A messy house is no fun – it makes me feel stressed and overwhelmed in all areas of my life actually. I even sleep better when my house is clean. And I can’t get my house clean unless it’s organized – shoving stuff into the cupboards and under the bed doesn’t count as “clean” to me.
When it comes to getting organized, one of the key elements must be decluttering.
What creates a true “Christmas Spirit?”
Christmas is just around the corner and I have been thinking about all the fun activities that our family will do once again.
However, this year, I have decided to be more conscious about getting my girls to serve others and think outside of themselves.
As a parent, you know it’s hard to keep your sanity at Christmas with little ones – if you don’t have a great plan.
I remember one Christmas when my daughter was about 2 years old, she got overwhelmed with all the Christmas activities and lack of schedule. I guess she just had too much fun. Because on Christmas day about 2:00 pm with all the activities happening around her, she just laid down in the middle of the floor and fell asleep with friends and family walking and talking all around.
Growing up, it was common to walk into the bathroom or kitchen and smell bleach. It was such a common household product that I was shown how to “safely” use it when I was in sixth grade to clean the bathroom.
Thankfully, when we know better, we do better and that will not be the case when it comes to teaching my children how to clean, they will know how to properly use non-toxic household cleaners.
The holidays have become a time of great stresses and budget busters, partially caused by materialism.
Don’t get me wrong, I love getting gifts and having material objects as much as the next person. However, I personally feel that such a huge focus on material objects greatly detracts from the spirit of the season – loving and appreciating the gifts and people we have in our lives.
Before we can have an honest conversation about how to stop wasting food, we need to look at some statistics. Did you know that just one quarter of all wasted food could feed the 795 million undernourished people around the world who suffer from hunger (source)?? What about the fact that In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month (source)?
If you have a kid, you’ll need to know this at some point.
Apparently when I was a year old I scribbled all over my dad’s new brand new lazy-boy with a ball point pen. Fortunately, ink is pretty easy to remove if you know how. (My parents still had that chair, and it was ink-less, until I was about 16.)
Deciding what to get rid of is THE HARDEST PART of decluttering. (I am so wishy-washy… if I don’t take that box or bag RIGHT to the thrift store, stuff sneaks back out of it.) Sometimes you just need simple inspiration about what you can get rid of to help you get started and that’s what today is about.
There’s good reasons why the decluttering movement is such a BIG one.
In our current consumer driven age, it’s not hard to find yourself buried in piles of stuff – without even realizing it’s happening!
During any stressful or turbulent time in our lives or when we simply begin to feel overwhelmed by the chaos, it’s natural to look for something we can physically take control of.
You can see that I have, in fact, got an organizational system in place under the bathroom sink. I’ve implemented some of the best and most popular tricks around, like making use of the upward space with shelves and buying cute little baskets from the dollar store (sarcasm? Even I can’t tell…).
And you can see that I have totally ignored that system and piled crap anywhere and everywhere under the sink where crap would fit.