Day1: Organize-athon

Day one was centered in the Living room/area. The front of the house is just about done as far as decluttering goes. However clutter from the rest of the house finds its way to the living area on a daily basis.

I set my timer to see how much time I would spend exactly. In addition to the 5 tasks I am commiting to spend 1 hour in the room of that days tasks, whether it needs extra things done or to get some more detailed cleaning done that it needs.

Even just in the first 5 minutes of just going through with the bag and throwing things away broken, torn or not loved, just to have for the sake of having something decorative in the area made a big difference. If you do not have more than 5 minutes to give to an area, just run around quickly and hit as many spots as you can in 5 minutes. you will be amazed that even just 5 minutes can make a difference.

I spent a total of 68 minutes in the living area which also houses our dining area. We had not done a tidy before bed time as you will see in the before pics so I had to do general surface cleaning too. I wiped our electronics, sweeped and mopped the tile entry, cleaned the glass and dusted in that time frame.

Here are before pictures, since I have decluttered not doing one tidy before bed doesn't result in the enormous disaster it used to. So doing it the next day wasn't such a time waster, however it is much nicer to wake up to a clean house :)

BEFORE PICS

So as you can see in the before pics, its really just a lot of things disheveled or out of place.  

AFTER PICS

game/blanklet cabinet was purged before I had my surgery. Just needed to be straighten up and some things that didn't belong needed to be put away.

Same here, electronics needed to be wiped down and dusting. Prior to my surgery this was also purged. so just needed to be straightened up. We moved the TV here to block the fireplace as we won't be using it and 2 CJ before we know it will be crawling around so just one less thing we have to baby proof..lol

I purged our oak wood magazine/book rack, threw out a bunch of magazines and found enrollment papers from 3 years ago for odyssey charter school..lol. Cool thing is I found my impossible list from step study that listed things I thought were impossible that only God could do. I wrote those things a year and a half ago.

our dining area that is open to our living area. I love this table, once the study room is done and my desk is organized I won't need to use the kitchen table anymore.

entry way clear :) because of the way we have the furniture and the TV now, the dining area and living area are open to each other. It makes the room feel more roomy and opens it up making it easier to manuever and clean.

I have a black and white laser printer that we scored really cheap on newegg, so I printed off the entire workbook and put it on my snazzy clip board I got at the last womens retreat, got my 30 day check list, felt good to check off day 1.

Mentally I struggled with projecting about blogging about this. I thought to myself, great job big mouth, saying your gonna blog the 30 days and with pictures...I am a very private person as far as my home goes. It is my safe place, place where I can hide secrets and chaos. Posting pictures of my house and my own struggle with organizing and managing my home leaves me feeling vulnerable, especially what if I fail the challenge. I am great at starting things I just dont finish often.

I decided this was an opportunity of growth and another opportunity to not care if people judge my honesty and openness. An opportunity to be real, throw out another mask I wear. One lesson I keep getting reminded of is I am not alone in a lot of things I struggle with as a woman, wife and mother.

So that is day 1...

From the Inside Out,

Chrystal