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.
(THIS POST PROBABLY CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS. OUR FULL DISCLOSURE POLICY IS REALLY BORING, BUT YOU CAN FIND IT HERE.) This …
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.
If you are a sentimental parent, parting with anything that has to do with your child can be quite traumatic. From their first sliver (um, don’t ask) to their first prom you want to cherish every single moment forever. When my boys first began going to school I would save every piece of paper they brought home.
There are seasons where you just can’t be as present in your life as you’d like to be. I’m experiencing one of these seasons now. There are probably some women out there who, 8 weeks postpartum, are on top of the world. They’re back at work. Their houses are spotless. They are wearing (clean) clothes. Maybe they have slept in the past week or two.
It might seem contradictory that I can claim love for “lazy-girl” cleaning hacks, and still state that I am living on purpose. But I think “living on purpose” can mean that we accept that we can’t do it all. So we choose to do the absolute best that we can, and we prioritize.
I love setting my purse down on the clean counter, and standing there NOT feeling overwhelmed by mess. (Maybe you’ve always had a clean kitchen, in which case you might not totally relate to what I’m about to say here. But if you’re reading this there’s a good chance that maybe you don’t always have a clean kitchen…)
I often (really – I do mean often) gather a box of stuff that I have decided I can part with and I feel so much lighter and happier when it’s out of the house. Seriously!
Why? Because once I was drowning in clutter. Too much stuff. And I will not ever go back to that.