Recently I spent an evening in a friend's home. Her home was peaceful, calm and inviting. The house was clean, thoughtfully decorated, and uncluttered.In stark contrast my home is filled to the hilt with stuff. Because we have a small home with little built in storage (i.e. no first floor closets) we often use that as an excuse to put things everywhere and anywhere. In reality, we have lots of space; it's just poorly used.
In seeing my friend's living area, I've finally pinpointed what our home needs - white space. You know what I mean, like the border of white margin around a typed sheet of paper. As white space is easy on the eyes, so I think strategic empty spaces in a home are soothing and calm-inducing.
Granted I have not forgotten that we have two small children who are experts at creating messes. I'm not referring to their playspace here. Obviously many areas of our home will be unavoidably messy throughout the day as the kids use their creative energies in play.
This afternoon I'm attempting to look at my home with a new reorganizing perspective in mind. Trying to rethink our current systems and come up with some better more efficient ones.
My initial thought is that we own way too much stuff! Several items we keep in drawers or cupboards have gone unused for months or even years. Why am I holding on to this stuff? So that I can have an actual gravy boat for the theoretical Thanksgiving I might host 5 years from now? (Sorry gravy boat, your days are numbered.)
Picture frames are also getting the axe. While I love being surrounded by photos of family and loved ones, we just do not have the shelf space to house them.
I'm sure this is the beginning of a lengthy process. How do you fight the clutter in your home? Any unique ideas you can give me would be much appreciated!
3 comments:
Ugh, a neverending battle, isn't it!? I solved the clutter battle by doing 2 things:
(a) moving into a larger house (doesn't really solve the problem, but helps!) :)
and
(b) de-cluttering as I packed & unpacked.
Before we moved, I heard someone say this about "stuff": "If you don't need it or love it, it's out!" That helped me a lot. (I define a "need" as something I use at least once per year. Gravy boat, you may have a chance!)
Good luck with your project--it will be SO worth it! Start with a heavily trafficked area, or a heavily cluttered one...so you can see immediate results & stay motivated. And take before & after photos!
We are looking to de-clutter too. It is amazing after being married for 7 years that you can accumulate so many things. And then when you add a kid it just gets worse. We are going to be doing the same thing as Karen did since we'll be moving before the end of this year. Just trying to slim down what we have so that we aren't packed to the ceiling with stuff.I've been checking out some books from the library by Emilie Barnes recently just reading her ideas on organization. They have been interesting.
Good luck, Alicia.
I feel your pain about lots of stuff in small spaces! It's helped that we have moved at least every 2 years; I get rid of stuff every time.
One of the things that's helped me the most in getting organized, is having a friend come over (a organizationally-gifted friend) and look at all my spaces and hot spots and give me ideas and help me re-work things. Sometimes, you have to change things a few times to figure out what works the best.
CHris just got a MUCH bigger "office" at the library, and we were able to move two BIG bookshelves out of our house - they house so much clutter besides the books! Our house looks instantly more spacious and less-cluttered b/c of that.
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