Almost two years ago, I announced that “every room in the house was clean and clear,” which was probably true for the few weeks it took before things got junked up again. Within two months, I had to admit that “half the house has gone to hell in a handbasket” and the disorganization basically snowballed from there.
What happened?! I was doing so well! I got the clothes closets cleared, the craft closet organized. I’d organized the kitchen cabinets. I’d organized my recipes, and had spent hour upon hour slogging through my Supreme Paper Mess. And yet: there I was, not even two full months later, putting off both entertaining at home and needed repairs because things were in such disarray.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what, exactly, had gone wrong, and this summer I had the chance to make some changes. We tweaked one daily routine that has made all the difference in the world, and I also figured out a few small things I need to do a couple times a week to keep things running smoothly.
The really big change, though, was in re-evaluating how we wanted to use the very limited space we have. We ended up making a huge, if perhaps unconventional shift, re-purposing the rooms to fit our needs. In the process, we ended changing not just how we used the space, but also the habits of maintenance and storage that had been imbedded in those rooms over the course of a decade. This week on the Quest, I’ll share with you the changes we made, with an eye to strategizing what changes you can make to fashion your own Organization Breakthrough.
Maintenance under control: today it took all of an hour to tidy the living room, bedroom, and my studio, which included sweeping and vacuuming, doing some dusting, polishing mirrors, cleaning glass-topped tables, picking up, and making the bed. And I'm not a fast worker, folks.