Spring Cleaning? Spring Purging!!
Posted on April 6, 2010 by FoBaM-Jamie
Kids come complete with their own clutter. From day one, the paraphernalia accumulates at an exponential rate that has more in common with the way gossip and viruses spread than the properties you would typically apply to “stuff.”
I’m currently experiencing an acute case of clutter-itis. I moved last Thursday and had to pack up every single piece of flotsam and jetsam and truck it seven miles to our new house. I started the process with the best intentions to toss more than I packed, but – in the end – time slipped away from me and I wound up frantically tossing everything (from scraps of my daughter’s Kindergarten homework to shoes that haven’t fit her in two seasons) into large cardboard boxes that were then labeled, unhelpfully, “Misc.”
Though the piles of crap sometimes bring on mild panic attacks, I have more or less resigned myself to this life of chaos. I carve out living spaces that are free of junk and turn a blind eye on the rest of the house. My home office, for instance, is currently buried under a half dozen plastic file boxes full of magazine clippings that are nearly three times older than my daughter, an amazingly robust collection of once-used gift bags (I just can’t bring myself to toss them … there’s nothing wrong with them!), several pieces of flea market furniture, a film camera that I haven’t used in over a decade, and other similarly useless items.
A friend of mine recently had a major flood in the basement. She cheerfully informed me this morning that she’s getting a dumpster for all the stuff that got damaged. She’s not even going to open the boxes. I wish I had that kind of will power … and a dumpster. Though a move is a perfect excuse opportunity to toss out or donate large quantities of clutter, the probability is high that I’ll stash this latest collection in closets and under beds and wind up moving it again in a few years.
How’s your clutter? Any tips on how to dump the excess baggage? Any success stories from moms who have found a new, much lighter lease on life by letting go of all the stuff?
It doesn’t matter how old my kids are, they will leave messes when they visit us. Messes on the kitchen counter for me to clean. I know this is going to sound crazy, but we are happy they spend their vacation with us and we do not mind at all that they make messes and don’t clean after themselves. We love it!!
Haha. Too much like my own story… I moved a year ago, and today, still have boxes labeled misc, or stuff in the closet in the back bedroom. Thank goodness I’m not alone!
I’m moving, and I was soooo excited to be able to get rid of all the junk! It’s insane how much there is, and he’s only 18 months old! Dare I feel bad about putting some of it in a box labeled “FREE” out by my mailboxes? I’m just so TIRED of it all….
Sadly – a neighbor did that with an old couch with the word FREE. And it sat there. She then put a sign on it saying 25.00$ and it was “stolen” within an hour!
I have two little boys, ages 5 and 3, and what one outgrows I put back for the other, which of course leads to piles of clothes that won’t be used for at least 2 years, since my 3 year old is a much smaller child than my 5 year old was at his age. I guess I SORT of have a handle on it. We have an extra bedroom, so that closet is dedicated to all the clothes that have been outgrown, or aren’t in season right now. I have a dresser shoved in there that is packed to the max, but at least slightly organized by season and by pants/shirt, etc. I purge us twice a year, some women in my area run a kid’s consignment sale, once in the fall, and once in the spring, and you tag all your own stuff and haul it down to our local community center and they do the rest of the work for you, and you make 70% of what you sell. I usually have a yard sale in the summer too. It’s the only way to keep it under control, with two sets of doting grandparents, it still seems to multiply faster than I can get rid of it.
I find it helpful to purge only when my little one isn’t home/awake! If it’s something she might notice is gone, I may hide it and if she doesn’t ask for it, purge it during the next session. We also like to make seldom played with toys, like a fp barn and animals, outside toys and often toss at the end of the season.
Check out Flylady.net – you will wonder what you did without her, seriously! Good luck!
My son is 19months old and everything seems to clutter at once : diapers,toys and clothes. But i have a system..three bins: one for books and puzzles, another for smalltoys and the last one for big toys.. I try getting him to pull out some nd put those toys away before he brings out more so it doesnt become to cluttered.it usually works
I recently went through my closets and decided that if I haven’t used “it” recently then to the trash it went. My closets actually have space in them and I am going to do my best to keep them that way. It was just one of those nagging tasks and now that it is done my mind can be free of it, ahhh what a good feeling, let it go
im in the process of moving across town and I thought I was organized! I was wrong, what a project this has turned into. The one thing I can say that is orgainized is the boys cloths. They are 14 months apart so clothes do get used! I have them all sorted into bins according to type, pants, pjs, summer, short sleeved long sleeved, coats, ext. This way when they need something , I just have to go thru one box. It Has worked well.
