The lesson, the mess, and the disposed of

After our vacation, I felt overwhelmed coming home. So much stuff!! So much mess! Even when the place is cleaned up, it still feels messy cluttered because we have accumulated to many things. Not bad things in and of themselves, but 6 weeks on the road with minimal clothes, toys, and accessories, made me realize how much I didn’t need.

Baskets of laundry

It was so much easier to keep the laundry clean when each child only had 6 changes of clothes. There was no “Mom, I don’t have any underwear/socks/pants/etc.” ad nauseum each morning when told to get dressed. All of the clothes went into one tote in the hotel room closet, and every 2-3 days I did two loads of laundry, darks and lights. I promptly folded them and put them in their one drawer they were each assigned per hotel room. Granted, they were mostly summer clothes and didn’t take up a lot of room, but surely one dresser should suffice!

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They had one church outfit that they also wore to the wedding in which we were involved. Granted, we went to a different church service each week, so it was easy to get away with only one set, but do we really need 20 different dress shirts? So many of them have been handed down from their older brothers or given to us, but are we really managing our space resources when we are housing SO many? And that’s just dress clothes!

Plenty of dress shirts

The kids’ dressers are overflowing when all of their laundry is clean, which is getting to be more consistent, given that keeping the laundry room clean makes my mornings brighter since it is also my pantry. (NOT something I recommend, btw, but at the time we built our home, we didn’t really have a choice.) Oh, and having this room this clean?! Totally new! 😀 Even the washer and dryer are cleared off! Hooray!

Pantry/Laundry room

And here’s my new plan for keeping single socks at bay. We’ll see how well this goes…

I WILL CONQUER THE “MISSING SOCK” MONSTER!!

Mismatched socks plan

The floors of their rooms became littered with dirty and clean clothes mixed together because I don’t always supervise the putting away and the picking up. When they DO clean their rooms, which is also becoming more frequent, I find clean and folded laundry in the hamper. Why? Because they have too many items!!

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And this includes me. I have too many clothes too. Granted, I have maternity clothes, postpartum clothes, nursing clothes, and several sizes until I get down to my “normal” size, but really, enough is enough!

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So…my reaction? PURGE! And so I have been. As I’m folding laundry, clothes that are stained, stretched out, too small, faded, worn out, outdated or even “I don’t like this shirt”, are getting thrown out! It is hard for me. I think I like the security of stuff. “I can always use more,” right? Ugh….

Purging feels good.

 

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