I have a love hate relationship with my office catch-all room.
I love it, because I spend a LOT of the day there, and I'm glad to have an area to put my desk, school shelves, etc.
I hate the room because it is out in the open and seems to be the room where things go that no one knows where else to put it! It's *almost* worse then my store room since at least the stuff in the store room was taken there because I at least *thought* I wanted to keep it.
My desk is the proverbial dumping ground for all the stuff that the kids don't know where it goes, and I often find myself doing the same. There's also just a TON of surfaces for things to get put on and then attract more clutter. It is certainly our most cluttered room.
I have to be honest, that I'm going to explain what I did the first time around. I'm also going to be 100% honest and tell you that it doesn't look much better then it did after the first week. Unlike some of the other rooms, I have not been diligent to maintain it and it has continued to re-collect clutter.
The biggest thing that I did was to start with our bookshelves. I cleared off one shelf a day-completely. I did go ahead and dust it, and then only replace it with the things that would go there. If the bookshelf held books, I made sure there were only the correct amount of books on the shelf and not piled on top of the pile or sitting in front of the books (which was what was is still happening).
I tried to remove everything that didn't belong on the shelves. Some of it had another home. Things that didn't have another home got put in a box in the store room. I was not decluttering, so I didn't sort it, but the fact of the matter was that I simply COULD NOT just leave all the stuff that didn't fit on the shelves.
My desk was the other goal. I cleared off the entire desk. I threw away a ton of stuff (where does it all come from?). I then got a basket and put it on the side of my desk to hold the items I wanted to work on.
I didn't go through the drawers. I didn't pull out any furniture. I didn't pull out the couch (mostly because it has a broken leg and I couldn't).
Unlike the other rooms, I really didn't come up with a good daily plan. I try to pick up the dishes (cups) off my desk daily, and I have been trying to keep things from pooling on the floor in front of my desk. I also try to keep the floor picked up and the coffee table cleared off.
As I look around the room, it is REALLY hard to type this. I simply don't feel like I've conquered this room much at all. So, I guess I am going to have to make a point to start over on this room. Really, I have to.
I'm glad I am blogging about this. My goals have been 1. Clean up the room and 2. Maintain a reasonably picked up status. I DID complete number 1. But, I've done such a bad job at 2, that I would not say I did 1.
Going forward, I will be adding a shelf a day to my to do list. It may take awhile, but at least I will be able to see progress being made. I hope! And, YES, it needs to be decluttered, but that's the second level of cleaning for me. I'm not there yet in this room.
I'll keep you updated!
God Bless,
Lisa
You may have figured this one out by now, but I'm going to make it official. If I had been better at housekeeping before I got sick, my house would not have been nearly as bad. But, I didn't. In fact, housekeeping is something I have struggled with since the dawn of my existence.
Even though I wasn't very good at maintaining my home, I could always garner the energy (maybe more like panic) to get the house in reasonable shape if someone was coming over (which was-purposely-rare). But, getting sick pushed the house over the edge. It was to the point that I could NOT get it clean in a day. NOT.AT.ALL.
Getting sick was the final straw for both my house and my housekeeping. I needed a system. I don't want to end up with my house in such disarray ever again!
Once I started with my recover the house plan, I started to realize it was not only working to recover the house, but maybe *just maybe* it was something I could maintain for forever! I realized that with each room I tackled and with each day that the previous rooms stayed in reasonable shape, that I had slowly, but surely, made a sort of plan. A housekeeping plan.
Believe me when I say that I never dreamed of having, let alone blogging about, a housekeeping plan. I was born a messy and thought I would die a messy. Okay, you know what that's true. I probably will stay a messy (can they change to cleanies?). But, I will be a messy with a semi clean and organized house. Who knows, at some point, maybe it will actually be CLEAN and organized. Maybe someday I will actually be able to take photos of my kids and not have to crop out a mess (and them not be 30 or outside).
There are a couple reasons I decided to start adding my cleaning efforts to my blog.
First off, it's what's going on in my life right now. It is front and center of my daily efforts. And, since my blog is really about our life, it is super hard to not tell you about it.
The other reason? Well, maybe I'm not alone? Maybe I'm not the only one who has a difficult time keeping a house? Maybe my new found methods would help more moms then just me? I thought, why not at least give it a try.
I have been VERY nervous to add these posts, though. I began my recovery efforts in December and waited until March to even start typing them up. I wanted to wait and see if I could stick with the plan before I started telling everyone anyone else.
Once I began typing them, I didn't post them right away, I have still been too nervous. In fact, as I type this, not one single post has gone live (though I did post them since I wrote this). I almost started a whole separate blog, but that would really end up adding more work to my already crazy schedule. So, I'm going to post them here.
Hopefully, I have burst the previous image you had of me (I say hopefully because I hope you thought I was clean and organized before this), and that you will continue to stop by for at least my homeschool posts :). Off to post the first one...
Thanks for reading!
God Bless,
Lisa
