One Small First Step

Don't agonize. Organize. ~Florence Kennedy

I may need intervention. I still have a clutter problem. However, my schedule has just been decluttered, so now I have the time to declutter other areas.

I am planning on reorganizing my entire home during this year, but the task is so overwhelming that I decided to take it one small step at a time. Today, I completed my very first step! It was nothing big nor particularly life changing, but I knew that once I did it, it would be one little thing that would make one little area a happier place for my eyes to rest upon.

For years we have use a small bright green shoe box (from when our daughter was a probably three years old) to store batteries. The box was beginning to look worn and everything in it would get dusty because the top was never placed on it and bulk batteries packages were tossed into it that did not fit. It has been on the top shelf of my husband's desk hutch for years, which houses lots of other loose items that just gather dust, because he just may need some intervention also.

I began looking on the Internet for ideas about organizing in general and saw this idea that was quick, easy, and cheap. I bought a five-drawer organizer, which was nearly half the price it would be to buy two of the three-drawer types that I saw for this idea. From top to bottom, I labeled the drawers:

• 9V and Specialty
• AAA
• AA
• C
• D

Now my battery organizer is sitting on a shelving unit were my old flatbed scanner used to be. We replaced that scanner with a wireless all-in-one when we switched our Internet service from DSL to U-verse just before Christmas (AT&T did not give us much choice in that). The old scanner had to be directly plugged into a computer with installed software and it was getting to difficult with three computers, plus some of our equipment was so old that the software is incompatible with the newer versions of windows and is no longer supported.

Anyway, I now have our batteries in a clean little drawer unit that is easy to dust, keep organized, and reduces that clutter (those dreaded "piles") so that I feel like smiling just a little more when I am in the office area.

~ My Lord, thank you for reminding me that the littlest change in the right direction is inspiring for the largest tasks ahead. ~

Decluttering Challange for 2011

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. ~William Morris

My friend Birbitt has proposed an interesting challenge in decluttering the home in her post "Ending the clutter." If you have followed my blog for a time, you know that clutter bothers me and decluttering overwhelms me as I have written about it a few times, but Birbitt has a easy plan that chips away at the clutter.

She has proposed that one item for each day of the month must be removed from the home by the last day of the month; that would be thirty-one items on or before January 31st. This must be a item one would not typically throw into the trash but items taking space in the home that can be sold, donated, or thrown away.

I have decided to accept the challenge with some tweaks that work better for me with my situation. What items I do not plan to donate or toss away, I will list on craigslist to sell and then place it into our yard sale stack, which technically is still inside my home, but once there are not taken back out. If it does not sell on craigslist, we will try selling in a yard sale in Florida next time we go there to visit my husband's mother. What is left over from that sale does not come back but will be donated there.

January is going to be fairly easy, but I am wondering about doing this for an entire year: 365 items! It seems like so much and yet I probably do have that and more that I do not need. I probably have about half of that in my yard sale stack already, but I am not going to count those things although I am going to try to list them on craigslist along with the items I will this in this challenge.

One of the things that helps me decide if something is worth keeping is asking myself this: If we were moving, would I bother wrapping and packing this item to take with us?

Soooo...are you up for the challege?

I am so excited! I have to start listing things on craigslist soon!

~ My Lord, this is a true challenge for me and I would like to have less things in my home that are simply things. Please bless Birbitt and all the others she will inspire to declutter one item for each day of 2011. ~