Tag Archives: home

The ongoing battle in my house is that it is very tiny and can look very cluttered easily. I love my house and I’m actually grateful to have a smaller space. In the apartment that I lived in before I found my house, I had significantly more space. My closet in that apartment could fit a bed inside of it. I had a lot of things in my room because I had space and I was living with roommates. So I needed my room to be more than just a place to sleep. I had a little couch to relax on plus my desk. I wasn’t working from home back then, but I still needed a place to do some work.

I probably have more space in my house than I did private space in my apartment, but I also don’t have as much storage as I did before and there are some rooms that were being fully used by me at the old apartment. Mainly the kitchen and bathroom (I had a private bathroom which was maybe triple the size of my current one). And I did a lot of downsizing when I moved here, but I also kept some of the habits from my old apartment in my house. For example, I had the storage space before to keep things that I didn’t really use but might use again one day. And now I don’t have that space but I struggle with getting rid of things because I’m worried I will need it again and don’t want to have to pay for it again.

I have needed to get over that struggle and have slowly made changes in my life to work on getting rid of things. And when I got my new tv stand, I had to do a lot of work with downsizing again. I’m still working on finding space for some of the things I had on my old tv stand that don’t fit on the new one, but I have gotten rid of a lot of things that were taking up space. And I think that project really kicked off wanting to do this in more areas in my house. The problem with these projects is that when I’m in the middle of them it makes my house so messy. But I have been able to find little projects I can do without making too much of a mess.

The first area I tackled was my entry closet. This already has a lot of organizational stuff inside of it, but the floor was a bit crazy. This was such an easy fix because the main thing taking up floor space was the storage box with all the holiday-related decorations I own. I rarely need to access this box (I don’t always decorate for the holidays) so having it take up so much floor space was unnecessary. I found a place in my utility room that isn’t easily accessible but fits the box perfectly. So even though I will need a ladder to reach the box when I need it, that’s a much better place than somewhere that I use every day and blocking things I really do need.

And when I was in my utility room, I knew I needed to do a lot of work on that space. That area has become a catchall for lots of stuff when I don’t know where else to put it. I’m so grateful I have that room because it is a great storage area that is inside my house. I can store things in my garage too, but I don’t store a lot there because I have to move my car to reach it and it’s not inside. So if I needed something in the middle of the night, it’s not really convenient. I try not to have too much in my utility room, but it can easily gather stuff. And a lot of it is stuff I don’t actually need and might have forgotten about.

I found some health and beauty stuff that I don’t need or use like unopened bottles of lotion I don’t use anymore or unopened bags of cotton rounds (I use reusable fabric rounds instead of cotton ones now). This doesn’t need to be in my house because I’m not going to use them. So they went into a bag that I’m using to collect things I can donate to a charity that needs it. Yes, I guess I wasted money on things that I never needed, but that’s in the past and I’d rather find a place that needs them instead of keeping them in case I decide to use them.

My dad helped me create some nice storage in my utility room, but I haven’t been maximizing it for a while. I have a sink that doesn’t work in there, and my dad built a custom topper so it becomes a flat counter. That space was used for my wine storage and I had a wine bottle holder on there. But I haven’t had alcohol for a long time and that wine bottle holder was just being used for me to put other things on top of. I could find a much better storage holder than a wine bottle holder for things like tools and cleaning supplies. So I asked a friend if they wanted the wine bottle holder and they took it off my hands. My utility room is still a work in progress, but I’ve been able to get rid of so much and I’m finally able to see what organizational things I need to make it a more efficient space.

I’m going to start working on organizing my kitchen and bathroom next because I know I have products in those rooms that I don’t need. I know my pantry has stuff that probably is past its use-by date that I forgot about. I know I need to store my baking supplies in better containers instead of just the bags they come in. And while my bathroom doesn’t really have storage space where I can forget about things, I know that there are products that I see in there that I tell myself that I use that I really don’t. I will probably take those products out of my bathroom and store them in a bag for a week or so. Then I can see if I go into that bag to get it out or if I really have been lying to myself that I need them and use them. After that, I need to work on my desk but that is going to be a much longer process and will probably require more time to decide what I need to save.

Even with the limited cleaning and organizing that I’ve been able to do, I have noticed a huge difference in my house. Things are easier to find and I don’t feel like there is just stuff around me. I like feeling more peaceful at my house since I am here so many hours a day. And once I have things clean and tidy, I might look at more decorative things to add since I know I want some more personality in my space too.

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I hate that so many things in my life were affected by election season, but it really did take over my life. I’m finally feeling like things are normal again for me, but I’m still dealing with what happened when I let other things in my life slide because I didn’t have the time or energy to deal with them.

When things aren’t normal, it’s stressful in so many ways. But one way that I was stressed was by the lack of cleaning I had done in my house. While I’m not the cleanest person I know, I still do daily cleaning and try to do weekly deep cleaning. I thought with having a small house that it wouldn’t be as hard to clean, but I feel like having a small house actually can make things worse. Dirt and dust seem to appear so quickly, but that’s probably because there’s less surface area for them to land on. And clutter is definitely a problem with a small house. I try my best to limit what I bring into my house, but last month things just started to pile up.