I’d have to say… with 6 children there is quite a bit of clutter that accumulates just from Season to Season! We moved about 6 years from the West Coast to the Mid West… I have learned to let things go… I didn’t bring alot of my household items with me and basically started over. However, 6 yrs in this house now has ‘clutter’. I’ve learned that I (we) CAN live without from the move… we’ve done it. So last Summer my husband brought home one of his work/dump trucks & YES we loaded it up! I couldn’t believe how much stuff we just HAD to throw away and let go [again]. Now this is not an often occurrence… I also like to eBay my childrens clothes… but, sometimes that just becomes too much… so off to Salvation Army or Goodwill with the clothes & toys periodically. I do find a way to keep their important mementoes, of course, by placing them in their own labeled storage container with lid. I do the same with their pictures… I put those in the smaller shoe size containers with lids in cronological order.
Rebekah has it right with flying with Flylady… I also fly with her! She has been a big help in my life! Thanks to http://www.flylady.net
We need to simplify… good luck & maybe just maybe a ‘blindfold’ to wear as you go through your ‘Misc.’ boxes just might do the trick.
Good Luck!
~Bizee Mama
http://www.bizeemamax6.blogspot.com
Just this past weekend I had a family get together on Easter Sunday. That means Saturday night till early morning Sunday I was cleaning the house. Sadly, it took me nearly three hours to clean my daughters’ room. They had toys, clothes, candy wrappers, and God knows what else stuffed under their bottom bunk bed. On top of that I am pretty short so on a daily basis I can’t see on the top bunk bed. You don’t want to know the trash I found up there, its just plain scary. They weren’t allowed in their room, other than to sleep, since Sunday afternoon. So far so good, but its only been two days. =S It’s amazing how may junk they have collected.
It is so nice to know I’m not the only one.
We moved 18 months ago and still have LOTS of boxes. Here are two tricks that I have learned that I am working to set as goals. 1. If you haven’t worn it in a year (meaning all four seasons have passed) then you aren’t going to wear it and you should get rid of it. Even those skinny jeans you are hoping to get back into after having had a few babies. If you loose the weight you deserve to just buy new ones. 2. The National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, DI, etc. Most have drop off locations for gently used clothes and other items. The MS Society will even come to your house to pick things up. The MS Society calls about once a month letting me know they will be in the area. I MAKE myself fill at least one bag or box of different stuff to donate. It makes it a little easier to give things to a good cause then just throw them away. Even if it’s just once small box at a time.
My teen/tween daughters and I are on a major cleaning and de-cluttering binge, too. My mom will be here next month for dance recital, and it may take us that long to make the house presentable! Rather than trashing our discards, we Freecycle them. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. If someone wants the toys, clothes, bedding, etc. that we’re done with, why not bless them with it and keep it out of the landfill? I learned long ago that putting stuff aside for a yard sale doesn’t work for us. I’d rather give it away now than store it indefinitely just in case I can sell it for fifty cents in a few years.
I actually have a Donation truck visit almost weekly to pick up odds and ends that we have outgrown or do not need anymore… I keep a big grocery bag in the garage for the on-going purges and have it picked up by the truck.. Couldn’t be easier than that…..I also keep a MEMORY bin in the attic for each child to save the items that we simply can’t part with… Having a memory bin stops the clutter from forming in their closets and all over your fridge & countertops…:-)
My husband and I moved into our own place for the first time when I was 4 months pregnant. We’d lived with roommates that had kids or our respective parents to help out since we got together, so getting our own place was a freedom from other people’s clutter and lifestyles. Well, 6 months pregnant hit, and out went my motivation. I’m the one that does most of the cleaning… my husband keeps the coffee table and other such surfaces clean, and I take care of the rest since I stay home… so eventually I felt bad reminding him to clean his part since I wasn’t doing mine. Eventually I was 8 months pregnant and we lived in this cave of clutter. Gas station cups littered our living room and so did take-out boxes. Dishes piled up after I used a bunch to host a party and then was too tired to clean up that night… the next day I meant to get around to it, but only got a small amount done. Best of intentions. Lack of ability or motivation to make it happen.
At least the living room and office had to change. We tackled them one each day. Since I wasn’t as physically energetic, we just devoted the day to it, and I did what I could do sitting down – sorted through months of piled up mail and ads, etc. We put stuff that didn’t yet have a place in the bedroom that still needed to be tackled. My husband moved the furniture to open the room and allow less places for clutter to pile in the future. I swear, 3 trash bags went out that day. But our living room and office were clean.
