Welcome to the 5-Day Clean Your House for Christmas Challenge. Otherwise known as: Crystal really needs to deep clean her house and she needs the public accountability to get it done. Ahem. 🙂
{Thank you for humoring me. If your house is in great shape, please just skip over these posts. I may be the only one who has kind of let my housework and decluttering slide a bit the past few months.}
I was planning to move on to another area of the house today, but since I didn’t get the Kids’ Room done yesterday like I’d hoped, I’m going to stick with that today in an effort to be a little more realistic. 🙂
If your bedrooms are spotless and clutter-free, pick another area of your house that you’ve been putting off and tackle that today. Maybe the coat closet or the office or the storage room… er, maybe not the storage room unless you have a LOT of time and ambition! 🙂
Here’s my plan for this morning (feel free to follow it somewhat, if you find it helpful… or you can get a laugh out of how detailed I am!):
This Morning’s Plan
1. Read my Bible, exercise, and shower.
2. Get dressed to my shoes. (Thanks, Flylady!)
3. Eat some breakfast, read aloud to the kids, start a load of laundry.
4. Morning chores with the kids. Put away laundry from yesterday.
5. Get the kids started on their schoolwork. Kindergarten with Silas.
6. Switch the laundry. Fold another load of laundry & put it away.
7. Attack the Kids’ Bedroom:
- Pick up/remove clutter — either throw out or put in Goodwill pile.
- Organize things that need to be organized.
- Vacuum thoroughly.
- Dust — especially fans/light fixtures.
8. Celebrate a job well done… maybe before 6:30 p.m. today?? 🙂
So, that’s my morning plan. I’m hopeful to have it all done before dinner time today — maybe even lunchtime if my morning goes perfect. Which never happens, but I can always dream that today might be the day!
I’ll take pictures and will post an update late afternoon/early evening to let you know how it goes.
Want To Join Me?
Are you joining me? If so, what room(s) are you planning to tackle today and what’s your morning plan? Let us know in the comments. If you are blogging about it, I’ll have a link-up that you can link your post to by late afternoon/early evening.
Kayla says
I decided to get rid of any clothes in my kids room they can’t fit into anymore. I also plucked out in toys we haven’t used in a while. Making room for new things that will inevitably show up.. Haha
Stephanie says
I plan to get rid of paper clutter from my living room. It pile up REALLY fast.
Susan says
I really enjoy reading your blog because you tell us when you almost run out of gas, forget to wash your own clothes and over-schedule your time. It makes me feel much less like a failure when I feel like I work so hard and try so hard and yet sometimes accomplish almost nothing I can check off my list. I am planning to attend a children’s christmas concert at my neighborhood school tonight and make my grapefruit jam for my office co-workers. Hopefully I won’t be up until midnight but this is my available night to get it done.
Beth says
I’ve been on a mission lately to build contentment in our home. One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is that while it makes for a tidy home, simply bagging up less-than-pristine stuff and starting over buying new is not a recipe for contentment. I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I de-clutter along with you. A new question I’ve added to my thought process is, “Can we make-do with this?”
We’re also making a concerted effort to look for those missing pieces to puzzles/games and to take care of what we have. When I was a little girl, my mom always kept a little yogurt container (back when they had lids!) of tiny pieces that she found as she cleaned. She was always proud when she reunited a piece with its home. I always thought this was absurd, but I’m beginning to see how this small act could have served to teach the value of even the smallest items.
Crystal, I know you’ve written before about wearing your clothes until they wear out and fall apart– I’d love to hear more of your thoughts about these ideas, especially as you’re decluttering.
Crystal Paine says
I definitely agree that you shouldn’t bag up stuff only to replace it with new stuff (to me, that flies in the face of the whole point of decluttering!), however, I also don’t think you should hang onto things you don’t love and aren’t using if you can pass it onto someone else who could use them. For me, that’s part of contentment, too — sharing with others instead of hanging onto something for a “just in case” time that rarely ever comes.
Beth says
Yes–I think that’s the beauty stated–sharing with others is part of the contentment. 🙂
Jenny says
We did just this thought experiment today. We have this toaster. It’s been sitting on a shelf in our pantry for over a year. We prefer our toaster oven, but both are old and we were worried we might give the toaster away, or sell it, only to need it when the toaster oven dies.
Today we’ve decided to “let it go” (as Elsa would sing) and pass it on to someone who needs one right now. We decided if our toaster oven breaks that we would rather go without, until a new toaster oven comes along, than to use a simple four piece toaster. Even if it is stainless steel and a really nice name brand.
We don’t need it and it’s time to pass it on. We struggle with when to save and when to let go around here.
Angie Young says
I’m tackling the bathroom today. I hate cleaning the bathroom. When you share it with two growing boys, a husband, the cat’s litter box and puppy training area, it’s pretty gross!!
Danielle B says
We’re in an interesting situation right now, as my family is living with my father, his wife and her son, so I really only have to keep our side of the house clean, and clean up the kitchen after we use it. I would love to have a home of our own to de clutter again, but we’ve been living with family since June. Our things were scattered between several people’s basements, attics and storage cleats, but since we recently moved with my father, all of our things are finally back together. I’ve spent the last 5 weeks continually organizing and decluttering.
The area I really need to keep organizing is my pictures and photo albums. I basically quit organizing and making photo albums back in 2010 after my third child was born. I have a lot of work in this area and while it may seem like nothing to someone else, it feels very heavy to me. I want to get this done by the New Year. One of my goals for 2015 is to get each year from 2010 organized into its own photo book online and print them here and there as we have the money. I can’t do that if it’s all still jumbled and the pictures haven’t been gleaned through to find the ones I really want.
So, that’s my goal! 🙂
Danielle
Charlene says
I need to go general cleaning–laundry, dishes, etc, and work in my bedroom and the dining room. My table is a catch-all these days!
Kim says
We too did this prior to Thanksgiving so the challenge for us is to maintain. It’s funny how loving how it looks when it is spotless is not enough motivation to keep it spotless. It stays looking great for two weeks and then starts to erode. I told my husband that I wish we had company coming over every three weeks or so because then we could maintain. 🙂 Good luck with today’s goal.
heidi says
I did this challenge the week before Thanksgiving week, so no deep cleaning necessary. But… Lots of hot spots – as flylady calls them- that I need to tackle.
Lyndsay Withey says
I think we are going to tackle our daughters room while she is gone today. Sometimes its easier to clean while she is gone than when she “helps”
Jennifer Beard says
I really need to tackle dishes today.
Hezzie Lamb says
I will be working on my daughter’s room as well as finishing a few hotspots in mine.