Tag: clutter

Free House: Comfortable in a Mess

Another day of cleaning. I finished the first clean of the Parlour. The armchair, tv, rug, and lamp all need to get thrown out. I’m not sure if the very old sound system is worth saving or not. It appears to still be working. And then we have to go through and deep clean. But, I’m working on the initial cleanout first. 

I think that our neighbor was doing most of her living in this room at the end. It looks like the chair was being used as a bed and there is a lot more food trash laying around. It was interesting, as I was cleaning I got the impression that this room had felt comfortable to our neighbor. I can’t say particularly why. But, it reminded me of my bedroom this past summer. 

I did not clean my bedroom this past summer. I had some standards. I kept the trash in the trashcan and the dirty clothes in the dirty laundry basket, but other than that, my room was completely taken over by clutter. Clean clothes that didn’t all make it in the drawer, papers that my cat knocked off my desk, still laying in a pile on the floor. The sock basket that my kids’ socks all live in was spilling socks everywhere. Stacks of books. No dirty dishes, I didn’t want bugs..but you get the idea. I thought about cleaning my room, but I didn’t want to. Not because I didn’t want to clean, but because I wanted the cluttered atmosphere. For whatever reason, this summer felt really overstimulating. The bright sun, intense heat, lots of activities to get kids to and from. Whenever I could, I retreated into my bedroom. It was cool. Not overly bright. And it felt comfortable to me. For some reason, the idea of cleaning up my room and making it neat and organized made me feel like I would then have to be productive when I was in my room. I didn’t want to be productive. I didn’t want to look at a perfectly organized desk and feel the need to pay bills, or write, or do some creative project. I just wanted to exist in my room with no outside pressure. So I didn’t clean it. I kept the rest of the house clean, because those were shared spaces that a bunch of us had to be comfortable in, and where I wanted to invite other people into as well. But, my room was for me (and my long suffering husband who obviously didn’t care enough, because he didn’t take the time to clean it either). 

When summer started coming to an end, I tackled my room, and several big cleanout projects in my house and got everything organized and ready to be productive in time for the new school year. But, as weird as it might be to some, I understand how you can be comfortable in a mess. 

Here’s what things looked like before I started.

Here’s the pile of trash.

And another pile of trash, ready to go out the window down into our trailer, except the trailer wasn’t there today, so my husband gets to do that when he has time. 

And here’s the end product. I think this is my favorite room. 

And here’s me, worn out after two hours of manual labor. 

Sometimes Cleaning Involves Making a Mess

Today there has been a festive note in the air. Thanksgiving is coming next week, and then we launch full-blast into Christmas. And, my son is coming home tonight after being away at school since August. YAY!!! 

 

With all the approaching festivities, my cleaning bug finally kicked in. Our house was a big ol’ mess. I had the kids help me clean up Friday night, but the problem is we had pockets of clutter all over the place. So, while everything was picked up off the floor, the room still felt a mess. So, today we tackled the clutter. I put two kids on the job of fixing our bookshelves. In order to do that they had to take all the randomly piled books off the shelf so they could organize them all neatly. In the process they also found some movies, toys and papers that didn’t belong on the shelf. 

 

I assigned another child the hall closet. He had to pull everything that had been stuffed in there and make a giant pile on the floor. Then from that pile he could hang up all the coats, put all the gloves, scarves and hats in a box, line up the boots, and put the duffel bags of snow pants back up on the shelf.

 

I cleaned out the Random Drawer that had all our coloring papers, school papers, playdough, puzzles, school supplies, and a bunch of other random kid things. (It’s a big drawer.) In order to clean it out I had to make all kinds of piles on my dining room table in order to sort everything out. 

 

Sometime in the middle of all this cleaning, my husband came in from some errands he had been running. The house looked worse than when he had left. I quickly defended myself. We ARE cleaning. It just doesn’t look like it. We’re going to have to make some messes before it all gets clean. He understood. 

 

Today I also decided it was time to start potty training our youngest. It’s way past time, I’ve just been procrastinating. So, I bought a bag of M&Ms and asked him if he wanted some in exchange for sitting on his potty. Of course! He sat and peed for me. And so far has stayed dry and peed five times in the potty! I’m super excited. But, I know that we have some accidents coming in the very near future. It’s part of the package deal. Some of our kids have potty trained in as fast as a week, and some have taken a year. But all of them had accidents. It’s part of the transition from changing dirty diapers to having clean dry underwear. 

 

One other thing I did today was commissioned my fourteen year old to paint me a Christmas Painting to hang on my mantel for the holidays. She got out her sketch pad and started sketching out some ideas. She showed me one, rough lines outlining the little drummer boy. It was a messy sketch, but I could see what she was drawing. It looked great. I knew that eventually she would turn it into a beautiful picture. 

 

Of course, you’ve probably got the point by now…It has occurred to me this evening, that in order to clean something, or accomplish a goal, you usually have to go through a messy stage where you are making progress, but it doesn’t look like it. 

 

It gives me some hope. I am dealing with some personal shortcomings that have me really discouraged. I have been spending a lot of time recently just thinking about the problem. Trying to get to the root of why I can’t seem to ever overcome in this area. Spending some concentrated time just thinking about this has not been fun. It’s put me in a bad mood. It’s also helped dredge up some old stories from my past that I’ve not properly dealt with. It’s all been rather messy. But, here’s where the hope comes in. Right now it just looks like a mess, but it’s still forward progress. I’m closer to overcoming today than I was a week ago. Sometimes, in order to clean something up, you have to make a mess first.