Part 1: What triggered me to change...
I have never been one of these people that has to have every crumb off the counter, and every sock matched, I don't make my bed every single day, and most days I am giving my kids a spit bath. I am the type of person that would on any given day choose a nap over a clean house. I love sleep. I would start planning days before company came by to make sure my house met the minimum standard of clean, and I was always digging through laundry trying to find that ONE shirt!!
It was miserable.
About a month ago we started preparing for my daughters 7th birthday. She got a new "big girl" room this year and I really wanted it to be completely transformed. She had SO much stuff every where, toys that had missing pieces, clothes, random socks, and my gosh the PAPER was out of control!!
It was like a switch in my brain. This is why she never wants to clean in here, and when she does it takes hours of me poking my head in saying FINISH CLEANING!
I sometimes look at my laundry, and get so overwhelmed I would rather just shut the door and walk away, unfortunately it was always still there waiting for me when I poked my head in. When I think about it though before a few weeks ago my laundry was never actually done. Not once.
My daughters room had just gotten to that point where sure maybe everything was shoved against the wall, and I could see the floor but it was never actually clean! I could see her frustration, and how much she hated the cleaning process and I felt for her! If someone was telling me to finish that mountain of laundry every day I would hate it. I wanted to help her.
I know when a room is clean and everything in its place it just makes me feel better and happy! So much easier just to lay down and relax! So there was only one solution. DECLUTTER. While I thought she would hate me for getting rid of so may toys...turns out she spends triple the amount of time in her room than she did before. When before everything was so crazy and chaotic she was always following me around asking me to watch TV or asking me to download a game on her tablet. She is SOO happy. My husband and I were talking the other night about how she had been in her room all night just enjoying it! The best part is..everyone is happy! She has an EASY to clean room, and I don't deal with the frustration of it always being a wreck!!
The day this all clicked in my brain...I decided this was the case for just about every room in our house. My sons room was the same as his sisters...The kitchen had one to many junk drawers, the bathroom had one to many cans of hair spray, my husband and me have WAY to many clothes overtaking the closet and floor, and the laundry room was the catch all for everything that didn't fit else where..it was time to make a change!! So that's exactly what we have been up to!
