No answers today, just observations.
This post is from when we moved six years ago and is pertinent today because we are renovating the house, which requires a lot of clean up and sorting.
"I have been packing to move for two months. In the process, I have
pitched or given away bags and boxes of stuff, found projects that
needed finishing and things that needed cleaning. Why did it take moving
to deal with all of the extraneous stuff around the house?
The first homeschool conference we attended in 1993, the McKim family
was speaking. They had fourteen children. Mrs. McKim had a workshop on home organization that was a
squooshed-down version of an entire weekend of home organization talks
that left me feeling breathless and inadequate, even accounting for the
fact that I was expecting my second child and she had six adult children
living at home to do her massive list. it included daily chores
(vacuuming), weekly chores (organizing the kitchen towel drawer) and
monthly chores (cleaning the garage! Monthly!)
Now, my dear husband doesn't clean. Anything. Except himself. And
emergency child cleanup. But, he is very grateful when I do clean. Well,
he doesn't like my process (think angry tornado) but he likes the
result and tells me so. Personally, I am more of a project person than a
maintenance person. If we could afford someone to clean our house
regularly, I would hire them simply because I like a clean house but
don't enjoy the process of keeping it clean. I just do it because I am
so overwhelmed when I let the house get away from me. Since I am the
only one moving the house away from chaos, the garage has been cleaned
perhaps three times since we moved in thirteen years ago. Maybe.
I have come to love Swiffer dusters. When I have a Swiffer duster in
hand, I dust the top of the door frames. I dust lampshades. I dust table
legs. I dust the carpet under my bed where the vacuum doesn't reach.
Unfortunately, cute little statues, like Precious Moments figurines, and
"vignettes" that my Romantic Country magazine advocates, don't
take Swiffing well, so there are some places that just don't get
dusting. A year ago, I dusted a shelf in the rec room for the first time
since we moved in and my sons' naval models were so dusty that the
battleships looked as though their decks were covered with tiny people.
However, I can declutter! It makes everybody very tense. They never know what
they're going to have left after I get going. I have a guitar that has
been rescued from the trash four times and hidden in various kids'
closets until I find it and throw it away again. I cannot convince them
that the guy at the guitar store twenty years ago told me it was a lost
cause. However, decluttering falls in the project category, not
maintenance.
A lady at church when we first got married had been such a terrible
housekeeper that she vowed to her ladies' bible study that she was going
to put together a home management program and start teaching it. If she
could figure it out well enough to teach it, anyone could do it. Her
system was, never have more than three items on any flat surface. It
makes them much easier to dust. That sounds great. In our next house, I
will follow that rule religiously. That also means, large collections
should be behind glass. I have a teak storage unit inherited from my
father that we call "the Beast" and it has some glass display cases.
That's where the plaster models of my ten kids' feet as babies will go
so they won't get dusty. Behind glass really works in the fight against
dust.
I discovered Prairie Style magazine. Only been about four to six issues were published, by the same people who publish Romantic Country. Now, we would call it modern farmhouse. It is upscale country without the
romantic fru-fru. One woman said, "I don't have anything that doesn't
have a use or a meaning." That was convicting! How many things do I have
because I thought they were "cute" or "cool" but they don't do anything
and no one I care about gave them to me. Now, I just need to get on
Pinterest and find a project that can turn all the three dimensional $2
tchotchkes my kids gave me into one amazing art piece!
