One Step At A Time...

Too much stuff weighs your whole being down. Letting go of it all, is so freeing and life changing. We have been programed to think that more things will make us happier but that is a pure lie. Excess stuff holds you back. It creates fears of not being good enough. Too many things creates chaos and disorder in your house and mind. Through this process, I have learned that without all the stuff that I can breathe easier,  that I am more at peace in my mind and soul, I am not dreading someone showing up unexpectedly because my house is a giant mess because I have no place for all of these things that I have accumulated. Owning less is way easier than trying to clean up excess stuff all the time. This is the simple lesson that I learned through all of this.   Simple but true! Major differences that have happened:  - My floors are staying cleaner longer. There was too much stuff that had no home, so it ended up on the floor. - My laundry is staying caught up. I can d...

I don't know if any of you follow or have heard of Dave Ramsey . He is a money guru who has an awesome book called the Total Money Makeover (which I totally recommend to everyone!). In his book, he talks about the snowball effect which is about how a small change can motivate you to keep making bigger changes, like how a snowball gets larger as it rolls down a hill. He applies this example to getting out of debt but I am using it to talk about my journey to reclaiming my house from stuff. Yesterday, I talked about how just deeply purging clothes made my house feel lighter and helped to settle the constant chaos that we felt. The day after I started the clothing, I decided to tackle another job that I had been putting off: my yarn stash/cabinet. The doors would not even shut on it anymore because it was so messy. It was a big task but I had this mindset that it was going to be done. Before and After I moved on from there and tackled the entertainment cabinet and tided and ...

Back to my story: I looked at this item of clothing that my daughter has never even wore before but I had washed multiple times and said this is the last time that I am washing it. I am done. I refuse to spend time and energy to keep all of this stuff clean. It is time to remove it from my home. It and many other items were washed, dried and placed into a empty green basket. Within two loads of laundry, that empty basket was full and overflowing. I just kept washing, drying, folding and purging and it took about a week to get through it all. That basket is currently full again and will have a permanent place near my laundry area. My trusty green donation basket! The rule was that if it did not fit in my kids' dressers, it was going. For my husband and I, the rule was we had to love the item or it was gone. We just simply did not have room for this many pieces of clothing in this house. We were done with living out of laundry baskets. I took three smaller baskets and labelled ...

Picture it: I am standing at my washing machine, I have approximately 5 baskets of clean clothes, 5 baskets of dirty clothes, over stuffed dressers and empty ones. I am on the verge of tears as I add clothes that I had literally just washed the day before but they were not even worn on a body yet. Why was I was washing them because they ended up on my kid's bedroom floor because there was no room in their dresser. I felt like failure. I am failing at this homemaking gig. We are drowning in stuff, it is everywhere. Just stuff everywhere. My house is in a constant state of chaos. No one is at ease or at peace. My husband is working 11 hour days and coming home to a house that looked like a bomb went off in each and every room. I am seriously failing in my job as a homemaker, wife and mother. I was becoming tired of trying to organize and clean with no results. The reason as I quickly learned is that you cannot organize when you simply have too much stuff. All you are doing is ...