Why Declutter? Find Time and Freedom

Are you in a season of life where keeping up with the cleaning feels impossible? Are you drowning in mess but have no time or energy to declutter? If so- read on. I’m just getting out of that boat. Hear my story, know you are not alone, and get some practical tips for making quick progress that will make your daily life easier.

I delivered twins a little over a year ago. I am only now feeling capable of simplifying our space. Not all in a day, mind you, but I first knew I could manage 30 minutes here and there on a consistent basis once the twins finally slept through the night. It wasn’t as if the build-up of clutter had only started bothering me. Oh, no. It stared at me from every surface as I went about my day. Complete and utter physical and mental exhaustion put a little damper on my ability to deal with it. I have two other children who obviously also need love and attention and enrichment. If I had free time, I had to give them that, not spend time going through closets.

Why is there so much stuff everywhere?

For some background, the house we are living in belongs to a family member, and they still keep quite a bit of their belongings in the house (some of the bedrooms for storage, coat closets, etc). This is entirely their right, but it has presented a challenge as to what to do with our belongings. Finding space for things like out-of-season clothes, the vacuum cleaner, Christmas decorations, extra paper towels, and so on, isn’t easy. Plus, I have clothing in approximately five sizes to accommodate the wild weight fluctuations I tend to have.

After a period filled with frustration at myself, and honestly sometimes my family, for things getting messy just hours after I’d organized them, I ran to Google. “Organizing kids toys.” “Storage solutions for small spaces.” “Cleaning routines for busy moms.” I must have spent hours trying out different techniques. Ways to fold clothes to fit more in a drawer. Stack items in bins so they all fit in a cupboard. Fit more stuff in smaller spaces. You get the idea. After a while, it sank in. It was not possible to keep as many items as we owned if my goal was to spend less time cleaning. Not with four young children anyway.

Don’t declutter until you’ve done this

The very first, most important part of beginning the process of ridding your home of clutter is to envision what it will be like when simplified. Imagine getting a call that someone is in town and would love to stop by, and it would only take 15 minutes or less to get things back to a state where you’d be fine with company seeing your home. Imagine your kids being able to keep their room clean. Or using your “free” moments during the day to have a cup of coffee, or tend a garden, or read a book instead of cleaning up messes.

Please, don’t think for a minute that I have, or think you should have an immaculate home with no signs of real life inside. My kids drop food (ALL OVER THE PLACE). I am not a great decorator. My vacuum stays in the hallway most of the time because it’s easier to vacuum up the aforementioned crumbs when it’s easy to reach. I have a basket for laundry in the living room since I often change the twins there. It’s all about making your home and your lifestyle fit YOUR needs.

I think we can all agree that one thing we need is more time to do things we enjoy. Perhaps you need more time in the day to take care of yourself. I do! I took time to put lotion on after a shower maybe once or twice a month in the year after having the twins. No shame in my game, man. It was survival mode. Now that I’ve started on this journey, I now have time to lotion. You’re welcome, hubby.

What should I declutter first?

Now, I still don’t have much “free” time. When I chose where to begin, I knew that starting in the most-used or visible areas first would have the biggest impact on my morale. When you start with a shelf in a closet in a guest room….you do all the work and then feel like nothing changed in your daily life. I wanted immediate results. Also, quite frankly, I wanted my family to also notice and give me the accolades I so deserve. For me, that would be most impacted by paring down our toys. If you are starting this journey, trust me. Pick a place/type of item that you find yourself cleaning over and over and over.

I know I’m not the only parent in the world dealing with too many toys. It certainly feels that way though, when you see glimpses into other people’s tidy homes. Blocks and science kit pieces and action figures covered my sons’ floor in their bedroom. Baby toys covered the floor in the living room and dining room, despite me putting them back on the shelves and baskets several times throughout the day. Obviously I knew there were too many toys. I had several problems which paralyzed me, however:

• Few opportunities to work on decluttering long enough to complete the task
• Guilt over missing out on money if I didn’t sell a lot of the items
• Guilt over the idea of not sorting the toys well enough prior to donating (making sure all the pieces were there, sets were together, etc)
• Fear of making my children sad

These are all valid concerns! Nobody wants to be responsible for a child’s tears when the toy he picked out at the thrift store is missing half of the pieces. It would certainly be nice to make back a few dollars on toys you spent hard-earned dollars on. Plus, what if your child is scarred for life to no longer have that toy that they forgot existed? But wait! Don’t lose focus of why you want this to be over quickly! The ongoing cost to your quality of life may be enormous if you let it linger. Free yourself!

Get it over with

I had several false-starts with our toy situation. At least twice, I went in with big black garbage bags and scooped up toys that I said I would pull back out to sort “when I had time” so that I could know what could be sold, what could be given away, and what was garbage. This helped the boys’ room stay clean. But, imagine this, I didn’t ever have time to sort those toys. They sat in the garage, and inevitably, came back into the house a few at a time with the help of two nosy boys.

To move forward and finally see some relief, I had to get over the idea of making money from these toys. For me, with my specific situation, it was not practical. The few times I did list things for sale, the commitment of time to follow up with interested parties, packing all four kids up to meet people in a safe location and not mess with the sacred nap schedule, was never worth the few dollars I would earn. I’m not exactly rolling in dough, either, but even so, it was really not worth the time.

I finally decided to get it over with. My husband had a day off, and I asked him to play with the kids for a few hours while I did a declutter of the toys once and for all. I sorted into the following categories: toys to keep, toys that could still be used by a child, and those that could not. The ones we kept had a place to live in the boys’ room. Those that could went into bags to take to a local homeless shelter. The rest went into the garbage. I loaded them into my van, and dropped them off.

Was it life-changing?

If you consider that since that day, I have not spent more than a minute every week tidying up my sons’ room, I shout a resounding YES! I can’t tell you what a relief it is to finally see a difference. It gave me the confidence that I can one day have a home that I can keep up with. A magazine worthy home? No. A blog-worthy home? Probably still no. A home that doesn’t overwhelm me. Yep.

Tagged: Tags clutter declutter minimalism organization overwhelmed toys