a gypsy caravan

Getting it Done: The Front Closet

We have a tiny 1940's bungalow.  Everything about it is tiny, especially the closets.  In the living room, there is a tiny coat closet to which Mike added shelving.  It has held a number of things but most recently it has been home to our games and puzzles.  This is what it looked like before decluttering:

I am always so humiliated to show you my before photos but I think it is healthy humiliation. :) It is funny that I started this project after lunch and thought it would take an hour or so.  By the time I found all of the puzzle and game pieces and sorted them all out, in addition to keeping the children from playing with them all, it took several hours.   I gave away four large bags to Goodwill, thirty six games and puzzles in all.   How in the world did we ever accumulate that many games?  Some of them were never opened!

Here is the finished closet.

There is much empty space and I love it.  We have so few empty spaces in this house.  Since completing this project, I have enjoyed walking over to the closet and looking inside at the empty shelves.  Yes, I know, I am easily entertained. :)

Bloom Where You're Planted

When I was a newly married woman, we had a small, two bedroom apartment that was modestly furnished.  I enjoyed decorating that first home but was not very satisfied with performing homemaking tasks.  Honestly,  I did not spend enough time on them to know whether I really liked them but I convinced myself early on that I did not. 

I look back on that little place and realize just how small a space it was, yet I remember feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of keeping it clean not because the job was daunting but because I preferred to spend my time doing other things.  I still placed a lot of value in my "me time" and did not want to be burdened with what I thought was the dull, repetitive job of keeping house.   Homemaking was for my grandmother and my mother, I thought, not for me.  I desired to have a big family someday but I did not really consider the amount of work that would come from that blessing. 

Many nights, I went to bed  with dishes in the sink though I had plenty of time to wash them.  I just preferred not to.  I was not very fond of dusting so I went long stretches between dusting and polishing the furniture.  I often waited for the laundry to pile up before washing it rather than keeping up with it.  I did not consider myself slovenly but simply "undomestic".    I wanted to spend my time doing other things and would get to the housework when I could no longer bear the mess.  In time, I grew increasingly resentful and frustrated with homemaking, wishing someone would come and do it for me so I could "get on with my life".   Little did I realize that my home reflected me as a person.  To neglect my vocation was to rob my family and myself of peace and happiness.   

(I believe that the above situations are far different from a mother with many little ones who simply cannot get it all done.  I could have gotten it done but had no interest in doing so.)

We bought our own home eight years ago and no longer live in that tiny apartment.  We now live in an itty bitty bungalow with four children.  There is more work to do these days, not less.   I am no longer working in the corporate world as I was when I was first married but, instead, spend my days reading stories to little people, caring for the day to day needs of my family, driving to ball games and cooking up a storm.  One would think that my "me time" would be even more coveted  because, as many a mother knows, there is little time each day to spend on things that we choose for ourselves.   Yet, oddly, I find myself enjoying my life more now than I ever have, despite my lack of "me time".    

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do, that is the secret of happiness."
James Matthew Barrie, novelist and author of Peter Pan

Certainly there are household tasks that I do not enjoy as much as others.  I used to abhor washing dishes.  They would pile up until there were no clean dishes to be found before I would touch them.  I loved to vacuum and clean floors but dishes made my head spin.  Then one day I decided to dim the lights (not too dim or the dishes will not be clean. :), fill the sink with hot soapy water, light a candle on the counter and roll up my sleeves.  I really don't mind washing dishes anymore.  The warm water is very therapeutic to me.  That does not mean if you stop by unexpectedly that you won't find any in the sink at any given time (right Anne? :).  It just means that we can find happiness by doing the chores we used to hate if we try to do them with creativity and a servant's heart of love. 

Homemaking, done well, has blessed my family more than any other activity on which I could spend my time.  While I like to knit and scrapbook, neither of those things affect my family as profoundly as my efforts to make our home a welcome, tidy, and clean place to live. I have seen firsthand how our decluttering efforts have changed the very countenances of those who live here. While we are far from done, not a minute of that time was wasted.  I plan to keep it up and not to lose heart.

"Success is getting what you want.  Happiness is liking what you get." H. Jackson Brown 

Now that decluttering has become a habit around here and we have begun to see the fruits of a tidier home, I have become interested in reading more about how to perform different household tasks.   I have been reading two books, Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson  and Keeping House by Margaret Peterson .   Keeping House shares the "why" of  homemaking.   Mendelson's book explains  how to go about it.  I will be using these two books to encourage myself in my vocation as my decluttering is completed. 

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." --Mother Teresa

Is my home always neat?  No, though I'm finding it is much more manageable now that there is less stuff.  The time it takes to tidy up has shortened drastically and will continue to do so as we finish decluttering.   I am inspired to continue to bless my family by being diligent and faithful in my homemaking efforts.  By abandoning ourselves to the tasks at hand with love, we will find joy in our vocations as wives and mothers.  There is great satisfaction to be found in serving others and denying ourselves.  That is the message of Christ and it can be done within the walls of our home each and every day. 

