I can tell you where I have just found more time! It was hidden in my house all along, all this time, just waiting to be found! I bet that you can find more time just like I did too…

In recent weeks I have been on a mission to de-clutter our house. I have always been a fan of organization, and I try to keep things neat and tidy but this time it was different. I started to look at our life as a whole, and evaluated where we (mainly me) spend the most time. I began to realize I was such a homebody because I felt that our house was never quite clean and never quite tidy enough. It was as though there was always something to be sorted through, moved, reorganized, etc, etc. That’s because there was. After I took a giant step back and really saw the big picture of what my day entailed, I realized I was organizing the same little piles of stuff all the time. Little piles that accumulate as we live this thing called life. Little piles that became something of a ball and chain that kept me captive to the house itself. I finally had enough. And so it began…

I have never quite understood the mysterious “junk drawer”. I grew up with one at my grandmothers house. It was always the top drawer to the left of the stove. Full of odds and ends, mismatched shoe laces, extra batteries, a random paper clip, a pen that doesn’t work, some forever lost zip ties for the trash bag, a pair of long since broken shears, among other things that filled the drawer to the brim making it almost impossible to even close it shut. Junk. It was just junk that didn’t need to be kept. It was never used and didn’t come in handy in all the years I lived there.

It only seemed natural that the dreaded junk drawer was the right place to start my mission. As I sorted through the muddle these thoughts came to mind: “Why do we even have junk drawers in the first place? They just take up space, and lets face it… they are full of, well – junk! Throw it out or make a place for it, and that’s exactly what I did. No more of the “someday I will use that… or it MIGHT come in handy if…”.” No. Done. Trash.

I can’t even tell you how freeing that process was. It was like all these tiny pieces of my being were finally free to enjoy life. To breathe easy and finally relax. Seriously, it sounds crazy but it’s true. You should try it. No really, do it. Revolt against the clutter!

The next few days went by and although I was newly freed from my ex-drawer of junk I still felt imprisoned with the daily grind of keeping up the house. How could it be possible for a mother of one to have so much cleaning to do? My husband isn’t the worlds most tidy guy, but even then; a house of three? How on Earth could I spend day in and day out cleaning and picking up after us three? This didn’t make sense, how was this possible? Then it hit me: the piles. It was the piles of stuff with things. Mail. Magazines. Pencils. Odds and ends. Stuff stuff stuff stuff…JUNK.

At this point I have to say that I realize some people reading this are thinking “well duh, of course this all makes perfect sense. Get rid of the “junk” and be done with it…” and yes, you are correct. However, not everyone thinks that way. Sometimes its just not that obvious! I grew up with these behaviors, they were taught to me growing up (indirectly). It isn’t like my family members sat down and instructed me on how to hold on to every single last thing you have even if there is no purpose, even if you don’t like it, etc, etc. It’s just the behavior that was modeled and so I inherited it as a product of childhood. Ok, enough of the why I do what I do, it doesn’t really matter honestly. What matters is the here and now and what you are going to do with it!

So over the next week or so I began to give away toys that Taylor was no longer using, or had grown out of. I donated photo frames, candles, and trinkets I didn’t intend to use. Let go of purses that have been hanging in my closet since we moved. There are too many items to inventory that went out our front door never to return again. With each piece that left our life I felt more room to breathe. The days passed by and more things went on their way to find new homes.

By the end of the week my shoulders felt physically lighter. I started to sleep better. My house was coming together finally in ways I never thought it could. Don’t tell my husband this, but it practically cleans itself now!

Before starting this whole process I remember thinking to myself that the only people with houses THAT clean must be super rich and have enormous houses filled with pottery barn furnishings and a maid to boot. This of course was in regards to the beautiful, perfectly coordinated, pinterest homes we all “pin” and drool over. Then I started to see a pattern. Time and time again the rooms in the photos were neat and tidy. It was almost as though no one lived there. Or did they? Looking a bit closer I realized storage played a big role in these pristine settings. But I have MORE than enough storage, how on Earth could I use more storage?! This is when I realized it is not the amount of storage you have, but rather what is in the storage that matters most. So I went on a mission to redefine what exactly should be stored and what should be tossed/donated.

The moral of the story is that I was losing precious time with all this extra stuff, valuable moments wasted away on worthless trash. The bible warns us about storing up material things here on Earth in Matthew 6:19-21 “…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I can say first hand how true this is. Because of the clutter, and stuff, and things, I struggled with my commitment to reading the bible in a year. Just a few passages each day, I couldn’t even get that done. Of course there are many other things going on in our life that contribute to the busyness of our daily life, but the house should not be one of the main time constraints. Now, if our home cannot be put back together in 30 minutes or less I believe it is time to reevaluate “things”.

** Post from 2013 AVeryAireyLife