Decluttering Your Main Rooms- Part 1 Reflections

 Well, it's clear my time line was a bit off ;o)  In my house, these days, decluttering a room is kinda like digging a hole in sand close to the tide.  If the tide is low, then the hole I dig may stick around a while and I might be lucky enough to make a great sandcastle.  But if the tide is on its way in, I can't make too much progress before it disappears.  Right now, I feel the tide retracting and thus can make progress on simplifying our house.

Our first part of decluttering the main rooms has been a 2 tiered project.  I typically don't think of our house as being terribly cluttered. What I found was that once I took away the visible clutter and piles that initially bothered me, I realized that I have many little things laying around that have been there so long that I hadn't even really noticed them anymore.  I changed my lens to a finer focus and started to tackle the little things and they were mostly "unfinished projects" like taping up a ripped page in Rita Clare's pop-up book, putting cd's back in their cases and storing them in the other room, random seasonal items needing to be put away, etc.

With the main rooms cleared away, I actually feel a lot more organized and clear headed, even though many of the others rooms are still a disaster (trying not to think about it!).  I now enjoy my living space and feel more "present" in the room.  Who says Feng Shui is bogus?  :o)

Unfortunately, this journey toward simplifying your home isn't a quick project.  At least, not in my home.  Maybe before kids, I could tackle this all in one weekend.  Now, I can barely finish 1 project from start to finish.  If I do, I usually feel a bit guilty that I've neglected my kids.  Alas! 

Now you have a choice.  You can either move on to all your other rooms and do a big sweep of purging the unnecessary items OR clean up the other rooms.  This is a great opportunity to deep clean the rooms, since you'll have less to move out of the room before more things return and take up space.  I'm going to move on to cleaning in my next post and then will revisit cleaning up the other rooms later on.  Each other room has some special considerations.

If you've started this journey with me, what are some obstacles you found?  Any surprises? Issues?

Jen Starks, Owner www.ecologicalbabies.com ecologicalbabies@gmail.com 850.284.5887