We’ve found that devoting a day or afternoon to cleaning one specific spot is the way to go. Our next day will be tackling the bedroom… we got lots of items for baby that we’re not yet using, and have a lot of old clothes we’ll never again use. Our room is just boxes of random stuff. We’re going to throw away stuff we forgot about, put away what we’re keeping that we need within the next year, and pack the rest up into boxes for storage. Then, I’ll devote a day to the kitchen, and at the end every dish will be clean and the fridge will be cleaned out.
I know it won’t stay clean, but it’ll be manageable to keep up. Already, when our living room or office start to get messy, it takes about 5 minutes to get them back to perfect. That’s about the best we can do!
When I first had my daughter, I kept everything. All of her baby clothes and toys, play pen etc. Eventually I got a storage unit for all of my “extra” stuff. One day I went to my storage unit to put more stuff in there and realized I didn’t have any room to even step into it!! I got so overwhelmed that I went through one closet at a time in my two bedroom appartment and if I hadn’t used it in 6 months, other than weather related items, I put it in one of two piles. Either to give away, or throw away. After spending a week doing that, I tackled the storage unit with the mind set of ‘everything must go’. And it did!!!! The only things I had left were Christmas decorations and sporting gear. I figured if I had all this stuff that wasn’t being used, why keep it!
I felt sooo much better after I purged!
We moved an hour away when I was 8 1/2 months pregnant with my son. I had tons of boxes and bins “stored” in the basement from when I moved in with my husband. I sorted, toss and donated…and then tossed more. Even now, I am constantly getting rid of things as fast as we are done with them. I love the Freecycle website. I get rid of my clutter, and someone else can get some more use out of it.
Ok today is my birthday and as a gift to myself I have decided to finally join FlyLady.com to help me get my house in order. I am excited to learn more.
My son is now 3 1/2, and we decided this was a good time to get rid of all those baby toys that he no longer plays with. The mountain of toys was building in a corner of our living room, and that’s just what wouldn’t fit in his room! After keeping only the ones that he plays with on a regular basis, and storing the ones with the most sentimental value, we had a HUGE pile of garage sale items overtaking our dining room. Now, to get that garage sale going…
I am determined to de-clutter and organize the house. We are moving in July and due for another baby in September, so it is imperative that I:
1. get off my duff and purge the house of useless items,
2: find a lot of nice looking storage boxes for the stuff I do keep (like the scrapbooking I swear to myself I will finish every time yet another scrap of paper falls from the pile on the top shelf of my closet)
3. prod my wonderful husband into making the smaller smaller toy boxes he said he would make (instead of replacing the giant rubbermaid tub my toddlers toys currently reside in with store-bought storage boxes)
4. Finally give up on and donate the clothes that will probably not fit me again while they are still in style. hey, that just means a good shopping spree when this second baby is out and I lose the extra weight.
I just don’t want to, yet again, move a bunch of junk we never use.
To all the fellow moms out there, don’t feel so bad, I have 2 beautiful daughters one 8 and one 11 that bring home plenty of stuff. I can’t bring myself to throw it out. If you want to feel better about yourself, just watch the show hoaders and suddenly you will think you are not so bad. These are the best years. I have some of the things they have brought me prominently displayed next to my extensive Hummel collection. To me they are worth more than the Hummels. Lets enjoy them while they are still young, they grow so fast, these beautiful gifts from God.
We have two girls ages that are 21 months apart and share a room. Needless to say their room becomes a total desaster. Well this week it was time to clean and move the play room to the basement. The youngest just turned four so everyone can go up and down stairs. I find that the biggest thing is that they just don’t put things back where they should go. And yes we don’t always make them, so we are all at fault parents and children. But after two hours of cleaning and two garbage bags of junk later we are vowing to do better. Everyone take care and enjoy the children that you have remember motherhood is the toughest job you’ll ever love!
Great stories! So glad to know I’m not alone & loving the tips you guys are sharing. Honestly – there are so many things you’re prepared for (or, at least THINK you’re prepared for) when you become a mom, but battling enormous quantities of clutter was never in the books I read. Serious oversight, but I’m glad there are more experienced moms out there who can set me on the right path.
You have certainly been very busy writing up this great blog, It was very interesting to read. Can’t wait to see what you write about in the next week