Hoarding and Flying

FlyLady!

I've talked with two bloggers this weekend about clutter.  They were short conversations, but it was a tangent that I thought needed to be talked about publicly.  I think I'm thinking about clutter because I went shopping this past week and brought home a few things.  I rarely go shopping and when I do, I rarely buy anything, so maybe this whole conversation really started because I brought some items home.

I didn't need anything, but that bowl.  I really did need the bowl!

Have you ever seen any of the TV shows on hoarding?

I find it amusing that I watch these shows and always think - "well, at least I'm not that bad."

I know that I'm not a hoarder, but I also know that I have those tendencies.  It's kind of scary to say it out loud and seriously.

I love FlyLady and I learned a lot from her.  If you don't know about FlyLady, she's a woman ( and a business) that helps you learn how to keep your house clean, among other things.   I think that one thing she reinforced with me,  was to keep my bedroom free from clutter, laundry baskets, non bedroom items, etc.   My bedroom is just that.  A room for my bed.  No matter what the rest of the house looks like, my bedroom - the master bedroom - has very little in it. It's truly a blessing to wake to a room that is peaceful.

My kitchen is clean, the counters washed daily, the dishes washed at least once a day if not more, the fridge cleaned out several times a week.  A FlyLady must is to have a shiny sink.  Funny thing is that's another thing that I have done forever.  I enjoy doing dishes, so my sinks are completely clean and clear when I go to bed each night.  I wake each morning to a clean sink, clean bathroom, clean bedroom.

(This was my kitchen table area when we first moved in a few years ago.  My husband has now completely consumed the area and it's now covered with paperwork.  Many years worth of office stuff on the table, the chairs and the floor.)

The livingroom, dining room, two spare bedrooms and laundry room are a mess. No lie.  A mess.  I have piles of stuff, a coffeetable that I rarely see the top of, a chair that no one can ever sit in and a spare room that is just full of stuff.   Actually, now that I'm looking at my laundry room, it isn't a mess.  Inside the bins that are on the shelves, those are a mess, but the laundry room itself is quite tidy looking.

 That orange bin isn't on the dryer anymore, but that's pretty much how it looks. I do love my laundry room and the washer and dryer.  I heart them :)

Maybe hoarding isn't the right term for me because I'm really very good about giving stuff away and throwing things away once I start going through the clutter.  It's the getting started part that needs to happen.

Thankfully my house stays in the same state of disarray and rarely gets worse.  The biggest problem is that when I get it all cleaned up, it immediately returns to the previous state.

I need to get back to the "I can do anything for 15 minutes" mentality.  That's a FlyLady theme and it means that you can get your house clean 15 minutes at a time.  You can also learn a new language, get fit, eat right, clean the car, whatever it is that you want to accomplish you can do it, even if you only have 15 minutes at a time.

I'm not brave enough to show my clutter, but now that I've publicly talked about it, I bet a fire will be lit under my rear end.

Now, about that 50 pounds I'd like to lose.

Have a great week!
Kristin