The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up or How to Make Your Sock Drawer Look Like Mine!

I’ve just finished reading a book, I have to write about. Even as I made notes and underlined and laughed while reading it, I thought, “I can’t wait to blog about this….”

I need to qualify all that I’m about to write by saying, this woman is nuts. But it’s a good nuts. Pretty much every chapter had me shaking my head and muttering, “What a lunatic,” but I said it with a smile on my face. I adore this woman and her ideas. I just wouldn’t ever want to live with her.

The book is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing by Marie Kondo. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s been all over the news lately. It’s a small book that’s selling like hot cakes.

Most of us are enamored with the idea of organizing our stuff, but this book goes beyond that. It preaches that you get rid of huge amounts of your belongings – anything that doesn’t “spark joy.”

I loved this concept that we should only wear clothing that sparks joy for us and we should only keep things in our home that spark joy in our lives. Sure, there’s the stuff you need that maybe doesn’t spark a lot of joy – a spatula, the paper-towel holder, the sheets for the guest room bed – but it’s something to strive for. My teenage daughter has a ladle on her Amazon wishlist that is shaped like the Lochness monster. She loves it. It sparks joy. Maybe it will grace her kitchen someday. She also has a tea infuser that looks like a shark swimming around your cup as it makes your tea. My kid definitely gets the sparks joy concept.

I’ve been trying in recent years not to bring anything in to my house that I don’t really love. No furniture to serve a purpose – it needs to be something that makes me happy.

Our living room is large, there’s room in there for lots of furniture, but currently there is only a couch (it sparks a tiny flicker of joy only because my mom recovered it for me and I remember that fun weekend, but it’s filthy and it’s days are numbered, but it’s the only real seating left in the room, so there it is.), a coffee table (which does spark some joy because Nick refinished it and it’s functional, simple, and pretty), and the dog’s recliner (an ugly, worn out, hand-me-down recliner that our incredibly untrainable dog sleeps on most nights – we hold on to it so that she won’t get on the other furniture.). I know we need some seating, but I’ve yet to find anything I can afford that even remotely sparks joy.

We moved the screened porch furniture in for the winter, so for now there’s lots of seats, but as soon as it warms up that room will be barren again. No matter – I’m not buying anything until I find the furniture that speaks to me. Kondo backs me up on this and I love her for it.

When it comes to clothing, Kondo spends almost half the book on her system.

Create a Professional Kitchen (even if you're an amateur)

Once upon a time, I organized our kitchen. I threw out things we never used and sorted the useful items into the prime drawers. I gathered all the spices, donated the duplicates, and lined up the jars with the labels facing outwards. I matched up all the plastic containers and tossed anything without a matching lid. I cleared the counters of erroneous items that had come to reside there by default. I even took down every piece of children’s art on the fridge. The entire kitchen looked ready for show. Because it was. The house was for sale. Why is it we never really clean out clutter or make our spaces truly tidy until we’re either expecting the Queen or putting the house up for sale? Don’t we deserve to live in such pristine places, too?

This week the topic for my evening class was “Clearing Clutter and Cleaning” and in honor of that I began emptying drawers and scouring my kitchen for wasted stuff and wasted space. This is not a job done in one morning. This is a job that takes determination, a large trash can, and several extra boxes for donations and indecision. Let me share my 10-step Kitchen plan with you!

Happy Organized Homemaking

I just returned from a wonderful weekend leading a women’s retreat on the topic of happiness. It was fun to explore the idea from many perspectives and a delight to meet so many interesting, passionate, caring women. Being away from my little tribe always makes me appreciate them more, but coming home to a mess cuts those warm fuzzy feelings short every time. Except this time! This time I came home to a relatively clean home. What a nice change. The children are growing up. Either that or my hubby’s getting better about cracking the whip!

This morning as I sorted out the piles left on the counters and laundry dumped in the laundry room, I thought about one of the topics that came up over the weekend. We agreed that an organized home makes you happier. Most of us feel more content and energetic when our surroundings are not overwhelmed by clutter and chaos. I whole-heartedly agree on this one. Lucky for me I married an engineer who works for a tool company. He can build or fix nearly anything. I cannot. But I have lots of ideas! We make a great team.

