During these days after J’s birth, my friend L and I have been concentrating on organizing and purging the house. When we moved here almost two years ago, I purged a lot of things rather than move them, and have gone through several times since doing the same thing. Still it seems that every six months or so the process needs to be gone through again. For one thing homeschooling just produces a tremendous amount of paper, completed workbooks and other things that need to be periodically evaluated, stored or disposed of. Also small children tend to collect “treasures” and then forget about them after a few weeks at which point they become clutter. Add to that a small house, parents that aren’t very disciplined about putting things away and particularly a Mama who has trouble figuring where to put things in the first place and the house was full of piles!
Thankfully L is very good at figuring out where things should go and since we’ve been working together for years understands the way I do things so that where she organizes things too corresponds nicely with what I do regularly.
Yesterday we tackled the Master Bedroom. It’s a problematic room, since we use it not only as a bedroom, but also as home office space, and I wanted to add some space for sewing as well since I know that I have a lot of sewing to do this summer, and being able to sit down to the machine whenever I have a few minutes works well for me.
When we started there were enough piles that we couldn’t walk across the floor without stepping over or around something. I had wanted to tackle the job for some time, but every time I looked at it I couldn’t figure out where to begin! L just started in one corner and kept working until the floor was clear and we had packed up things for the thrift store, thrown away a lawn trash bag of stuff and my work surface looked like this…
Cleared off and dusted computer desk- I don't remember when I last saw the desk top!
Sewing table made by removing the drawers from one side of a massive file cabinet. I still have a little work/setup to do here but I know where to start!
What surprised me about this, was how much less cluttered my brain felt as we progressed through the project! Last night when I went to bed, the room felt so much more peaceful with less in it. This morning when I woke up, I could look around the room and see that while there was still some things to be done, there was space here for thinking, working, writing, and reflection. This sense of peace was a huge encouragement to me to try and keep it this way. I know that will be a struggle for me- tidiness has not only never been one of my strengths in fact as a child I actively resisted being tidy, and I’m paying the price for that now as I not only have to learn to be tidy myself but also need to teach the children…
Still if my brain can be this much freer to concentrate with my room clean it will be well worth it to concentrate on tidiness this summer. Who knows how much creativity has been bottled up because of the clutter? It will be exciting to see how things progress- perhaps I’ll go around and photograph the house when we’re done so I have a basis of comparison over the coming months!
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