Dealing with clutter.
My recent Facebook status read :
“Declutter and reorganise, declutter and reorganise, declutter and reorganise. Never ending. And worse – the house looks the same! And yet must do!”
I am ruthless
I cannot stand clutter and therefore am always de-cluttering. And I am ruthless. Toys that are not played with after a few months are first put away first. If they are still not played with by the next round of decluttering, they will be passed on to another family or donated to the Salvation Army.
Clutter makes me feel antsy, trapped, messy. Even if it is organised clutter, if there is such a thing! I do not like to see piles of things on the floor and table. It disturbs me visually and of course it makes dusting and vacuuming much more challenging and time consuming.
A minority
But I realise I am in the minority group. I visited a few homes recently and I find that although their family size is much smaller than mine they a lot more stuff than we do. And so, the amount of walking space is very little.
I like our home to be as streamlined as possible for easy cleaning. That is why we had lots of storage created and built when we renovated our home. With 9 people in the house, it is tough to make space but we do it because it is claustrophobic to be hemmed in by boxes and cupboards or toys at every side.
Chinese New Year will be upon us in a few short weeks and I know many people take that as an opportunity to spring clean since we don’t have a real Spring here 😉
I did it during our Christmas break!
But still, clutter lives on
Don’t get me wrong and think that my house is neat and tidy. I still have 2 small ones who love to play with all the toys in the toy boxes and their stuff toys but when I holler for them to pack up the house, it can be done in 10 minutes or less because everything has its place. There are seldom stacks of stuff unless we have been gifted with clothes/toys/food that I have either not had the energy to organise or are passing them on and waiting for them to be collected.
But with 9 people in the house and homeschooling thrown into the mix I guess I will have no choice but to learn to live with some clutter.
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