Simplify Your Home and Be Happy

Ahh yes.  Clean and Simple.  That makes me happy.

Well, we all know happiness has many different facets, but I CAN say from experience that this does, in fact, help.

Too Much Stuff

Every now and then, the STUFF in our house completely and totally gets to me. It paralyzes me and I cannot do anything else (with any ability to be nice, anyway) until something is done about it. That happened last week.

The Current Status

It is March in our homeschool year. Honestly, I’m tired of the school thing. This is typical though, at this time of year, so I know I’m not alone.

We have about 6 more weeks of Classical Conversations, the homeschool coop we have participated in over the last 2 years, and I think, maybe, we can make it to the end. But not without some changes around here.

I LOVE looking through all 3 of these rooms and seeing cleared floors all the way!  These are the 3 bedrooms I was really focused on, though my room got rearranged too.

Clear the Space To Clear the Mind

If I don’t see a space as clean and cleared and simple, I find it very hard to think and be creative.

For the last 20 years or more, I have described my decorating style as “hotel-living” or “vacation-home-living.”  I want to feel like I’m on vacation in my day-to-day life, which means simple and “less is more.” (By the way, I don’t think that is too much to ask, is it?)

How Did We Get Here?

With a day to day routine that includes things like:

• stuff that must be moved from here to there and there to here every time someone lays something down.
• 5 children, and a husband in his office, all in the same house, all day, every day of the week.
• laundry, the dishes, the fusses, the feeding, the playtime, the naptime, the diapers, the potty training, the, well, you get the idea,

something has to give people!

Everything you see here is all that is in this room.  I guess I’ll leave the little table and chairs.  It CAN be useful here.

I even forgot my anniversary

I was in the big city last Saturday, an hour and a half away, with our 2 big girls at the state swim meet. My husband called at 7am that morning, home with the little 3, and said, “Happy Anniversary, honey.”

“Oh, is it today?”

He thought it was funny and  has gotten a lot of milage out of it. And it IS pretty funny, though had he forgotten, it wouldn’t have been funny at all!  (We ARE celebrating 2 weeks later this year though, so I thought that was a pretty good excuse.)

Anyway.  Enter “The Plan.”

Clearing It Out

And I mean seriously clearing it out!

I’ve been a Simplify Ninja over the last week. Even to the point of rolling up the beautiful oriental rugs in a couple of rooms and storing them away. The design on them sometimes actually adds to the clutter on the floor in my minds eye.  They may come out again in the winter, but for now….

This has the little play kitchen, but the laundry room is on our 2nd floor and through that door, so it’s useful for the little ones while doing laundry.

Part of decluttering, I’ve read, includes clearing off the flat surfaces.  Tables, desks, nightstands, counters.  But that also includes the floor. We tend to forget about that.

Upstairs bedrooms for the children just need the bed with linens. A night table and books. All they do in there is sleep and read, so it works great.

Caveats

There are a few toys in one of the closets near the laundry room, and that is still a good thing, as long as it’s not too many.  And our 15 year old daughter has a few extra things like her sewing machine, but I can relax a little when they get to be that age.

Downstairs

School, play, work, and eat all happen downstairs. Look out though, I’m ready to attack there next.

In fact, now that I think about it, maybe we can just start eating out on the driveway with paper plates :)

This is our schoolroom.  Rug.  Gone.   Now to the rest of it!

Things will inevitably migrate back into these rooms, until the next time that Mom does a freak-out.  Everyone has learned, you better get out of the way, help and be on board, or you might be next.  Just kidding, if any social workers are reading this :-)

Is anyone else out there as extreme as this, or am I the only one?

Lord God, please help me Prioritize my days, Simplify our lives and Live out your plan.