de-clutter, organize and clean up

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." William Morris

I mentioned how much I love organizing in my last post and it's true. I find great inner satisfaction from cleaning and making things tidy. I also find I'm in a better mood when my house is cleared of junk. But, as you can imagine, having a child doesn't lend itself to a clutter-free home. Instead, I usually just clean around her mess and leave her toys and such until the end. The nighttime clean up has become a real life-saver. It allows me to ignore my obsessive-compulsive behaviors for a time, knowing that I can satisfy them later.

Once a month or so I get the urge to go through the house and just clean everything out. Not necessarily get rid of things but make sure everything is where it needs to be and is easily found. I try to start small. Trying to conquer it all at once can be frustrating and getting overwhelmed is a hazard of organizing on a larger scale. So, the smaller the better. In that frame of mind, I recently started with the top drawer of our bedroom dresser. Just the top drawer. It might be relatively small but on the scale of disorganization, it's like an eleven.  That drawer has turned into the catch-all for the bedroom bits and bobs that don't have a specific place. Costume jewelry mixes with lint rollers next to pocket knives and pocket squares. Really, there's no rhyme or reason to the configuration other than they don't belong anywhere else. And it wasn't just contained in the drawer anymore. It had begun spilling over onto the top of the dresser. I needed something to corral as well as separate everything. A $6.00 plastic drawer organizer from Target has made all the difference. It has three smaller compartments and two larger ones that separate the mess by size. After throwing away useless papers and using decorative tins for my jewelry, I can suddenly see the bottom of the drawer. 

Sometimes the organizing plan of action doesn't come together until I see a specific container that just screams "I can help you!" Which is why, for Valentine's Day, Jason is taking me to The Container Store. Be still my heart. Does my husband know me or what? A morning at The Container Store, an allotment to buy whatever I need and a trip to the cupcake store afterwards. My idea of the perfect date. I'm hoping to find the kind of inspiration that creates miracles because my next clutter-busting project will be to organize the garage. 

The garage is currently only big enough for one car (just barely) because most of it is filled with boxes. Every time I pull the car in I think of one of my Secrets of Adulthood - If you haven't needed it yet, it can probably wait a while longer. How many of the possessions in boxes have I lived without for almost a year? Some are things just waiting to be put away but others can definitely go to Goodwill. But that will have to wait for another day. First, the house. Then, the garage.