Getting it Done: The Learning Room

I have finished working in the schoolroom.  It took me four days to complete this room.  It was a horrific mess.  You will see in the "before" photos just how much clutter was filling this room, rendering it unusable.  Every year, after Christmas the learning room is trashed because our crawl space to the Christmas decorations is only accessible through that room.  I am ashamed to post the following photos but I think it is good for me to be as honest as possible.   I hope that by seeing my mess, some of you might not feel so alone in your struggles with clutter.  I hope, in some little way, you will be encouraged by the transformations that our family is making.

I eliminated several wobbly shelving units and threw away eight tall kitchen bags of trash, inlcuding many old notebooks, lapbooks and drawings.  I gave away four bags of who-knows-what-else and will be selling a large rubbermaid bin full of books.  I moved the picture books to the girls' room so there is a lot less filling the shelves these days.  Years ago I had purchased cork tiles for one wall but they all fell down, leaving the adhesive all over the wall.  I covered that with Van Gogh calendar prints and will change the prints every three months or so. 

As you can imagine, we were not doing any schoolwork in this room when it looked like this.

Here goes!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Nothing fancy but much neater, in my opinion.  A couple things worth noting:  I removed a small, wooden folding table from the room temporarily to serve as additional seating for when our company arrives this weekend.  The table will be back in front of the learning room window once our company leaves.  Also, though I vacuumed the carpet, we have several blotches of paint that kids have spilled over the years.  Anyone have any luck removing acrylic paint from the carpet?  The brick that is visible in my window is my neighbor's house.  It is only a driveway's width away from ours so we can easily talk out our windows at each other.  Thankfully, we are blessed with wonderful neighbors!

Well, thanks for not throwing tomatoes at me over my messy photos.   We are getting there, slowly but surely.  Slow and steady wins the race, right?  In the meantime, thanks for visiting today!

 

Peter Walsh on Oprah

Part Two of "Inside the Lives of Hoarders with Peter Walsh" will be shown on Oprah tomorrow.   I did not catch Part One but the story and quite a few links worth following are on this page from Oprah's site. 

HT: Cheryl

Just call me Rosie...

...Rosie the Riveter, that is!

Today, in a frantic effort to get ready for company (six people who are arriving this weekend), I installed two of these:

and  two of these:

Removed the old caulk and proceeded to recaulk one of these (no that's not mine in the photo):

BUT, by far the most exciting job completed today was to repair my upstairs bathtub which has not been working since last MAY. (Ahem.)  To make a long story short, the tub would not drain because the little lever thingy was broken as well as the wire thingy that you can't see that controls the little lever thingy. Once I removed the little lever thingy, the wire thingy and its surrounding plate, I dug down the overflow with a wire hanger and pulled this thing out. 

This thing apparently controls the tub's ability to drain.

Not any more!  (insert evil, sinister laugh)

At least now we can use the tub, though for the time being I will have to purchase a temporary rubber stopper for bathtime.  I didn't want our company to have to share one bathtub between the ten of us. 

Do you know that I only spent $18 and now have two working toilets and two presentable bathtubs?  I am pretty proud of myself. 

Now I am going to prop up my feet and have a glass of wine.  Then I am going to bed. :)

Getting It Done--The Sunroom

The main area of my home consists of the kitchen, living room, dining room and sunroom.  They are all attached to one another.  My sunroom is about 10' x 10' (if that).  It is an addition which was built about twenty years before we moved here.  It has always struck me as funny that someone would go through the trouble to put on an addition that is so small. 

I mean, imagine saying to your spouse one day, "Honey, we need more room.  We are just busting out at the seams here."  Then imagine your spouse agreeing with you and sitting down to talk over just how much space you will need.  Would the two of you EVER come to the conclusion that you need an additional 10 x 10 foot room?  Seems to me that whoever  put on that addition could have thrown away a few boxes rather than constructing such a tiny space.  Anyhow, back to the story...

The sunroom has very little wall space.  One entire wall is an enormous picture window.  Another is a sliding glass door.  This makes for a lovely place to watch the birds at their feeders or keep an eye on the kids playing in the yard.  I  read aloud to the children each morning in the sunroom.  It is adjacent to the dining room where we currently do most of our tablework. 

I started purging this room before the others because it is used every day and because I felt it was a doable project that might help motivate me to continue into other rooms.   Peter Walsh recommends filling out a list of questions like this for each room:

Sunroom
Current function: Laundry folding area, pillow fort building area, pile collecting area, place to dump jackets, purses, briefcases, backpacks, etc.

