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.