Let me take you on a pictorial tour of some of the ways we’ve organized our family life. Maybe it will inspire you to organize something in your home which just might make you happier! (please note that I didn’t clean up for the tour. I figure we’re all friends here and you won’t hold the cleanliness of my counters/walls/floors against me!)

Half-Review: Happier at Home

Right up front you should know that Happier at Home is basically a second part to Gretchen Rubin’s other book, The Happiness Project. I am a big fan of The Happiness Project. I subscribe to her blog and e-newsletters, co-led a book class on The Happiness Project, and am even leading a women’s retreat this fall about Happiness which will utilize the book. So, I’m biased. I love the subject.

Couple things you should know about Gretchen’s style and writing. First, she is the over-achiever of over-achievers. She gets more done than the average bear, and certainly you and me. She obsesses over things that might not fall on your radar. But – she does her research and her writing is accessible and inspiring, which forgives a lot of sins.

If I asked you right now, “Are you happy?” what would be your answer? Honestly? Are you as happy as you could be? And more importantly (for Gretchen’s purposes) do you appreciate how happy you are and could you be even happier?

10 Tips for Getting a Million Things Done in One Day

I am frequently confronted with a million things to do in one day. Sure, I’m exaggerating, but the feeling of overwhelmedness is real and it might as well be a million things because there is nearly always more to-do’s on my to-do list than is humanly possible. Thankfully, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more efficient. Maybe I still don’t get a million things done in one day, but I spend less time wandering through the house muttering to myself and eat less chocolate in an attempt to calm my panicked soul. Below is my ever-changing advice for getting a million things done in a day.

1 Have a list/s. Keep lists handy of what MUST be done and what COULD be done. Update these regularly. Don’t let the tyranny of the urgent control your day. Focus.

2 If you can take care of something in less than a minute, do it now, don’t put it off. You know you won’t do it later and it will nag at your soul each time you see it. For instance – filing something, putting shoes away, depositing a dish in the dishwasher, hanging a coat in the closet.

The Story of Our Children

I know I am not the only parent horrified by the sheer volume of paper our children bring home from school. One of these years I’m going to save them all and see how many pages we accumulate over the course of one year. I’m certain the stack will reach the ceiling and then the kids can make calculations determining just how many trees have been sacrificed in the name of their education.

But at the same time, I appreciate the communication and I do like to see what my children have been up to. The real issue becomes what to save and what not to save. To avoid drowning in paper and indecision, I developed our bin system. Each of my children has a labeled bin in the mudroom where we deposit papers that we aren't ready to part with because a) they will be necessary for a future assignment b) their author deems them too good for the recycle bin c) they make their mother get misty eyed with pride or wonder or d) their mother finds the paper/art project/unidentifiable object on the floor and doesn’t know whether it is of consequence, but fears being accused of appearing apathetic towards her child’s work of genius. All others fill the recycle bin. Between the massive quantities of paper the school sends home and the even larger numbers of projects produced at home, it’s a wonder we can hold an entire year’s worth in one room, let alone one bin. It requires a will of steel, I tell you.

These bins fill up. So when the end of school rolls around, we spend a morning sorting through the bins. I plunk a trash can, a recycle bin, and an empty “Keeper box”, labeled with this year’s dates, in the living room. I also bring along a permanent marker or two for labeling and dating the things we keep. Then I fetch the overflowing bins and the unenthusiastic children and we get to work. No one is very excited to do this task, myself included, so we plan a reward for ourselves. After the sorting, we went to the $2 movies. (This year the older kids saw Alice in Wonderland and I accompanied the youngest to see How to Train a Dragon. I recommend the Dragon movie – good messages, decent writing, adorable dragons.)

