Since last week I’ve been on a vengeance about spring cleaning and cutting the clutter from the spaces where we live, starting with my girls’ closet and room. My spark was lit while attending two Montessori workshops at my daughters’ school, when I realized how far removed our home had become from being a place where the kids could independently manage their own environments.
When I saw that Simple Mom was having Project: Simplify 2012, it seemed perfect for me to jump on that bandwagon and do some spring cleaning with a community of other folks my same boat.
In addition to wanting orderly spaces for my kids, these days I’m finding I need them for myself too. I can not allow myself to sit still and enjoy any time for myself until the spaces around me (or in the basement under me) are minus my piles of stuff to be read, dealt with, archived, mended, cooked and responded to. I’m thinking if I have less stuff to manage, I’ll have more time for myself.
Adding to that, our 90-year-old house is undergoing exterior renovations now, with the interior renovations starting in May. I’m bracing for that – trying to think ahead of what girl is going to be in what room, where my sewing room will land, how my new kitchen will be laid out and how we will live through having no kitchen at all. Much purging is in order!
Under Project: Simplify, this week’s hotspot is Kid’s stuff – toys, clothes and the like. For us it means toys and art supplies. I spent the entire day Sunday in my basement while the kids popped in and out wanting helping to reorganize. I was surprised at how eager they were to sort, sell, donate, recycle and reuse items in new ways. Helping with the transformation was truely exciting to them.
For me, part of my challenge is to reorganize using what we have. That means I won’t allow myself to buy any new bins, baskets or systems to house our stuff. The point is to get rid of the stuff and not to buy more stuff to hold the too much stuff we already hold on to for too long.
Monday morning, with my two-year-old at my side, we started cleaning out the art space in our basement. At times it has been a peaceful place for the girls to do self-directed art with supplies left out for them to use freely. Since Christmas (and longer) our basement has been a dumping zone for things that I don’t have time to deal with at that very moment.
Included in this post is the grainy picture I snapped with my iPhone this morning. Friday I’ll share some after shots of the basement spaces we concurred this week, taken with my real camera and better light (I promise). It looks scary here. But already it is feeling SO much better.
Stay tuned…..
