My mother never found cleaning to be a priority which is the opposite of her mother. My oldest sister married a man that likes cleaning and keeps her house on the clean side. My sister who is one year older struggles like me to take care of the kids, the cooking and the cleaning while trying not to go insane. As a kid I was never required to do routine chores, just every once in awhile we were expected to do our fair share. In college both my roommate and I tried to keep our apartment clean, but my room was always cluttered with magazines, clothes, and paper. I think one thing that has helped me become less of a hoarder is moving so much.
As a child I moved when I was too young to remember, and when I was a freshman in high school. I remember the second time we moved we left things in the house because it was such an exhausting process. I can't imagine my parents moving now because my mother is what I would call a hoarder. She buys but is never able to use all that she buys. The items end up in piles and she can't keep track of where things are and ends up buying more out of convenience. She tries all the time to clean up but she goes to work, likes to vacation, spend time with the grand kids, and likes to make crafts and go to craft shows.
In college I moved every year I attended. I first lived in school sponsored housing in a large apartment complex. It was far from school and could be a little crazy at times. Since we couldn't find many people who wanted to rent to us, my roommate and I moved into the ghetto. After a year we were able to upgrade to a better neighborhood, but by then it was my last year of college.
After college I move back home and had a baby. After a year and half there I transferred with my company to a small town 5 hours away. After a year there I moved into my first house. After living there and having baby number 2, we decided that the small town was too small and moved to the big city. In the city I moved into an apartment for 6 months with the kids while my husband worked back in the small town to fix and sell the house. We needed a place where we could live with our dog when we sold the house so I moved to a townhouse rental. After there for a year we finally settled into our current house and have been here for a year.
When you move so much you get tired of unpacking and repacking items that you never even touch. I used to have a lot of magazines and books that I always planned to reread and organize. It took me a long time to let go of these things. I know my kids have lost some of their toys in the move but they don't seem to miss them at all.
So the real point of this post is the fact that I still have a clutter problem which doesn't help with keeping chaos in check. I used to get frustrated by the fact that after I would clean, I still couldn't find what I needed. This was due to the fact that I didn't always have a place for everything. I would stick it away in a place that was convenient at the time but I would forget where that was when I needed the object. I was fighting myself.
I find A Slob Comes Clean to be inspirational. I have blogged before about a cleaning game plan, but it only seems to last for so long. Now that my kids are older I find that it is becoming easier to get help from them on keeping the house clean. With cutting out my cable I have also found it easier to clean because it is something to do, and something that needs to be done. I do enjoy sitting down at times to try and organize my things, but I usually end up getting distracted. I start looking at pictures, then remember I need to catch up on scrap booking, but when I do that I need to download pictures, that leads to uploading them to Facebook while I'm at it, and I might as well go to the store to get a box to organize them into. I love the idea of non negotiable chores everyday. Today when I got up I made sure to make the bed and clean up the dishes. She also talks about how it is said to take 28 days to form a habit. (I do wonder how many days does it take to lose a habit but that isn't very optimistic thinking?) I will try to add something to my day every two weeks to see how I progress. I need to take it slow like she did and I hope to be able to find my way through this point in life.
I completely agree that moving makes you look at things differently. We moved out of a 1700 sqft house and needed enough truck space for a 3200 sqft house, according to U-haul, and I"m pretty sure they were right.
ReplyDeleteGood luck adding your habits! Even one habit formed makes an amazing difference in your home.