Christmas is over and if your house is anything like mine you need to now make room for the new stuff.
It’s not even that we got a lot of stuff but I don’t want my things to collect. For instance, my husband received a really nice set of steak knives to replace the crappy ones we’ve been using for a few years. I could add the new knives to our cutlery drawer and forget about it but I’d rather not place things on top of things.
I also received new food storage containers. I don’t know how, but throughout the year I end up with mis-matched tops and bottoms. Opportunities like this allow me to go through them and recycle the ones I can’t use.
My mother kept everything and from that I think I inherited a very minimalistic mindset. If I don’t have any use for something, or will only use it a handful of times, I’d rather not own it. I want to limit the stuff in my small home and so every December and January I declutter and organize like crazy.
These are a few rules of thumb that I follow to help keep things organized in my home:
- If you receive a gift that can replace something, get rid of the other thing. If it is still in good use, donate it but if it’s not worth keeping, toss it. I don’t need 16 steak knives, eight good ones will do just fine.
- When putting Christmas decorations away, go through everything and throw out broken decorations and ornaments. Also it’s ok to not keep every single card that was ever given to you. My sister has kept every card, ever, and it sort of drives me crazy to go over and see all the clutter. Keep the special ones and toss the rest when the season is over.
- While putting things away try to be organized about it. I packed all my Christmas decorations away very neatly and was able to get rid of two storage boxes in the process. This gave me room to store a new decoration that I received as a gift.
- Look for areas to improve while putting things away. While I was putting some new DVD’s, I decided that I needed to compress our collection. As small as DVD’s are, after a while they consume a lot of space. Since my husband insists we keep them all I plan on organizing them in thin plastic DVD sleeves and getting rid of all the cases so we can store them in a small box instead of an entire media shelf. Looking around the home I can see many areas where I can compress things we already own to make more room.
Keeping things cleaned and organized make all aspects of your life flow better. It is a huge relief to not have to search all over the place for an object. I plan on using a few days of my Christmas vacation to get everything organized for the new year and start the year out with my best foot forward!
Catherine is a first time momma to a rambunctious toddler. When she isn’t soaking up all that motherhood has to offer, you can find her blogging over at Plunged in Debt where she chronicles her and her husbands journey out of debt. You can also follow her on Twitter.
