Do You Have a Cluttered Home?

I have much work to do. My home is not stuffed like those on the Hoarders television show, but it is cluttered. My children have 568,982 toys scattered around the house. They also have 4528 pieced of clothing in each of their closets and dressers and those are just the ones that fit them. If you count the articles that no longer fit them that are still in their drawers and closets it's probably more like 5792.

No matter how often I clean off the dining table it becomes filled with the detritus of everyday life within days. My kitchen countertops, already filled with kitchen appliances and such over 80 % of the space, continually fills with other things on the one countertop that should be somewhat clear.

I buy more and more shelves, more and more boxes, thinking that more shelves will solve the problem, but the truth is I need to purge "things" that I don't use. But I worry that as soon as I get rid of something I'll need it. I can count on less than one hand the times that has happened with the stuff I have gotten rid of though.

I attach sentimental value to things, which is part of the issue that causes people to become hoarders. I remember who gave me things, who gave my kids things. I remember my kids wearing outfits, playing with toys. I remember my deceased grandparents owned certain things and I can't let them go.

When I do clean and organize it feels great. I love the results but things usually fall apart quickly. It doesn't help that my kids have the same tendencies.

How do you tame your clutter?

Tackle it Tuesday- The Hallway Edition

I am, as I said, attempting to reorganize my home. Not that it was very organized before Miss D came along 7 1/2 months ago, but since her birth our home (which was already bursting at the seams) has become even more crowded with things.

There is the requisite baby gear, that as D grows we will no longer need that nonetheless take up precious space in our small home. With Christmas came more toys, more things and with another child seemed to add three times as much stuff.

I've been trying to look around our home for underutilized space that I can use to store, or at least put away some of this stuff.

Enter our upstairs hallway. This is a short hallway that is from Craig's and my bedroom (which is directly to my right when I'm taking the photo) to Miss M's room (which you can see part of the door frame to her room in the photo). Like I said, the hallway is short, but we've had this little storage chest there for several years that opens and I've stashed Craig's Dale Earnhardt model cars inside. I put photos on the top. I love all the photos, but mostly they just gather dust because I am lazy and do not dust nearly as often as I should.

Also, when we put up Miss D's crib in our room we moved a bookcase that my dad had made for me when I was little out to the hallway to hold bedtime reading books. You can't actually see the bookcase in the photo because it has several books piled on top of it.

I had a brainstorm the other day and bought a square shelf like I bought for our dining room/living room area a couple of years ago. It really is much nicer looking, besides adding a bunch of storage space that we weren't using to its potential. I moved the other chest into our bedroom into the last available floor space we had!

Adieu Christmas

We packed up our Christmas decorations last weekend. We don't have a set time that we put up and take down the Christmas decor, but it always seems to work out to be that they go up the weekend after Thanksgiving and come down the weekend after New Year's Day.

The decorations pack away much quicker than they appear around the house. We have several plastic tote boxes that hold the many treasures. One box is devoted solely to the breakable and/or special ornaments for the tree. The ornaments that have boxes are returned lovingly to their homes to await Thanksgiving's return. The decorative towels in the bathroom are rotated to the bottom of the drawer and the generic winter snowman towel hangs in their place.

Craig packs the Christmas tree (yes, we have an artificial tree) away in its box and places the tree skirt, tree stand and power strip in the box with it so we can find everything again in eleven short (and long) months.

In a half an hour (one hour at most) our home is back to as it is for the rest of the year. It always makes me a little bit sad to not have the pretty tree to look at in the evenings, but it also fills me with optimism for what lies ahead in the new year.

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I'm still hoping to get the rest of my home organized soon. Thanks to PBN I've discovered a new website with organizing tips and so much more. Visit the new SC Johnson website - http://rightathome.com/for cleaning, organizing, recipes and coupons.