The sorting really isn’t that terrible once everyone gets going. It’s kind of fun to see the things created back in September. The memories unearthed are worth the effort of the unwelcome task. The hard part is deciding what is worth keeping. Each child must think hard about what he/she really wants to save. There is only one keeper box shared amongst all three kids. The bulk of the box is always filled by the youngest child. In fact, I’m not sure my oldest thought anything accomplished at school was worth saving. He did find a few masterpieces created in his free time at home that made it in to the keeper box.

One box worth of stuff seems like a small amount, and it is, but those annual boxes begin to stack up. Here’s where I come in (and don’t tell the kids). Prior to the sorting day, while the kids are still at school, I pull out the previous year’s box. I examine its contents and sort those things in to the individual child’s Keeper box (an under the bed bin that holds all size wonders), tossing out or recycling everything else.

My children are prolifically creative, which I love, but without some kind of system we could quickly become overwhelmed by their creations. Some day when they move to their own digs, I will roll up for a visit, climb out of my convertible, and hand them their Keeper box. I imagine them boring their significant other to death with the details of each project (unless of course the significant other is recently acquired in which case she/he might feign some interest).

The other object I hope to bequeath to them when I arrive in my clean car wearing unwrinkled, unstained, stylish clothes, having taken the scenic route to their abode because I have all the time in the world, is a photo album of their childhood. I say hope because such an album doesn’t exist yet. I’m getting ready to start the album for child no # 1. I even purchased a book just for this purpose. I am a serious scrapbooker who produces annual books documenting our escapades that weigh in excess of twenty pounds each (filled with pictures, paper, buttons, brads, and embellishments – yes – I am one of those people!). But those books are for me, not them. Someday I will have my nursing aide lift each book carefully on to my lap and I’ll flip through them slowly, remembering these days when my life was rich with children.

I want to make each of my children a book to take with them when they launch. A book that illustrates where they came from, how they became who they are, and how much they were loved - a book that tells the story of their childhood. For this you need pictures, of which we have plenty. We take pictures of everything. I even have pictures of my friend Carol removing the stitches from my oldest son’s arm and my daughter, red faced in tears after having her ears pierced. Not to mention thousands of portraits of our gray cat and the chickens with the puffy heads. Pictures of the kids leaf sledding, splashing through the homemade car wash, and flying on the zipline, plus the countless sports teams, concerts, geography bees, and envirothon competitions should fill these books to bursting with stories.

The sheer quantity of pictures rivals the amount of paper the school sends home. Luckily, most of my pictures are now secured inside my external hard drive. My plan is simple. For each year of my child’s life, I will fill four pages with pictures. The album I bought holds between 4 and 6 pictures per page. That’s an album with 36 pages (front and back filled). This seems reasonable to me. Of course, I’ve yet to start. Wish me luck.

If we can do everything possible to safe-guard the memories of childhood for our children, I believe it is a priceless gift. I look back on my childhood and there is much I don’t remember. But when I pull out the school days book my mother carefully filled out in her familiar cursive or page through an album with the clear plastic curling up, my childhood comes back. It’s a window in to who I really am at my core. My diary is another map – one that is funny, embarrassing, and poignant. It reminds me that we are hard-wired from the start. There were clues back then, even if I didn’t recognize them. We grow and change, but who we are begins in our childhood. As parents we must find ways to protect and preserve this precious piece of our children’s story.

A Place For Everything

We had almost completed the 500 piece puzzle of the planets, when it became obvious that there was a piece missing. Before we could become too discouraged, my six year old yelled, “I’ll check the Missing Piece Drawer!” jumped up and ran from the room. The Missing Piece Drawer, you ask? As a mother, this is my best invention yet. Unlike all my allowance plans, chore charts, and measuring cup-free recipes, this one even the kids like.

The Missing Piece Drawer was born when I finally got serious about cleaning my house. It seems to take me forever to clean and no matter how fast I move, the kids and their mess move faster. I find myself, constantly picking up pieces that were left out – board game markers, dice, puzzle pieces, checkers, legos, and all kinds of essential parts to what I consider expensive toys and games that would truly not be the same without all of their pieces.

