11.14.2011

"The Room"

I'm still in shock at how neat our house looks right now - not a pile to be seen, clean counter tops and tables, bed made, laundry caught up, folded, and put away. It's like a miracle. The cleaning fairies are smiling down upon our house - or maybe I just finally got motivated to get stuff picked up. Either way, things are looking good and surprise visits don't send me into panic-mode.

But...

We have this room in our house that is supposed to be our office, but it ends up as the catch-all for my last minute tidying sessions. Because I have no shame and I need some accountability, I'm going to show you what it looks like right at this moment...

Photobucket
{Right side of the room}

Most of the stuff you see on the left side of the room will be taken care of with Christmas, but I also have a number of items that I have purchased and stored as "just in case" gifts and I really need to organize them and clean out so that when I need a quick hostess gift, I can actually find it!

Photobucket
{Left side of the room}

{Head hanging in shame, cheeks aflame} The thing is, I have all these piles throughout the house and I don't know what to do with them. I'm afraid to throw them away because "what if..." and all that; but at the same time, I don't know what I should file it as..."Miscellaneous Papers and Receipts that May or May Not Be Important" seems rather long, don't you think? What it's really going to take is several hours (or days) of me sitting down and going through it all - not just making new piles to be dealt with later, but actually doing something with it (file, shred, or toss).

Photobucket
{Hallmark is right, life is a special occasion - I'd enjoy it more with less stuff!}

Last week I received a preview copy of The Money Saving Mom's Budget, and as a result of my reading, I've set goals for the month that are broken down into goals for each week. For example, one of my goals for the month is to work on actually cleaning the house, but I've broken that down into different cleaning aspects for each week (floors, dusting, etc.) to make it a little less vague. I try not to have more than two to three goals per week because I know that if there are more than that, I'm setting myself up to fail. I know me.

So now that you have seen my "hidden room", please tell me that I'm not alone - I'm not the only person out there who has such a room/closet/space! We keep the door shut on this room, which helps the house to look tidy, but doesn't do much for getting the room cleaned out. Hopefully the goals that I have set and the lessons from Crystal's book that I'm implementing will help this room to have an open door policy in the future! I'll keep you posted...

8 comments:

  1. No. You aren't the only one. Daniel's "office" looks really similar to your room. It is the room where I throw everything I don't know what to do with. We've tried to make some strides to improve the appearance of this room (a closet system to store things better, getting rid of stuff in the room from time to time, etc) but it always ends up in its state of chaos again. We're actually turning it into a guest room/office since we'll be using our current guest room for something else now. I guess we're going to have to keep the office clean now. Or subject our guests to quite a horrific mess...

    ReplyDelete
  2. No you are definitely not alone! When we first got married neither of us had anything...s we bought a descent size house and filled it up with stuff...then we had kids and moved to a bigger house and filled it up...then we had more kids and moved to smaller house with all the kids and all the stuff, and again to an even smaller house with all the kids and all the stuff. Do you get the picture? We have downsized so much to fit in the space we have but there are times when I feel like we are busting at the seems...especially with homeschooling and all the books/papers/work for that. So in THIS house I have a cupboard/cabinet thing with all the school stuff that I can let get messy then close the doors, my closet in my room is the collection site for things that don't have a permanent spot and the garage is the piles of stuff...I like to think that most of the time these three places are "organized piles of mess" but that isn't always the case! lol! Maybe one day all my stuff will have a place...

    ReplyDelete
  3. YOU ARE NOT ALONE!! Thanks for being willing to show pictures! At least you have only one bad room! <: ) This very day I am hoping to make progress on boxes of random clutter that were filled when we were cleaning up for company, and then were never dealt with -- plus the mess on my desk. I have a lot of trouble with making decisions, where some people might just zip through it. I know what you mean -- I don't want to just end up with more piles, but to actually deal with the stuff! May the Lord help us as we seek to deal with our clutter!!! : ) Again, thanks for being so real.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Carrie,

    You are NOT alone! One bedroom/office looks like this, and so does the dining table (argh!) We have waay too much 'schtuff' and after 35 years of marriage, wonder how much of it is still necessary. Everytime we make a big run with things to the thrift store or dumps, it seems more appears! Crrr-azy!

    Thank you for being so authentic and transparent! I think your house looks terrific, and if it's only one room, you're way ahead of the game!

    Btw, my BRAIN looks like this! That's why I haven't blogged in 3 months--it needs some heavy duty clearing out!

    Blessings, Linda

    ReplyDelete
  5. You are so not alone!! I have crates of misc junk that I have no clue what to do with. I've been saying Im going to tackle them forever & have yet to do it!

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's like we were twins separated at birth! I'm a stacker! I have stacks here and there and everywhere. Most of the time though I know what's in each stack, but I would love to be organized like I was before kids. It seems like now all I have time to do is just to throw it quickly into a stack and move on.

    Soul sisters!
    Jan

    ReplyDelete
  7. My entire basement looks like this....I have hopeful ambitions of one day having a family room down there but cant seem to get the clutter out of the space there for more than a week....its gets cleaned and then before you know "stuff" is there again.

    I am all with Linda--my brain is full of "stuff" all the time....how I would love to de-clutter my brain..I think there are books out there for that.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Goodness! I'm glad to know I'm not the only one out there! :-) Thanks to all of you for sharing your stories and encouragement - perhaps it's something we can all work on together in 2012, eh?! :-)

    ReplyDelete

A reminder: there are more than 400,000 words in the English language, please use them wisely.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails