Keeping one step ahead of clutter

We've lived in our home for six years.  When we moved here, we more than doubled our living space.  We went from two bedrooms to four.  From one bathroom (that shared its duties with the roll away dishwasher) to three!  I love love love our home. We have so many cool things for the children. We have lots of space inside and out. It's a true ugly duckling that I've really fallen for.  In our old house, our kitchen was so small I could stand in the center of it and touch all three walls.  Now our kitchen has cupboard space with 40 doors and 29 drawers as well as the longest island I've ever seen in a home.  In our old house, we had four closets.   We now have 17 closets scattered throughout the house.  In our old house, the washer and drier were definitely added long after the house was built and lived on an enclosed porch.  Think concrete floors, spiders and mice.  Our laundry room now has floor to ceiling cupboards on both walls.  We used to use a small room on the enclosed porch for our hot water tank and very small food storage.  We now have an pantry/storage room that is lined with shelves and dressers that is as large as most master bedrooms.  It didn't take very many months of living in our nice big home to realize that all this storage wouldn't just keep itself organized.  I know some of you living in houses with limited storage space will disagree with me, but having lots of storage equals having lots of clutter. 

All that storage space is great for putting things away but it can also become a black hole of items piled in and forgotten about. When the kids are given the task of cleaning something up, they like to just pop open a closet and start throwing things in.  They know that everything has a "home", so if they're too lazy to put it away they don't just set it in the wrong closet, they hide it there.  Library books in the shoe closet?  Sure!  Dirty socks and gum wrappers where the DVDs belong?  No problem.  Church shoes in the toy closet?  Only if the other is in the shoe drawer!  Sunday mornings are fun around here as we search the different closets looking for those shoes!

I hate clutter, even the hidden kind behind closed doors. I feel it weighing on me even when I can't see it. With eight people in our family, we have a lot of things. After about a year in our home, I came up with a system that allows me to keep the clutter down to a manageable amount.  In order to stay one step ahead of the mess, I've made a list of the different closets and cupboards in our home. Monday is the day I've set aside for organizing storage areas.  Each Monday, I check my list to see what storage area is next.  I go through that space asking myself, "Would I take this with me if I moved? When is the last time we used this? How in the world did this end up here?! Would this be better stored somewhere else?  Could I do something to help this area stay better organized?"  I am not a recreational shopper (in fact I kind of hate it!) but things seem to just flow into the house without any help from me. Each time I go through an area, I find things to throw away, things to give away, and things to put away.  It's even been a money maker because I've found lost library books we'd already paid for stuck in some pretty strange places. I'm able to get my money back as long as we still have the receipt (which are kept in a designated area).

It takes me anywhere from 15-40 minutes to go through an area and I love how neat and orderly everything is when I'm done. By tackling a little each week, we never get to the point of total chaos. Some closets (especially ones that receive heavy usage by children) definitely get messier and they are on the rotation more often. It takes me about 4 months to go through the entire house and each time I re-visit an area, I find that it really needs the help. It feels so great to start the week out with a clean closet.

toy closet, tucked under the stairs

I should have taken a before photo.  Imagine you can't see the floor and the shelves are piled high.

It SEEMS like once I've gone through a closet and cleaned things out and organized what's remaining that it should just remain that way forever.  I've learned that's just not the case.  It doesn't take long for things to deteriorate back to the "close the door quickly so nothing falls out" stage.  But, by tackling a little at a time, it's never overwhelming to me.  There are certainly closets I dread going through (the school closet, ugh!), but once it's done, life is easier for everyone.  Having an organized home reminds me of the following scripture. 

 Doctrine and Covenants 88:119 "Organize yourselves: establish every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God."

I hope we can create in our home a house of God.