Happy New Year!! I pray that the first 9 days of 2012 have been filled with love and laughter!! We’re back from our amazing Hawaii trip and today was the kids first day back at school in 5 weeks!! It was so quiet in the house – I loved it! (I love it when they’re home, too, it was just nice to have a couple hours in the house…alone.)
Anyways, for some strange and unknown reason, I have been super motivated to get my house from: cluttered, disorganized, messy, into: orderly, neat and beautiful. I think, actually, that it has a lot to do with Dani’s teaching about taking care of what you have and THEN you’ll get blessed with more. I’m not saying we need a bigger, better house than what we have, because, truly, we are blessed. (Having said THAT, I do have a dream house in mind…) What I am saying is that I really feel like God is asking me to be faithful with what I HAVE been blessed with. And, really, what am I teaching my kids by shoving yet another box of junk into the corner of our dining room?
So, this past Friday, I got my garbage bags and recycling boxes ready and decided to start in my office. (I think the reason I started there is because Ben’s last fish recently died and it was still floating in the tank…algae and all. Ummm, gross.) I don’t think I’ve ever really had a problem with letting stuff go, I think it’s more a problem of laziness, to be completely honest. Cleaning and tidying are not my most favourite things in the world (are they yours?) and I’d rather leave the tidying for “tomorrow.” I’m realizing as I get my house in order that it probably takes WAAAAAYYYYY less time to “purge” a few things as needed than it does to “purge” a whole bunch of things from the past year all in one big “purge-fest”.
All told, my office took about 3 solid hours of work. I admit 3 hours isn’t a TON of time, but it is time I could’ve spent playing with my kids or writing a letter to a friend or scrap-booking (or all 3)! And in reality, if I would’ve tidied as I went, through the past year, I’m sure the tidying would not have added up to 3 hours. Before, my office was a place where I went to check my email and grab a DVD for the kids – I would ignore the fact that it was a disaster. (My husband said, “I don’t know how you can STAND it in here,” on numerous occasions.) Definitely not a place to sit and have a nice, relaxing cup of tea.
Now that it’s organized, I find myself wandering in and just looking around. My books are neat on the shelf, I can actually find my camera and the battery charger for it and there aren’t 30 notebooks piled against my filing trays, threatening to send a years worth of paid bills tumbling to the floor. (In fact, the filing is completely up to date.) I’m really proud of myself for getting it done.
The office is a small room, but I proved to myself that I could do it. It gave me hope that perhaps I could get the dining room “box-free” (and as of Saturday night, it was – I’m really upset that I didn’t take before photos…but it does look beautiful now) and that I could get the basement in the condition it was when we first had it finished, a place where the kids will want to play and where guests would feel comfortable to stay.
This afternoon I spent a couple hours down there, mostly putting boxes in the storage room (which will need it’s own day of organization) and putting the kids toys in their proper bins. The great thing for me is that I can already see progress. I got 2 rooms 99% finished (not 100% because I want to go get a couple of pretty bins for the bookshelf – there are some little boxes and books that I’d like to be “hidden”, so once I’ve got those, it’ll be 100%). That’s 1/3 done. I have to admit, thought, that the easy part is over down there and the hard part awaits me. Boxes and boxes of Cory’s stuff to encourage him to sift through. More boxes of completely outdated and useless (to me) electronics stuff. Still more boxes of who-knows-what, that’ve been packed up since we moved from BC to Sherwood Park (almost 8 years ago! – you KNOW I don’t need it if it’s been packed up for 8 years!!!) A daunting task when I look at the whole of it – but I’m going to just take one box at a time and before I know it, there won’t be any boxes left! I’ve given myself a “finish by date” of February 29th, with the hopes that I’ll actually be finished by the end of THIS month. I’ve got the before pictures of the basement ready and I’m really looking forward to taking the after photos! I’ll show ’em to you once I’m ready!!
Do you have a room in your house that you want to get organized, but you’ve been putting it off because it seems like such a big task? I’d love to hear about it!!
Blessings!!
Natasha Reynolds 