If you know me, you know that I’m not much of a housekeeper. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a clean, uncluttered home, it’s just that I don’t really know how to keep a house looking tidy and uncluttered very well. It’s never been my focus, I guess you’d say. But I’ve found that recently, my attachment to clutter has become much more noticeable. In fact, while I wouldn’t say that I’ve achieved hoarder status (I don’t keep garbage and such), I have to admit that things are a bit out of hand.

My primary issue, I have come to realize, is that I keep things because I’ve invested a significant amount of money in them. I may have absolutely no use for the item, but if I’ve bought it, I am not all that interested in getting rid of it. This is particularly true of anything craft or sewing related. It seems like in the past when I’ve purged crafting and sewing things, I find myself in need of it almost before the item leaves the house. But my 2600 square foot house has become more of a storage unit than home, so it’s time to do something about it. I’m just not sure what that “something” is at this point.

My cleaning style, and this is embarrassing to admit, is to take care of the “hot spots” and say I’ll do the rest later. The problem is, “later” rarely comes.

I haven’t always been this way. When I was young and single, my apartment was always clean. My laundry was always freshly washed and put away. My dishes were done every night. I could clean my entire apartment in 45 minutes on Saturday morning and I was done for the week. It was a lot easier back then because a) I lived alone, and b) I didn’t have a lot of stuff. Now, I live with two grown men who aren’t quite as helpful as I would prefer, and I have tons of stuff. Cleaning is daunting before I ever even get started, because I feel like a house this size will take forever to get done. While I hate moving, I have been considering downsizing after my son moves out, not because I don’t need the space, but because maybe it would be easier to keep clean.

Then I realize that as long as I don’t do anything to make it better – i.e., get rid of the clutter and come up with a schedule to clean – it doesn’t matter how big or small the house is, it won’t be clean. It isn’t that “something” has to change, it’s that EVERYTHING has to change.

Toward that end, I downloaded an app called Tody. Tody allows you to set up lists of cleaning chores by room along with a timetable for doing them. And if you can get others in your house to agree, they can also download the app and you can share one list of cleaning tasks so that everyone knows what needs to be done (I can’t get my folks to do this yet). It has helped a lot, because each task, and room, signal their status by color – red, yellow and green. The more green tasks you have, the more green your room will be.

I like the app a lot, because it reminds me of those things I may not remember – like baseboards – or think about – like light switches. But it also makes me feel like a failure, too, because frankly, I have a lot of red and yellow areas in my home right now. And I feel like I will never get them to green, because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life cleaning all the time.

It was a lot easier to live in a 600 sq foot apartment.

In fact, a few months ago, I suggested to my husband that we move to an apartment. He was dead set against it, but he did ask me why I wanted to do that. I couldn’t really give him an answer until now, but I think it’s because in the past, when I’ve lived in an apartment, it forced me to keep only those things that were truly important to me, and nothing else. I didn’t have shelves of crafting stuff, or kitchen cabinets filled with gadgets, because I didn’t have room for them. My apartments, even when I had young children, were almost always clean because I didn’t have space to store anything we didn’t absolutely need.

If I’m honest, the worst of the clutter didn’t really start until I had my business a few years ago. Back then, of course I had a bunch of stuff, because I needed to keep a certain amount of stock. But now … Now I have no business, but I still have a lot of stock. WHY?? That’s fairly easy to answer – I paid good money for that stuff. Do I really want to get rid of it? I mean, we’re talking a bunch of brand new t-shirts and the like.

I think about it and realize I’m being ridiculous, holding on to all that stuff, and I resolve to get rid of it. Donate it all, or at least use what I want to use and get rid of the rest. Then when it comes time to start pulling stuff together to donate, I think, I can use this. Or, I might need this. Or, I’ve been planning to do XYZ with this! Can you guess what happens next? That’s right. Nothing. Nothing happens. Nothing at all. I put it all back where it was and go sit down and hate that I can’t pull the trigger to get rid of crap. Then I push it to the back of my mind and forcefully try to forget about it, until the next time I take a good look around my house and realize that I still have too much crap.

It’s a vicious cycle, and I hate it.

But I am taking steps to rectify the problem. Tody is one step. Another thing I’ve taken to doing is making my bed most days of the week. Sometimes on Saturday, I get busy and forget. But most days since I’ve been home due to COVID, I’ve made it. And when I wash laundry, I try to get it washed, dried and put away in the same day. Before my studio moved upstairs, I had a horrible habit of dropping washed laundry on the couch in my bedroom. Now the couch is gone, and in its place is my cutting table. Things on my cutting table irritate me, so it’s less likely for laundry to stay there. I try to make sure the kitchen is clean every night before bed. And I am trying to check off at least one item in the app every day that needs to be done (as in, it’s red or yellow). I try to work by room – this month I’m focusing on the master bed and bath. My plan is to declutter on this first round of cleaning, which is taking more time I expected (hence, the “month” instead of “week” I mentioned earlier).

I’m hoping that as I get each room clean, I have the motivation to go back and clean it again before it turns red (it automatically turns yellow on the day it is scheduled to be cleaned, or the day after; I haven’t figured that out yet). I have my fingers crossed that when the room isn’t cluttered, it will be easier to clean it the next time. And each time I clean, I plan to be on the lookout for new clutter that needs to be moved out of the house, either in to the garbage or to donations. I’m really hoping that as I make progress, others in the house will step in and help at least keep it clean.

For now, though, I’m just trying to work on one room at a time, one month at a time. I’ve been listening to the Mari Kondo book about tidying up, and it’s given me a lot of direction, believe it or not. I know that getting rid of clutter is the key to a clean home. I just need to have the courage to let go of items I don’t want or need … God, give me strength!