It Is Not Too Late! Take The Journey With Us!
Here we are already approaching the end of January! How are you doing on the resolutions and the plans that you made to get your life in order for 2019? The "Well-lived Home" is an orderly home. It has a space and place for everything! We hope you will take the journey with us to make your home a livable, happy place to dwell.
My cold weather plans are to get the inside of my house in complete order so that when the weather turns nice I can enjoy my garden, my grandchildren, some time for entertaining around the grill and some all around sunshine. I decided to start with the thing that I dreaded the most......the basement! I would have posted a picture of my basement just to make you feel better about tackling whatever areas of your house that you fear, but I was afraid that my basement pictures would show up on the next hoarder's show. Let me just say that I have stuff! Lots of stuff! Stuff that I don't need and that clutters up my life! It takes up space that I could use for something better. Honestly, the things that make my heart sing and rejoice are not objects! So why do I have so much stuff?
“Owning less is better than organizing more.”
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While I am somewhat of a turtle when the weather is cold, I have made some baby steps toward a few of my "2019 de-clutter the house" goals! After the single digit temperatures and the 12 inches of snow that we got dumped on us last week, working in my basement seemed somewhat appealing.
We are avid gardeners and have often wished that we had a place to put grow lights and start our garden seedlings indoors. While thumbing through my seed catalogs this last week, it occurred to me that if I cleaned off one of my shelves in my basement storage room that I could set up my little indoor garden. The room was such a mess and the thought of it was a bit overwhelming so I decided to take a few small bites each day out of the mess that I so dreaded. My goal was to donate anything and everything to my local thrift store. Of course, there are a few things that I just can't part with, but those are few and far between.
I can almost hear your thoughts. You aren't a gardener. You don't want seedlings starting in your basement! I get it! I really do! But you do have something that you could really use some extra space for. Or maybe you just need to clean out and organize to free your mind from the clutter.
I started on Monday and decided that I would go down and just pick out 25 things out of that room to donate. I thought that I would be down there for hours digging out and loading 25 things into my car. To my surprise, I had my car loaded in just 45 minutes. Tuesday was a carbon copy of Monday and by the end of my short session, I could really see a big difference. On Wednesday and Thursday I decided that I could spare an entire hour so I worked for my allotted amount of time each of those days. This place was really changing! I was actually excited to go down there on Friday and decided to even add a few fun things just to make my new little basement green house an enjoyable place to be! In just a few hours this room that I had dreaded to even enter was neat, orderly and I had extra space for my little green house!
Every one of us has that junk drawer, room or closet that we avoid cleaning and organizing. Bringing order to your home is freeing, physically and emotionally. A new week starts tomorrow! Make your plan and tackle something. Anything!
As always, we want to hear your thoughts and ideas. Please post them in the comment section below. Until next time....... happy cleaning!
Julie Atkins
Milkweed Farms