Bless Me Flylady, For I Have Sinned

Erudite · #21 04-13-2008, 06:37 PM

Another thought about the de cluttering....

We moved into our house 2.5 years ago and overtime, as I worked on each room on the main floor, more and more would get stored in my master bedroom. Finally, we bought a new king size bed and I hung some pictures over the bed that I'd had for a long time (stored in my bedroom). Now I had this beautiful, beautiful bedroom...as long as you didn't actually walk into the room, because the wall the bed faced was our house decor storage: bolts of curtain fabric (some from my last house that I might find some use for...), pictures that hadn't found a home in the new house, the head board that no longer worked behind my bed, a lamp table that my Mom was going to send to DI but I thought I could use, and two chairs purchased from DI 13 years ago, but that are salmon colored so I'd thrown fabric over them to make them "match" the room. It was a big mess. So I finally spent some time on it. I cleaned the EDGES...hung many of the pictures around the house, camoflauged the bolts of fabric, neatened up the chairs, and dusted the lamp table.

I didn't spend a dime...I didn't throw away a thing (no, wait...I think I did get rid of an old chipped flower pot). All I did is spruce it up and clean up the edges so you can see where the floor meets the wall. Now, there's still an beautiful old headboard in there (I can't move it and I don't have a place to move it as yet...I hope to turn it into a bench someday), but the room LOOKS clean and cheerful, merely because it is neat and tidy and you can see the edges.

Yes, we could probably all stand to get rid of some stuff, but sometimes, making a consistent effort to not drop the stuff where it doesn't belong helps too. AND organizers do go a long way toward helping a space to look great. For example, I did something similar to the above to my laundry space. I was bugged by the products on the shelves that just don't look very good (the Shout for stains and the boxes of dryer sheets and so on). I've long had these fun prints, but they weren't properly framed and so didn't look great. Guess what I did? One of them was framed but the mat matched the bathroom of my old house. The other had a matching frame but not a matching mat. So I took them both out of the frames, taped them right to the frame backing (a nice cork looking stuff) and put them back under glass. I bought a big basket for all the products ($13.00 at Walmart) and VOILA! My laundry room is clean and neat and all I spent was the basket money and the time to redo the pictures I already had. Now when I do laundry, I put the basket on the dryer so I can reach it but the rest of the time it sits up on the shelf keeping the room neat.

A little creative thinking and cleaning the edges goes a long way.

bookworm · #22 04-13-2008, 06:59 PM

EXACTLY...

bookworm · #23 04-13-2008, 07:02 PM

I recently DID read a flylady email and it said that the master bedroom is not the graveyard for stuff that doesn't have a home. I laughed so hard, because that is exactly what my bedroom has become! So I'm going to dig it all out, a little at a time, and if it doesn't have a home, I'm going to either make it one, or throw it out. I have stuff in my closet that is just being stored there. I have a storage room in the basement! All I need are some cheap cardboard boxes and a marker and I can transport all that stuff in an orderly fashion down to the storage room. Then my bedroom can be a sanctuary and not a graveyard!

Stargazer · #24 04-13-2008, 07:40 PM

Thank you for that insight Dia (and everyone who posted after her). I definitely have too much stuff. I'm getting better at purging, and do love to throw stuff away, but there is still so much. I have declared this the year of the cleanse. It doesn't necessarily have a definition, except that that is where my mental attitude is and at the end of the year things will be better than they were at the begining of the year.

I was reading an article in Better Homes and Gardens today and it talked about mono-tasking. We spend so much time multi-tasking that it is hard to really get anything done done. By mono-tasking we focus on one thing and see it all the way through until it's done. I was talking to my DH a couple of days ago about how hard it is to stay focused on a task when you are a mom because there are so many interruptions. My DH is a good mono-tasker (it's a man thing right - shut it all out and go for it). He can really get a space clean and sometimes I feel jealous that he can do that. I guess I need to practice mono-tasking with a sincere effort - and purge, purge, purge.

Dia Minha · #25 04-13-2008, 07:40 PM

My problem is that I can find a place for everything and "clean the edges", but if I still have too much stuff in my house it doesn't stay that way. I can clean and organize and organize and clean, but it is not until I get rid of the "things" that it stays that way without too much effort. It would be really easy to say, I "need" a bigger house, so that all of my "things" can have a place. But I don't "need" a bigger house, because I don't want to spend all my time taking care of the "things".

Dave Ramsey says when you go to buy something you need to think about how much it is going to cost you. Not just the minute you hand over the cash, but how much time, space, and effort is the "thing" going to cost you. How much time is it going to cost you to keep the "thing" clean. How much more space are you going to need to provide the "thing" a location. How often are you going to need to mend or fix the "thing". I have found that the more I think about "things" costing more than just cash, the fewer "things" I need.

So yes, it is important to "clean the edges" in order for your house to look clean, but if you want to make it easier to keep it that way, just get rid of all the "things".

Erudite · #26 04-13-2008, 07:48 PM

Oh wow....are you talking about the "Save time for the soul" (or something like that) article?? That article has been the most fascinating for me right now. I've referred to it like 5 times in the past 2 days! I loved that part about mono-tasking, which is totally what got my bedroom and laundry clean. But the other questions...I loved them too. I've been trying to think how best to add them to the board, but they are so personal and individual that I'm not quite sure how to add them, but maybe I'll give it a shot.

SG I love your wavelengths!