My dresser is taking up the desk space and my hanging clothes are where the file cabinets will go. 

Other winter projects to look forward to:  In our front room, we are moving the freezer outside to the outdoor mudroom.  And our spare oven (from market) will move into the basement.  We would get rid of it, but the oven works and my regular oven is again on the fritz, so we need to keep it for baking bread or just baking until we can afford a new oven stove oven.  Wierd thing is that the stovetop on my regular oven works great, but the oven doesn't.  The spare oven works great, but it's stovetop is horrid.  So, I have TWO big appliances doing the work of ONE!  Someday when funds come in that will change.  Anyways, onto the project.  We hope to put in some countertop and lower cupboards for storage of food, which will come out of the pantry storage and make way for winter coat storage.  WHICH will be so nice... I hate not having anywhere to hang winter coats!!!  And the cost... is just the hinges and the countertop... which we hope to pick up a piece on clearance if possibe as it is only 8 feet long. 

Our second project is to make a TV area downstairs in the basement.  This will give me a more permanent area in the room it is now assigned to for a full sized office area... bills and farm paperwork and school records will be easy to access and work on in this room.  I do ebay quite often and this will be a good place to put mailing envelopes and boxes as well.  But this is a someday.  The winter project won't start until I downsize all the stuff from the basement.  (remember I put all the clutter into the basement!!!)    So, after the house is organized, I will have to get busy on ebay and sell as much stuff as possible to make room for Dh to work on the basement.  To give you an idea, I have about 5 church sized tables full of stuff and some boxes underneath at least 4 of them and I would say another floor to ceiling shelving full of old paint, and picture frames and odds and ends from old projects.  Oh my, that will be a HUGE task.  Dh says if I can just get one area cleaned (we have two sides of the basement... he can work on the other side while I am working on the rest of the stuff.   The wood we need to close in the basement and make it not just a block basement, was given to us, so we will have very little cost to this remodeling project. 

Overall, what does all this mess mean?  It means that my house will be organized, there won't be any clutter.  The rooms will have purpose and our home should flow.  I will finally have organized areas for my own hobbies and I will actually be able to DO THEM!  It sure is alot of work, but it will be worth it.  I am not anywhere close to being done, but I have a plan and we have goals.  That's a start.  Details make all the difference.  Not having any specific goals was keeping me from achieving the end product of a totally clean, organized decluttered house.  I went through the motions, but wasn't gaining any progress on the project.  So, now with new goals, I hope that we will finally see fulfillment of our dream house... a simple home that is uncluttered and provides for the basic needs of our family. 

Warmly, ~Melissa

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November 20, 2007 - Untitled Comment

Posted by blessedmomof10

melissa,

I too love to orginize and de- clutter!! It feels sooooooo good afterwards........even though it can be an exhausting adventure! The effect is well worth the efforts!

Blessings~
gloria

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December 1, 2007 - Untitled Comment

Posted by a1health

Can you organize my house, ha? We live in an apartment so I have to continuously organize our home. Good luck with it all!
Blessings,
~Farrah

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