My house is full of piles of stuff. It’s not intentional, it just sort of happens. One day the top of the counter is clean, the next it is a landslide of random stuff. This is not hoarders level, but is starting down the path.
Every now and again I get to see my house through her people’s eyes. It is not pretty. That image makes me want to change. Like any issue, you first have to figure out the core issue. Our household underlying cause is two-fold.
- We have too much stuff. A couple extra birthday invites? Let’s keep them! We can use them next year. That sheet of minion stickers still has one left.
- None of our stuff has a real home. Where should deodorant balls (so the smell from my daughter’s shoes does not spawn a competing lifeforms) belong? The island in the kitchen is not the correct answer.
My plan?
- Purge – You guys with small kids get how hard this can be. That cardboard box you got from Amazon last week is now a dolly bed. And it’s the best dolly bed they’ve ever had when I make motions to get rid of it. For kid stuff, I bag, hide, and purge. It’s not the most efficient process in the world, but it makes it easier to see if they even notice that it is gone. I do something similar for my stuff, which now that I think about it, very rarely hits step three.
- Find a forever home – just like dogs and cats at shelters, everything deserves a forever home. So the family always knows where it is and where it goes.
I’m hoping with these two steps I might get the added bonus of cutting down the ‘Where’s Waldo’ we play when we start swimming lessons or turn on the TV.
What do you do to keep your piles from taking over?
I’ve cluttered every home I’ve ever lived in. This one has one small closet in each bedroom. When we bought the house ages ago I loved the old-time feel and never noticed the lack of closet space. We have a portable closet in the hall for our winter coats and a few other bits of stuff. I think this house was built back when they charged extra for closets! We’re down to three and I can’t remember how we crammed 5 people into this tiny house.
It’s funny what you might not notice when you buy a new house. We did the same thing. Got into a house which wasn’t cookie-cutter, but ended up with no storage space. Especially in the kitchen. However, in our case we were going the other way adding people to the house. After adding two kids, we decided we had to move again to something bigger. The clutter still followed us. 🙂