Before we get where we’re going, we gotta see what’s holding us back. What’s wrong with my house, and with my household management and practices? Clutter is going to take up this first post on house analysis. Before my house can function like a well-oiled, productive machine, I have to strip it down to the essentials and eliminate everything that is not beloved or useful.
Clutter. Not as much as there used to be, but clutter nonetheless. Clutter elimination was the first step on this long journey, and I started with that after having my first child and realizing that the more things I had to pick up or put away, the more I had to clean and maintain and work. So reducing clutter was a function of my laziness. Get rid of the clutter, reduce the work. For motivation and inspiration, I rely on:
- www.flylady.net Flylady rules. It’s a wonderful place to start, though the personality and temperament of the site doesn’t suit everyone. For those who function well with having a little friendly housekeeping fairy telling you what to do throughout the day and keeping you on task, it’s perfect. She’s loving, kind, and can nag you without making you feel nagged.
- www.unclutterer.com Oh, how I love this site. Discovered it earlier in the year, and it’s like hanging out with the organized crowd. If you are drawn to minimalism, this is it. Even if you will never be a minimalist, this site will be a good influence on you.
- www.thehealthylivinglounge.com She’s feng shui-focused and has a great philosophical bent. Touches on a little of everything, but a good resource if you tend towards the “clutter has negative energy attached” view.
I’d like to hear what sites motivate and inspire you to pick up, weed out, donate, sell…
The inevitable link to clutter is consumerism. In fact, everything all ties together, but you gotta start somewhere. We’ll talk about consumerism ad nauseam, because it can sabotage everything we are trying to accomplish. But just a bit here: Unless we reduce household consumption, nothing will improve. So if you are starting to eliminate clutter from your life, start thinking about your consumption habits too. That’s what I’m doing. My grocery list sometimes has 50 items on it, my Walmart list 20. Why? Because of consumer habits, because as long as I stay within the budget, I tend to think I’m doing well.
Ugh. There’s no good place to stop and start posts, because one topic just leads to another. It’s a vicious chain linked together by bad habits that we all have. Sometimes we don’t even realize it’s a bad habit. It’s just there. We buy Concord grape juice for the beneficial polyphenols (I think that’s the good thing about Concord grape but can’t remember). We buy Simply Orange because it’s the best-tasting OJ I have ever had and, well, there’s vitamin C. We buy Simply Apple just because it’s so yummy. Mouthwateringly so. Then there’s mango nectar because of my obsession with all things tropical & for its smoothie-enhancing properties. There’s usually a pitcher of tea in there, and sometimes one of homemade lemonade. Milk, of course…a few random Starbucks bottled drinks, some Ting (see tropical addiction referenced above), Mexican Cokes (kid is intolerant to corn syrup). On and on and on.
We buy these things because they are available, because we have a food budget that is reasonable, because I am as much a gourmand as a gourmet & food makes me happy, so being able to drink whatever I have a whim to drink pleases me. As long as there was no corn syrup, limited ingredients, sorta kind whole food-ish, I haven’t felt any guilt about it in the past.
But how much packaging is wasted on us (in my house)? My kids only truly NEED water, breastmilk til they weaned, the occasional juice for a little variety and fun, milk or rice milk or almond milk for cereal, and hubby and I can’t function without our beloved tea. Instead of having 10 or 15 beverage options in our house, we are gonna reduce that down to four or five. To me, gluttony is consuming because we can, because it’s there - not because we need it. Fewer beverages purchased means more money saved, less packaging wasted on us, less clutter in the pantry and fridge. This is a win-win and my first attempt at curbing overabundance is to stop buying so many beverages.
Talk to me, Goose. Let me hear about it at your house.
L
I love flylady! I’m just….not very good at it
Eh, hopefully we’ll be able to move soon and actually have designated spaces for some of this assorted crap (mostly dh’s, mostly business related, mostly non-removeable).
Well, you mentioned my favorite, Flylady! She has helped me. You might want to mention freecycle. It’s a good way to get rid of clutter, without having to add to our already overloaded landfills. I am decluttering my house whilst preparing for a move, and what I don’t sell at the garage sale, I plan on freecylcling, then donating.