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This year, I have decided that I need to dedicate 30 days each month (28 days in February!) to make simple changes in my life that I can stick with. Permanently. I didn’t want to set a bunch of goals and fail miserably at them a few months from now. Like I have done every year in the past.
Hello again!
We are in the last week of February now and I thought that I would give you a better insight on how things have progressed this month with my new habit.
To recap: I wanted to spend the month of February putting things away. And to be able to put things away, they need a place. I like order. Order gives a calm space in the chaos that is life, in my humble opinion. Also, I am a control freak. You can’t control life most of the time, but you can control your response to all the things. Hence, I like order.
One of the first things that I realized at the beginning of the month – and I don’t know why I was so shocked and surprised by this – is that I needed to step up my decluttering to make this happen. Now if you’ve been hanging around with me for very long, you know I am not a novice when it comes to decluttering and sending things away to live with a new family. I’ve been doing this diligently for over eight or nine years now. It’s a never ending process.
Even though I mentioned it in the last post, I still didn’t realize the scope of how much stuff I still need to go through and get rid of. You can see my last donation haul here, and it’s a direct result of sending away the things that I know I don’t want in my home anymore. But. You knew there was a but coming didn’t you? This is going to take me a lot longer than 28 days to complete. I have worked every single day of February somewhere in my house for at least five minutes decluttering something.
That my friends, is the gist of it all. Very tiny chunks of my day. I get overwhelmed very easily when it comes to all the things. First there are a LOT of things. If I decide to KonMari my house, things are going to go horrifyingly wrong in a hurry. You’ll notice when I do KonMari something, it’s a micro segment of what normal people would do.
I KonMaried my purses and I was actually okay with that. It was a task that I could carry out and accomplish within a reasonable time frame. Otherwise, things would be pulled out and piled around my house for weeks. That’s seriously not an exaggeration. Ask Denton how I know this. Actually don’t, he might tell you in detail. I need limits. So I don’t declutter my kitchen. I declutter a DRAWER in my kitchen. It’s something that I can do while I’m cooking supper and not turn my kitchen into a disaster zone that won’t allow me to function.
Every day this month I have decluttered something so that I can put things where they belong. Like this:
I spent about 2 minutes going through my wooden spoons, culled out what I knew that I never reach for and stuck the lot in a crock that was gathering dust. Now it has a function and a reason to sit there and be pretty. My favorite reason for having beautiful things.
I am learning new things about myself throughout this process too. I am not the type of person to buy all matching containers and then come home from the grocery store and switch all the cereal into the beautiful matching containers. I just don’t have the patience for it. But I also do not like looking at the cat treat box that comes from Wal-Mart. We need a safe, out of Batman’s reach container for them, but I hate those plastic, ugly containers that they come in. When I found this guy, I snatched him right up.
Form and functionality. I love it.
As with January’s habit builder, I didn’t plan to have my entire house sorted out by the end of February. This year, I am trying to teach myself routines that I can stick with forever. This way, once I have my belongings sorted out and culled down to only what I love and know that I want to clean every day, it will be easier to spot newcomers who do not belong. Because let’s face it. Things are not going to miraculously stop coming into my house. I see new things that I want to try all the time. But once I determine that they are just not a good fit, hopefully it will be easier to send them on their way.
I found permanent places for quite a lot of stuff this month, but there is still a lot more to go through. I have many, many lovely things that I’ve collected over the past 25 years, but as lovely as they are, most of them are going to grace someone else’s home soon. I am not aiming to be a minimalist, but I definitely want to have less stuff.
I want what I think most people want: A comfortable, clean and welcoming home. Now that I’ve finally figured out for myself how to get that, I am on a mission to get it done. Five minutes at a time, clearing out the clutter to make a place for everything, so that everything can be put in its place.
I know that I will reap the rewards of teaching myself this new habit too.
Do you have plans to make simple changes in your life this year? I would love to hear about it! Let’s build some habits and routines!
You can find all of the posts in this series here.
Tracie