Tackling the clutter

Do you ever have one of those moments when you realize that it's become You versus The Household Clutter, and you must win? I had such an experience on Sunday.

It's no surprise that babies come with a lot of extra stuff - diapers, feeding supplies, toys, gear, furniture, clothing. These little people, just like us big people, tend to accumulate things quickly! I can say from experience too, that the more space you have to live in, the more you accumulate. When we lived in our apartment all of Eva's toys fit in to a couple of small wicker baskets. Not anymore! Also, the busier our lives get, the easier it is for little bits of clutter to creep their way out of their nice, neat places into our every day living areas. A bobby pin  here, a shoe there, a pack of gum that needs to be put in the diaper bag. In some ways this is okay...life is much more about enjoying the time you get with people you love than having a spotless home. I can embrace this. But then there are those moments when you start to glance around your home and notice clutter emerging here and there and over in that corner and across the room - it starts to make me a bit nutty!

So on Sunday afternoon when Eva was sleeping and Ryan was still working at church I decided that I had to tackle this problem! First I moved as much of the munchkin toys into the playroom as possible. This is the point of having an entire room of your home devoted to toys, right? During the day when fun memories are being made and learning is happening I am totally okay with toys being all over the house, but by the end of the day these toys need to make their way back to their rightful places. The only toys I want to have a permanent place in the living room are the stuffed animals and books on the bookshelf that blocks off our fireplace (not that it's bad to have toys in your living room - we definitely did before - but since we host student ministry and other events in our living room it is nice space wise to have the toys out of there). In order to make this happen I also spent some time reorganizing the playroom closet so that some toys can be put away out of sight and brought out for special times or rotated through for variety. Art supplies and puzzles are two examples of toys that I love for Eva to play with but that are better suited to be pulled out when I can sit right beside her to play with. Otherwise she just wants to dump out all the pieces from all the puzzles and then move on with her life. Our playroom closet also houses my crafting stuff and lots of serving ware (things like cake stands/pitchers/vases/etc.) I have been trying to figure out how to maximize this storage space so that the most amount of things can be stored without the closet feeling overwhelmingly stuffed when you look into it.

As I was working on all this I was absolutely laughing at myself. Do people with 4 kids organize their kid's stuff this much? Probably not. Will Eva one day thank me for helping her learn to play in an organized way? I hope so! But it's not likely...most kids like the mess.

Finally I tackled all the clutter that was not related to Eva. It's really not that hard to just pick up after ourselves each day, yet sometimes I just don't feel like doing that and it adds up!

When I was all done I looked back and admired my cleaning masterpiece. Until my child woke up and the mess began all over again.....

A photo from the church nursery on Sunday - I guess all that kid clutter is worth it when I see that precious grin!