Geez, my entire house is a mess!

No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to really get ahead of the stuff. The kids walk in the house and drop their bags just inside the door. Shoes and coats get left willy nilly throughout the house. Cups and plates are used and take up residence wherever they land. With our two year old Hectic Grandson, toys migrate from one room to another and scatter throughout the entire house. There are Legos just waiting for the tender undersides of my feet in the unlikeliest of places!

I know, I know…I should be nagging my kids to do better. I should be teaching them to pick up after themselves. It’s part of my role as a parent and grandparent. But I’m just as bad. I leave stuff laying all over the place. Hectic Wife isn’t any better. She’s currently got shoes laying in four different rooms! We’re all guilty.

With the advent of 2016, I planned to help get our house in control. By helped, I mean that I’ll be the one leading the charge and begging the rest of the family to just keep things as they are, instead of making them worse. Yet, here I am 46 days in, and things are no better. I guess that’s not entirely true. We did get the Christmas stuff put away before the close of January. Valentine’s has come and gone, and so have those decorations. But the clutter, junk, and mess of our daily lives is still all around us. Things are piled up everywhere, there isn’t a clear horizontal surface, and there are some stacks that threaten to fall at a moment’s notice. The three earthquakes we’ve felt here in Central Kansas are stark reminders of those piles and stacks!

But I’ve got a plan!

You see, in my mind (and in my task manager) I have these tasks of cleaning that are simply overwhelming. Clean the Kitchen is one of those tasks that is really a project. Small tasks upon small tasks that can easily grow into an entire day, or even an entire weekend. The kind of project that really never gets done. So it sits there in my task manager for days on end…taunting me while making me feel bad about my inability to get ahead.

And I hate that bad feeling about unfinished tasks.

So my new plan involves tidying instead of cleaning. I’m looking at areas in smaller pieces, and I’m trying to tidy them up. For instance, my desk in the kitchen tends to collect things throughout the day or week that we’re too lazy to carry all the way to my office. It’s covered with lots of papers, things that need repair, and other junk that will eventually find a different home. In short, it’s a landing place for crap that is destined to be processed or stored by me. When I put my mind to it, I need about 5 minutes to get through the stuff on that little desk. But I let it go for weeks on end. The stacks get higher, the piles get more precarious, and it becomes a huge project for me to address. So for the past week I’ve been tidying it up every night. I steal five minutes, grab the stuff from my kitchen desk, and distribute it to it’s final resting place. If something needs repair, I add it to my task manager in the Fix-It project.

I’m also doing a quick tidying of my office. This mostly involves picking up Hectic Grandson’s toys that are scattered on the floor. We’re still not quite to the point where he puts everything away (that would be a dream-come-true), but for a kiddo under two years old, he does put away an amazing amount of stuff. He’s helped do the tidying a couple of times, so there has been some progress.

The idea is that cleaning is an ordeal. Something that takes time, preparation, and a lot of effort. On the other hand, tidying takes just a couple of minutes and isn’t nearly as involved. As such, it doesn’t overwhelm me as much. In fact, it’s kind of therapeutic. The added benefit is that I feel much more in control of things when there isn’t so much clutter. Plus, two five minutes sessions of tidying up means I can check off two items from my task manager. And everybody likes to check things off their list of Todo Items, don’t they? I know I do!

So my task for you this week is to look around your house and pick an area that could use regular attention. Don’t make it a big area, or somewhere that is too far gone. Just a spot that, with a couple of minutes on a daily basis, would be better for the effort. Then make a plan to tidy up on a regular basis. Do it for a while and see if you feel more in control, like I did.

Honestly, the results have been absolutely amazing!