It’s shocking what you’ll find
It’s now July, and I don’t know about you, but during the last week or so, I’ve felt like I need to do some major tweaking of my house to survive the rest of the Summer! For me, Summer is generally a time when things slow down (a bit) and I have a little more time to assess what’s going on in my house.
Aaaaand here’s what I discovered: lots and lots of stuff crap. Not true crap or trash, but generally just too much stuff! And when there’s too much, I tend to get cranky and move towards making some major changes to fix things so I can get out of my mood. These are times when my husband tries to keep quiet and prays I pass by his junk. This time did leave his stuff alone and focused on my own junk.
True story time: I had piles of paper and things that had accumulated in the sprint to the end of the year. I guess this is potentially shocking if you believe I’m some some super mythical woman who is always organized. Reality check: I’m not!
How did it get this way?
Anyhow, a few months ago, I became the lead advisor for a collegiate chapter of my sorority, so I have more paper and stuff associated with that. I had PTA papers galore: permits for events coming up this next school year and other planning note. And most of all I had business papers- Ideas for blog posts, color schemes, classes and, and, and. And I didn’t have a system for dealing with it at the time.
Back to the And my kids? They had tons o’ toys and books about. My youngest had so much stuff that he had run out of storage space in his room. His bookcase shelves and top were full and the tops of his dresser and desk were full too.
So what did I do?
To fix my own organizing disaster, I put the papers where they went and if they didn’t have a home, I established one.
To start to fix my kids’ mess, I worked with each kiddo individually to figure out what they were ready to get rid of. In the past, I’ve been burned trying to get rid of stuff in the past with both of them there because they “clean up” their room by giving the toy to their brother. Oy vey! I learned from my mistake and figured out that I needed to separate them for best de-cluttering results.
Encourage a purge
Once separated, I pointed out several groups of toys that had been collecting dust and nominated those to leave the house. I got a lot of whining about how it was a favorite toy, yada, yada, yada, but the boys became way more willing to let go of things when I offered to give them half of the money when the item sold. That eased the pain of letting go of toys they really didn’t play with but were reluctant to get rid of for whatever reason. Other items that weren’t in a good enough condition to be sold were given to friends, who loved getting them!
For some of the larger toys (hello Dragon Knight Playmobil stuff!), I posted them for sale in a local Facebook Buy/Sell/Trade group and they sold pretty quickly. Learning how much they had just earned, the boys quickly found even more things that they were ready to let go of.
The Strategies that Work
It’s probably time for you to do a check in on your home and do a little de-cluttering yourself, don’t you think? Here are some organizing tips & suggestions for you to stay organized during Summer:
Give everything a home. Counters and floors don’t count.
Make decisions about de-cluttering kid stuff with one kid at a time.
Resort to bribery Offer to split the profits with the kids to encourage them to de-clutter.
Find a Facebook buy/sell/trade group to make some cash from your sellable clutter.
Hope these tips help you with staying organized during Summer!
