Room of the Week

While writing yesterday’s post, it occurred to me that I have been planning to outline my de-cluttering strategy but haven’t done it yet. I have partially been held back by a garage full of “Goodwill” items, but as I tackled that pile yesterday, I’m feeling much better about the process!

Executive summary: Completely empty the room. Clean every remaining surface. Make sure that each thing that comes back in is important and has a place and is clean. Simple.

If you want to know more:
When Camille was a baby, I started to get overwhelmed with my cleaning and organizing. I decided that the best way to manage this was to focus on one room a week in a cycle, meaning that each room was scoured about four times a year. As Camille aged, I dropped this to every other week, and now, finally, I clean one room a month (though the task is still called “Room of the Week” quite often).

The idea behind “Room of the Week” is that the room is de-cluttered, organized and cleaned. We start in one corner and start at the top (ceiling fan included). Moldings, baseboards, windows, screens, floors, furniture, switchplates get scrubbed. Each surface, container, drawer is emptied and cleaned. As we place things back onto the shelf, in the drawer, etc, we figure out 1) do we need this thing? or 2) is there a better place for it? Clothes get tried on. We decide if things have been used within the last year. If not, it is highly likely that it is time to toss it. Anything that needs to find a new place (whether in or out of the house), heads out into the hall (what a huge pile gets created) or into the trash bag.

Sometimes, we discover collections of items that belong together but have no place to be, so a new box/drawer/etc is dedicated. The big pile in the hallway is always a challenge. While my preference is to get the stuff out of the house, sometimes the girls are not reedy to let go and the stuff only heads to some storage box elsewhere (which kid of defeats the purpose). The “free pile” can sometimes grow to a point that makes it a bit unmanageable for me. I try to sort it out into “Goodwill”, specific recipient and “homeschool free pile”, but that isn’t always easy. I’ve been putting it off for a while, and the pile has threatened to topple on my car, so I finally worked on separating and reducing it yesterday. The garage is looking so much better.

Overall, the schedule of one room a month works well, other than for the kitchen. Since I try not to clean a room other than during its month (thank goodness for the monthly cleaning service that comes in!), the kitchen gets a little grubby by the time its turn rolls around — the toaster and fridge are pretty yucky by then.

January was the month for Camille’s room. While she didn’t agree to get rid of as much as I would have liked her to, she did manage to clear our piles and piles of books, clothes, trash and toys. Still more in her closet than I envision, but she’s come along way since the first time we cleaned her room!

Challenge: Convincing myself and the rest of the family to get rid of more stuff and also to keep stuff from coming into the house.
Challenge: Keeping up with the “junk” drawer and un-filed collections, such as the kids’ CDs (which come into the house on a very frequent basis).