Ideal function: Relaxation, snuggling, reading, watching birds

Who uses it? The entire family

Who should use it?  The entire family

What should it contain?    Furniture, books, decorations we love

What has to go?    Dusty silk plants, piles of paper clutter, clean laundry, coupons, dusty baskets attracting clutter,  unattractive knick knacks, stuff

Prior to the purging, it looked like this at any given time, though I would clean it up when people were stopping by.  It seemed to be the place where laundry ended up until it was folded.  Sometimes the chair in the foreground was completely covered with several loads of laundry.  There were piles on the floor fairly regularly.   Here is a photo of the room on a particularly bad day taken last year.

Here is the room now, after much purging, dusting and a small organizational change. 

I got rid of quite a bit of clutter, including some really dusty silk ferns, baskets and many knick knacks (that I thought I did not collect).  I did a thorough dusting and vacuuming.  I even vacuumed under the furniture!  (Don't laugh because that doesn't happen often around here!)

I think I did a fairly good job of listening to Peter's advice and eliminating all the things that I did not love.  I also did not buy anything else for the room with the exception of these cubbies.

I purchased the fabric cubbies from Target to store the children's school books for the current term.  Those that were shelved here were not pretty books but spiral bound main lesson books, workbooks, plastic three ring binders and the like.  They made the shelf look very cluttered and sloppy.  This bookshelf  is the first thing you see when entering the room so I wanted to neaten it up a bit.  One of the cubbies also contains the field guides, bird books and binoculars which should make bird watching easier and more enjoyable.

I still have windows to clean and a carpet to shampoo but, all in all, I am pleased with the way this room turned out. I hope to keep it neat, functioning and a nice place for the children to read, watch the birds and relax.

Thanks for stopping by and following our progress.  Have a wonderful weekend with your family. :)

Homemaking Update

I have been continuing my  household purging, though completion might be weeks or months away now that we are back to lessons.   It has all been going quite well with two van loads of random items hauled off to Goodwill.  I drove off with forty stuffed animals in the last load.  Do you know that no one has noticed yet?  Not one child has said a peep.  Phew!

Upon beginning to declutter, I was afraid that my biggest obstacle would be my emotional attachment to certain items.  Now that I have seen it played out,  I have not had much trouble parting with things.  In fact, there are few things in my home that are really THAT important to me.  Photographs of my family and my father's model ships are  all I am particularly sentimental about.  Books are another thing I will hang on to as a matter of homeschooling practicality, though I know there are many I will purge when I get to that room. 

I have much much more to do.  (hint: Come over ANNE !!! Please? :)  I detailed the living room and sunroom, dusting everything thoroughly and eliminating a lot of things that we simply don't need in there.  The rooms that are finished are looking a little, well, bare.  Maybe not sterile but certainly streamlined.   It will take some getting used to but in a very good way. :)

Kim and I have talked at length about clean design lines and minimal decorations.  We've agreed that simple, functional spaces make us smile.  I now have two rooms that almost fit that bill.  Honestly, it feels kind of strange to me now that it is happening.  Two rooms down, six more to go (not including a really nasty basement and a scary linen closet).

I've been following the suggestions in It's All Too Much which uses the acronym F.A.S.T.

Fix a time--Schedule a time for decluttering and make it happen.

Anything not used for twelve months--out the door!

Someone else's stuff--return it or get rid of it!

Trash--gone forever.  Once you take it out of your home, do not bring any of it back inside your home.

Setting aside time each day has been very helpful.  The days fly by so quickly and unless I give time to decluttering,  it rarely happens.  Even fifteen minutes makes a huge difference. 

Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Patiently Following the Protocol

It has been hard for me to follow this book, not because it is a difficult read or because I don't like the content, quite the opposite.  I have a tendency to want to skip ahead to the portions that tell me HOW to declutter, rather than reading the whys and following his lead.  I want to know how many sweaters to own, how to organize my cupboards and how often to flip my mattress. I am kind of a "tell me what to do and I'll do it" type of person.  I want to read the last page, to reap the benefits quickly rather than do the life-changing thinking.

The most important activity that Walsh mentions time and time again is to visualize the kind of life you want to live.  This is not because he believes that we can think ourselves into being neat and tidy but because he recognizes the connection between verbalizing our goals and achieving them.  When we take time to write down how we'd like our life to look, we might be surprised that it differs from what we are doing day in and day out. 

