surviving to thriving: home, refined
The next big obstacle was our home. It definitely made the top five for me, not because of the structure that it is, but because of the time we spend here. The conversations that will shape my children, the laughter that will fill memories forever, it’s ours and I love it so. But, there was always a big elephant in the room, my heart longed for an organized space, but we found ourselves in the midst of chaos on a weekly basis. It’s taxing and it really takes a toll on everything. It makes it hard to focus on the things that matter, because I’m half-way focused on what I’m doing and half-way focused on all the other things I need to be doing.
And the things is, I felt like I was constantly working towards getting things in order.
I had several friends recommend The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
By the end of the day, I had downloaded the book to Audible, and asked Allen to listen as well. We were obviously the target audience, because at midnight we had every piece of clothing we owned on the living room floor and we were getting rid of things at record speed.
It helped that we were both already growing increasingly annoyed at all of the things in our house. Closets stuffed full, attic spaces piled with boxes, junk drawers abounding. I kept thinking to myself, it hasn’t always been this way. But, if I’m being very honest, it truly has. Maybe for days or weeks or months, our efforts of purging and reorganizing would stick. However, it never failed, we always ended up back in square one, standing in a messy closet, hunting a lost shoe as we ran late.
The biggest take away for me was that most of what we’ve been told about how to tidy is wrong. The real problem we hear all too often: It’s best to chip away at the problem by tidying a little bit each day or weekend, or maybe one closet or room at a time. Kondo would vehemently disagree: By tidying a little each day, you’ll be tidying the rest of your life.
Wait, no. Nah-huh. I am not tidying for the rest of my life. Sure, we could get by this way, but nope. Not happening. I was willing to change based on this single fact alone.
I could write to you forever about this book. But, I can’t say it better than the author, so I would just urge you to go pick it up and read it, I think it cost around $10 and worth every single penny.
I included a checklist, but it won’t make too much sense until you read the book, once you read the book, it will be a great guide. Over the next several days, I’m going talk more in depth about our home and how we organized it using the KonMari method. I know so many are curious about what this looks like with children.