Tired of trooping back and forth to the playroom, digging through the toy bin, or dragging out the Trouble, just to realize that the piece in my hand is actually a marker for Sorry, I began putting the lost pieces in my pockets as I cleaned. Vacuuming always unearthed the largest finds, especially under the couch. Many times the pockets of my jeans would be bulging with these lost pieces and I would forget they were there. I would find myself waiting in line at Parent-Pick up fingering the objects in my pockets trying to guess which game they went to. Once home, life would distract me and the pieces would remain there and go unnoticed until I heard them clanging about in the dryer on laundry day. Soon instead of replacing these pieces in their respective places, I would stash them on the nearest receptacle - on dressers, on shelves, and in closets until I would have time to put them back where they belong, which rarely happened.

Finally it dawned on me that I did not have to put them back where they belonged at all. What would be the point? That piece, or one just like it, would be there waiting for me the next time I moved the couch to vacuum. I cleared out a drawer that is deep and long in the mission table in our front hall. There is room in there for thousands of lost pieces. No longer is the onus on me to return the lost pieces to their homes, now the kids know if they are playing a game, doing a puzzle, or building a lego masterpiece, and they cannot find a piece – the best place to look is in the Missing Piece Drawer. Brilliant!

When it is time to have the yard sale, I always check the Missing Piece Drawer to be sure all of the proper pieces to any game or toy are leaving our home together. Other items that end up in the Missing Piece Drawer are the directions to the 1000 piece Lego Building set, single playing cards, doll house furniture, parts for the numerous science kits and art kits that dot our house, and spare change (which gives some members of my family incentive to look through the Missing Piece Drawer on occasion and often times leads to some lost items being reclaimed and even put away in their proper place!).

So, it’s brilliant, the Missing Piece Drawer. Everyone needs one because life is much too busy to return every monopoly chance card to the box. And no amount of good intentions will help you sort out which Garfield puzzle this orange piece belongs to. As I grow older, I wish that there were a Lost Memory Drawer, similar to the Lost Piece Drawer where I could find all the things I shouldn’t have forgotten. A drawer tucked away somewhere inside my house that I could visit when my brain fails me. I could search through all the junk that clutters my mind, and there I would find the necessary information that was not put back where it belonged the last time I used it. Now, wouldn’t that be brilliant?

As my children get older, the things I find laying around most are paper. Homework papers, project papers, stories yet to be published, notes to friends, inspired music lyrics (daughter), dungeons and dragons character sheets (son), and wish lists for a birthday that is months away (youngest). Where to put all these papers? The sheer number of papers that come home from school each day are enough to overwhelm my personal secretary (if I had one). And how does an innocent, well-intentioned mother know which papers can be recycled and which are critical to the well-being of the universe?

A single Missing Paper Drawer is not an option – I have no drawer in my house capable of holding such volume. So instead each kid gets a Personal Paper Bin. Well, actually it’s a crate with his/her name on it. Whenever I stumble upon papers that are not clearly meant for the recycling bin (like the over due library book letter or the nasty note written to mommy in a fit of anger), I put it in the designated child’s bin. That way when my daughter is panicked because she can’t find that paper sent home two weeks ago about the project due tomorrow, she can dig in her crate and usually find what she’s looking for. Same goes for my son when he needs the piece of paper that had a dragon detailed on it during a critical moment in a D&D game. And when it is finally my youngest child’s birthday, I can dig through his papers and find THE LIST he is always referring to. When anyone’s crate gets too full, they are responsible for sorting out the unnecessary papers for recycling.

This paper system has worked for us for several years now and although we’ve gone to two crates per kid (kept in separate parts of the house so I am always near one and aren’t tempted to toss a paper just this once!), it works for us. None of us have time to return every lost piece or unclaimed paper, but we are not in a place to decide what is sacred either, so giving it temporary residence in the Missing Piece Drawer or the Personal Paper Bin is one solution. I’m sure you’ve got some of your own. I’d love to hear about them.

Are You Ready for Swine Flu?

