Simple Mom Challange

  

Simple Mom  has started a challenge regarding cleaning the house.

I have decided to join because I always need an extra boost in motivation when it comes to cleaning.

Week 1 is focused on the closets.  This is difficult for me because I think I have weeded through my closet as much as I can, but we'll see about that.  We have a slit closet, which we had my clothes in one side and Shawn's in the other.  About a month ago we switched around so that both of our clothes were in one side and the other had the off season clothes.  The side that we combined our clothes in is easier to get to which made it much less frustrating for the person who had the unfortunate luck of having the hard to get to side.

But to accommodate both of our wardrobes we had to pare down quite a bit.  About 3 garbage bags full went to charity.  Who knew closets held so much.

This week will be my challenge to see if I can make the closet even more roomier.  I will also add the dresser drawers to the challenge.  I know I can get my drawers down to be a bit more sparse.  I seem to have an unexplainable attachment to t-shirts though.  I will post again on Friday with progress.

Todays Closets

Left side is all winter clothes, right side summer

dresser drawers

the less clutter we live in the less cluttered our lives are.

the less clutter we live in the less cluttered our lives are.  

A simple home, where everything has its place, multitasking on items
A clean home, where last minute dinner guests can show up without inducing stress
A calm home where mornings are spent enjoying time with the family and not rushing around to try to find a book or the keys to the car

These are my hopes for my home in 2011.

How I will be accomplishing this is by:

1. eliminating clutter in each room of the house
2. reorganizing each room to maximize the living space
3. get rid of unused items. The idea that I may use it some day does not work any longer
4. replace old, worn and inefficient items with newer more efficient items
5. donate old toys, clothing and unused items to shelters or charities
6. don’t buy anything new unless it has a specific purpose

Going through each room I am amazed to find things that at one point I thought were really important and now with my new way of thinking I realize that its only purpose was to collect dust.  My emotional attachment to certain objects have been eliminated due to the fact that it is just getting in the way.  An example of this is a very large stuffed animal that my sister brought home from Germany for me when I was in high school.  It was a mascot of the Olympics that year.  It is huge and I always thought is was very kind of my sister to stuff that animal in her suitcase and bring it all the way back for me.  Now 20 some odd years later I only see it as a matted fraying thing that I really cannot identify (cross the abominable snowman with a teddy bear) and cannot find a place for.  I also cannot think of any other person who would want this (my son was afraid of it when he was little).

Since I am the only one in our house at the moment that if gung ho on minimizing our clutter, I have to be respectful of the rest of my family.  To accomplish this I have bought more storage.  Shelving and bins that are attractive and have clean lines have replaced the mounds of clutter in each room.  The only rule I have imposed on my boys is that once the shelf or bin is full then they have to pare down their items to fit.  I will never be the person that own only 100 items and I am OK with that.  My minimalist goal it to be comfortable in my home with my family, to clean less and laugh more.  As long as everything has its place and is contained, that is the best I can hope for right now.

Review - The Minimalist Cleaning Method

Review - The Minimalist Cleaning Method
Annie Jean Brewer
http://annienygma.com/
$9.95


This was a good read. To me this book was divided into 4 parts, the introduction, the recipes, the cleaning method and a discussion on minimalism.




What I liked first off in this book was that Annie has an 11 year old daughter, so I can easily relate to that. The minimalist motto is “A place for everything and everything in its place”. Prevention is key to keeping a clean house.  I also believe that this is the main priority to maintaining a clean house.  Everything has to have it’s proper place, if it doesn’t have a place then get rid of it, if you don’t use it regularly get rid of it.  The accumulation of stuff is what is keep me from having the clean and tidy house that I have always wanted.

The next section of the book is totally worth the price tag.  Annie gives recipes for cleaning supplies.  Everything from all purpose cleaners to hair cleansers, it is all there and many different recipes for the few cleansers. Very helpful


Annie’s cleaning techniques are very simple and frankly just plain common sense. But sometimes it is important for someone outside of your home to say the simplest things to you when you are lost in a sea of clutter.  The smack in the forehead and the following words ‘why didn’t I think of that’ is what I need to get me motivated enough to change the way I’ve done things for years.

Annie’s perspective on minimalism is close to mine.  Simplicity is the key.  Less stuff means more happiness and a greater peace of mind.

I recommend this book.

Minimalist Book Sale

Today until Thursday Karol Gajda at Ridiculously Extraordinary is having a minimalist book sale.

http://www.ridiculouslyextraordinary.com/minimalist-book-sale/

Of course I bought the group.  It is only 27.00 for all of the books which bought separately would cost around 245. I have had my eye on quite a few of these books for a while now, so how could I possibly pass this up.  I highly recommend buying this bundle because to miss out would be a tragedy.

What I thought I would do is each day I would read one of the books and give a review of it here as well as a link to the website and how you can buy the book if you missed this wonderful book sale.

September 23 Is International Minimalist Day

What a great idea this is.
http://www.ridiculouslyextraordinary.com/international-minimalist-day/

Today in celebration of the first annual National Minimalist Day I plan to:
walk home from work
smell some flowers on the way
make a great dinner from food in the freezer
play a game with my son
get rid of 10 things that I no longer need.

Minimalism

I have been wanting to become a minimalist for years. The idea of having a clean and uncluttered home is so appealing to me. You see it magazine layouts, clear coffee tables, a dining room table with only a bowl of fruit on top. But alas, that lifestyle was destined for someone elses life and not mine for I married a collector of things, comics, figures, anything Star Wars, elephants. I love my husband dearly, it’s the crap slowly filling our tiny house that I can do without. And now our son is following in his father’s footsteps. Oh joy. This is not to say that I don’t have my faults as well. I love cookbooks and I also love the elephants we have collected throughout our marriage, but I think I have come to a point in my life where the stuff we own is drowning me. I need space. I need to find that item I placed down a week ago that has now completely disappeared. I hate that. I also hate that I seem to be responsible for all of the items my family has placed down and can now not seem to find.

Aww, the ever elusive minimalism. It has been rattling around in the back of my mind for years and not it has come to the forefront. About a month ago I happened upon a blog 365lessthings.com and a light bulb went off over my head. I can eliminate one thing every day. It will be painless, it will be fun and most importantly it will go mostly unnoticed by the boys in my life.

And that was what happened until one day recently they started noticing more room in each room, more boxes being filled and donated to charity, more things in those boxes that they didn’t even realize were gone. And then became the paradigm shift. They became involved and excited in minimalism as much as I have. My husband, on his own, went through his overflowing bookshelves and got rid of a few boxes of books. My son, on his own, went through his room and got rid of old clothes that no longer fit and toys no longer played with. It was a revelation, who knew that a clean and uncluttered house is everyone’s wish.

My house is still a mountain of stuff, but it is getting better. I still remove one item every day and on Saturdays we are not busy running errands we pick a room and declutter as much as possible. There is still the odd item of sentiment that can’t be parted with, but I figure that eventually we will come back to that item and it will be removed when the emotion of the clear and clean rooms overtakes the emotion behind wanting to keep an broken thing that was a favourite six years ago.

I am figuring it will take a few years of this to declutter to the point of clarity but I am willing to wait, I have a vision of my living room being on the cover of a magazine, tidy, clean and with only the necessities.