I was avoiding doing the cleaning I needed to for a little while. I want to claim that I needed some downtime to recover before getting back to things, but honestly, it was just being lazy. But this week, I had to get my act in gear. First, the messiness was starting to really bother me and I could feel that I wasn’t in the best headspace. But also, my parents are in town now and I want to have a clean house for them. I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind if my house was a little messy, but I don’t like having it that way. And it’s not as clean as I would like it to be, but it’s significantly better than it was before.

Besides doing all the cleaning, I had to get my house back in order. I’m still working on the organization part, but I was able to get a lot done this week. And in that organization, I started to get rid of things. There are so many things I was holding on to for no good reason that I just needed to toss or add to a donation pile. I know that most of those things had some sentimental reason at one point, but it’s been so long that they are now meaningless junk. And there is no reason to keep them in my house and taking up the limited space I have. Maybe if I was in a bigger house, I’d find a way to keep them. But it’s probably better that I have a little space so I am forced into a more minimalistic lifestyle.

I did try to work on the cleaning and organizing a little bit each day for the beginning of the week. I didn’t want to get overwhelmed in the middle of working on it and making things more of a mess. I actually managed to figure out a good schedule because I never felt like I was trying to do too much. In fact, many days I actually felt motivated to do a bit more than I planned to do. It helped to make things go by and I was able to do almost everything I wanted to do with organizing and getting rid of things.

I still have a few more organizing projects that I want to work on, but I didn’t worry about them this week. They can wait and things don’t look too messy while they aren’t done. But I do want to get more of my house feeling as put together as the main spaces do. It’s been a huge relief to feel like things are clean and nice looking and I want to make even more of my house feel like that. Those extra projects require purchasing some things to help me and I haven’t found the perfect things to use yet. For example, I need new drawer organizers and I haven’t found a set I like. The ones I am using are cheap ones I got and I realized that while they worked I never loved them. I kept them until they started to fall apart (about 4 years) so it’s time to find a replacement that I want to have. But since there’s no urgency to get that done, I can take the time to find the perfect thing instead of spending money on something I don’t really like.

Even though I’m not totally done with my organizing, I got a huge chunk of it done and I feel so accomplished. And hopefully, I’m able to keep things up and not let my house get back to how it was just a week ago.

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I’ve read “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up” quite a while ago. I haven’t watched the Netflix series yet, but it’s on my watch list to watch eventually. But I am familiar with the idea of what Marie Kondo says in both even though I haven’t read the book in a long time. A lot of it is stuff that I already do, but it seems like every so often I have a big push to do some extra cleaning and organizing.

Right now, I’m in the middle of doing some organizing. But instead of doing it in a big effort, I’ve slowly been doing it. In the past, I have gotten rid of things that I probably should have kept or I forgot where I stored something until I found it again months later. I don’t want to have that issue again because there’s no need for it. And I don’t have any sort of deadline to when I need this to be done so I can take my time.

Since I’ve been in this long cleaning/organizing habit, I’ve debated about going back to the book or watching the Netflix series since so many people have been raving about how it has changed their lives. But I remember when I read it the first time how I really didn’t connect with everything in it. I don’t have a ton of stuff I have to get rid of. My issue is just making sure that I am putting things away in places that make sense and can be done over and over again. If the place I decide to store something isn’t the most convenient option, I probably won’t be doing it as needed. I’ll wait until things get bad and then I’ll have that mad rush to clean.

I know one of the big organizational things in the book and series is about how to store clothing. I love the file folder idea of storing shirt and pants. But I actually don’t have clothes like that in drawers. I have a drawer of workout clothes where I have one pile of workout towels, one pile of workout pants, and one pile of workout shirts. This drawer is just what I use for Orangetheory so I only have exactly what I need in there. I don’t have to dig through things to find what I like to wear in class. I found it the easiest way to store things compared to having a drawer for tops and for bottoms. I do have another drawer of random workout/lounge clothes that probably could be organized in the file folder style, but since I don’t go into that drawer that often I don’t feel pushed to do it. My bra/underwear/socks/pj drawer has dividers and is organized, but I know it could be better and that will be something I will be tackling soon. But besides that, all my other clothing is hung up so I don’t have a way to fold them. Everything is on the same type of thin hangers and is organized by type and color.

With everyone raving about how they love the system in the book and series, I felt like I should do it to. But the more I think about it, the less it makes sense to me to do it. There’s nothing wrong with her method, but it doesn’t have to be for everyone. And for my system in my current house, it’s not right. Maybe when I move one day I’ll revisit it and decide to do it, but not now.

I think letting go of the idea that I should be doing what everyone else is doing has been helpful. I don’t feel the same pressure as I did before about what I should be doing with cleaning and organizing and making sure it’s done quickly. I can take my time and there’s nothing wrong with that. I probably could be working a bit faster and that’s something I’m going to try to focus on this weekend. I have been doing little bursts of cleaning and sometimes I use that as an excuse to not do more.

I know the idea of spring cleaning is usually a big to-do with a huge day doing everything. But I’m enjoying taking my time and allowing myself to test out different things with how I want to store stuff around my home. And I have a feeling this won’t be just spring cleaning but a longer, ongoing thing. And that’s fine too. With such a small house, I know how quickly things can go from a little messy to a big disaster and working on it each day helps prevent that.

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