Just yesterday I received an e-mail from a friend with an attachment from Johns Hopkins on what to do if pandemic strikes in the form of the swine flu. It says to stay home, easy enough. And it says to be sure you have 16 days worth of food stockpiled. Not a problem. I’ve become quite the believer in stocking up. That wasn’t always the case.

I used to make frequent trips to the market and buy “only what I needed” in the firm belief that this was better for our budget. The problem with that logic is that I was forever running to the store for “just this one thing” I needed and coming home with a cartload of stuff because it was on sale or I was sure we were out of it. Let me be clear here – the less you go to the store the less you spend. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out. I don’t “need” many of the things I buy, but that doesn’t stop me from buying them.

Here’s a better plan, and one that saves me money.

1. Stock up.
I try to keep my shopping trips down to one trip to the Amish Market and one trip to the grocery store each week. Some weeks I can even skip the grocery store. I can almost always accomplish this by keeping my pantry and freezer well stocked. It stands to reason if you know you eat pasta at least once a week, you can buy all the pasta you need months in advance (it keeps). Stocking up on staples like pasta, pasta sauce, chicken broth, ketchup, syrup, cereal, jelly, peanut butter, beans and other items that will store well saves you the last minute trip to the grocery store with cranky kids in tow that not only costs money, but costs time. Fill your freezer with the things you need and always have an “emergency” kit in your freezer for “emergencies” (avoiding a trip to the grocery store for that one thing): 1) loaf of bread (even if you make your own bread fresh), 2) a pound of butter (will freeze for the duration), and 3) hot dogs (easiest meal to fix in a pinch that will please nearly every kid).

2. Shop less.
Before you rush off to the store to get one crucial ingredient do two things. First, if it stores well, add it to your list of things you keep stocked up on. Second – think of something else you can serve instead. I’m telling you – flexibility will save you hundreds of dollars. It’s really nice and supremely organized to have the weeks menus made up ahead of time and posted primly on the fridge, but if you haven’t got exactly what you need to follow the plan – improvise or serve something else. That’s why you’re the mom – you always have a Plan B.

3. Centralize your shopping list.
My list is a magnetic pad on the side of the fridge. Everyone knows that if you open the last of anything (oatmeal, peanut butter, ketchup, olive oil), you must write it on the list or Mommy may wig out on you. It’s my system, but it does take a little enforced guilt in the beginning to get everyone with the program. This works for us because then it’s not up to me to inventory the kitchen to make up my list or rely on my ever-decomposing memory to remember all the things we might need.

4. Shop alone.
Under no circumstance should you be taking your kids to the grocery store. Not unless you’re doing math homework that requires that you go there. I know, I know, I’m usually all for the teach the children by example thing, but honestly, if I take my kids to the grocery store I leave stressed out and laden with things I didn’t come there to buy (like Cheezits in every flavor) and almost always missing at least one item I planned to buy but left behind in the interest of my children’s safety and my sanity. There will be time to teach them about shopping for groceries (like when they come home from college). I’m here to tell you that if you are serious about living a kid-friendly organic life on a budget, don’t shop for food with your kids.

5. Organize your cupboards. Clean them out. It’s about time for that at my house. We have a pantry that is so deep I must stand on a high bar stool to see the back of the top shelf. Things could be lost back there for decades. It’s important to know what you already have before you end up buying yet another package of cornmeal (we currently have three) you think you need because you haven’t seen it in awhile, but in reality is happily molding in the back of your cabinet. This is a case of do what I say not what I do, (a line that never works on my kids) but I’m going to try to be better at this. I know how happy I felt on the few occasions when my pantry was organized. Most times it was because the house was for sale (I even faced all the labels out – amazing how that makes a cabinet look truly organized). It takes time to organize. You need to have a garbage can, a recycling bin, and a give away box handy. I’m putting it on my to-do list. Knowing what you have saves you money.

I’m going to expose our food budget for the last four years on Friday’s post and I know that stocking up has played a big part in the numbers. So, just in case the swine flu is headed your direction, consider stocking up. And even if you’ve had your flu shot, stock up to save money. You’ll be amazed.