I took the time to do this exercise the other day.  I was quite surprised by what I wrote because little of what I feel is important is actually being done.  I am spending my time elsewhere, apparently.  In the shuffle of life I am losing sight of what is important to me.  Here is what I came up with, nothing poetic, just a list of things that I would like to call my own.  I want to:

• rise early each day, feeling energetic and well rested.
• be as healthy and physically fit as I am able given my state of life, to exercise most days and to serve nourishing, well planned meals.
• be friendly and cheerful towards my family, to be an encouragement to them emotionally and spiritually.
• educate my children at home, to teach them the vital basics as well as to exposing them to interesting ideas, inspiring people and heroes of their Faith. 
• make my home a peaceful place to rest, learn and grow.
• have a home that we look forward to coming home to, a welcoming place for friends to visit.
• be sure that our belongings in our home reflect, support and enhance who we are as a family, not hinder us or weigh us down emotionally, physically or financially.
• pray the Rosary, as well as other prayers from the heart, each day.
• to spend my free time gardening, knitting, hiking, reading and traveling with my family.
• to embrace my vocation as a wife and mother by eliminating those outside activities that are a distraction or that rob my family of free time.

Walsh then asks us to envision what we want our home to look like, room by room.  As I mentioned in my last post, we have a small home.  I could wish for a sprawling Cape Cod with an ocean view or a farm house with dozens of acres but I believe he is meaning the current space we have been given.  How would we like it to look?  What is the function for each individual room now?  What should it be?

I am going to peruse some of my old catalogs (before I purge them away :) and get some inspiration.  I am not so much planning to replace furniture or redecorate (though a new coat of paint is not out of the question in several rooms) but I will be taking small steps (after de-cluttering)  to make things more beautiful and welcoming without spending a lot of money or adding more clutter to my home.   I need to remember that the goal in this exercise is to envision the beauty and calm with which I want to surround my family.  The next step will be to eliminate those things in each room that impede that vision.   

Walsh writes:

"Every time you look at an item in a room and contemplate whether you should keep it, imagine the life you want to live and ask yourself these basic questions:  How does your home serve your notion of the life you wish you had?  Do the things you own help you achieve that life or distract from that vision?  Is there room in your bedroom to sleep peacefully?  Does the front hallway welcome you when you arrive home after a tiring day?  Can your family gather for meals, fun or relaxation without the interference of piles of junk?  Every item filling your home should move your life vision forward and serve a real function, one that you can explain without making excuses.  Remember, 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'  Do your things meet these standards?"

For today, these are the things I let go which are awaiting their trip to charity.  The item on the floor is a wicker ottoman, which I do like but have no room for.  We keep tripping over it. The rest is, well, just stuff. 

Good riddance! :)

Is It All Too Much?

I have been reading It's All Too Much:  An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life by Peter Walsh.   I have read many different organizational books in my day, many of which have worked for me for periods of time.  Inevitably, I tweak and tweak the system until it no longer resembles that which I originally read about.  Lately, I have ditched any and all systems as none of them seem to be cutting it, store bought or self made.  Many of you know the feeling that it takes every bit of energy each day just to make three meals and clean them up, let alone organize and declutter.  That is where I am at.  I can try to organize my calendar, my chore system, my daily routine, my lesson plans but the most important thing I can do right now is to eliminate those things which are dragging us down and making my home unwelcoming.

You may wonder why I am taking the time to tell you about this  book when I have just admitted that I have read many of them.  What makes this book different?  In the introduction alone, Walsh tells his readers that he is not going to talk about the "stuff".  He claims that organizing rarely starts with the "stuff" but starts by visualizing the life that we want to live.  "Does the stuff we own contribute to the lives that we are hoping to achieve, or is it getting in the way of that vision?  If it's impeding our vision for the life we want, then why is it in our homes?  Why is it in our lives?  Why do we cling to it?"  These are questions that Mike and I will be asking ourselves in the upcoming weeks.

There is a quote in this book that really sums up my organizational problem.  "You can rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as many times as you'd like but the ship is still going down."  You see, I have been moving clutter around for years.  I do not have many knick knacks or chachkis but BOY do we have books...and wooden toys...and playmobil men and...fill in the blank.  Peter Walsh explains that most people spend an inordinate amount of time, organizing their clutter into handy, pretty storage bins.  Rather than get rid of our clutter, we buy another storage solution.  He mentions that while families have (sadly) gotten smaller in the past thirty years, home sizes have grown by half.  We have bigger homes and less people living in them.  Ten percent of Americans have a self storage space off their own property. That is a lot of "stuff".

We live in small bungalow with a relatively unusable basement which floods several times a year.  We have very little storage space, like most homes built between the two World Wars.  People were not hoarders back then and they repaired much, rather than replacing items.  Two of our bedrooms have a single door width closet and two bedrooms share a closet which is slightly larger.  We have a shallow linen closet on the main floor and a small crawl space in the attic eaves where we store our Christmas decorations.  I am not complaining about my home, believe me.  However, we have a very small home.  That's a fact.  This is the space we have been given and I need to make it the most pleasant place I can.  I need to declutter and make some "breathing room".   I want to turn our home into a source of comfort rather than a source of stress. 

I will be sharing my thoughts on this book as I continue to read it, along with any and all projects that we tackle head on.   It will be an exciting adventure, believe me. :)