Decluttering, with Help
By Jen Shenk
I had a secret plan to get my kids organized and their rooms decluttered. Although I had planned this for a long time, I waited until 8:30 that morning to break it to the kids that my friend who cleans houses was coming over at 9am not to clean our house, but to work with them to clean their own rooms.
I had planned this as an early Christmas present to myself last year. Jay and I were going to a Christmas party in New Jersey and my friend Kathy agreed to babysit, clean the house and work with the kids to get them organized over the course of the weekend. I was so excited. Alas, this party was on December 12th and the night before (ice storm) resulted in a drastic change in our plans, one that involved cooking on the woodstove, having neighbors sleep over and being without power for several days. So, the house has remained poised and ready for a heavy-duty decluttering since then. With my husband out of town for a few days, I thought it was a good time to try again.
I got up at 5:30 that morning and raced around getting the house ready to be cleaned. Then, after a few cups of coffee and several loads of laundry, at 8am I got up the courage to wake the kids and tell them our plans for the day. It went about as well as I expected.
It was very convenient (for me) to have someone else encouraging them to persevere, ignoring them when they came up with every excuse to ‘STOP THE MISERABLE CLEANING’. Kathy went from room to room for 4 hours, mixing praise in with expectations. She wanted full trash cans and a big pile of stuff to give away. She didn’t have that level of familiarity with the kids (she knows them pretty well, she’s just not close enough to them that they’d feel comfortable scowling or grumbling at her as they certainly would do to me in this situation). As I listened to her working with my three youngest kids, I was energized to sort through my own things. I had a few totes and laundry baskets from previous unsuccessful decluttering attempts (note: ‘put anything random in this big bin’ does not result in a decluttered house).
Somewhere I read that I should ask myself if there was any real reason to not pitch a specific item and if my answer was not entirely convincing, out it would go. I also had a huge tote full of completely random household stuff from about 2 months ago when Kathy came over to help me tackle the laundry room. She said she didn’t want to find out that I still had that bin full of stuff a few weeks later. Well, that was February and this was the end of August…that bucket was taking up a big space in the closet. So, when she was working with the kids, I was secretly FINALLY going through it, and for the most part throwing stuff out. It was much easier knowing that it’s been 6 months and I really hadn’t needed any of those things.
After a few hours, even though their energy was waning, the kids started to like the concept of having their rooms clean. We moved all of their clothes to new shelving in the laundry room so that only the clothes on their backs will actually make it upstairs to minimize the ‘dirty laundry on the bedroom floor’ problem that all parents (hopefully not just us) have.
As you can see from my BEFORE and AFTER pictures above, I am willing to go out on a limb and admit that not all areas of my house are entirely organized. We all have a clutter spot in our house. Mine is our upper basement. If I don’t know where it goes, it must go in that basement room. Kathy spent an energizing 4 hours with me and both of us got a free workout carrying all that stuff around. If she was not there to encourage me, to convince me to unload unnecessary items, it would have taken me three times as long and I wouldn’t have finished.
When Kathy was done ‘helping’ the kids, I warned them that she will be coming back in a month to do this again, that is UNLESS she comes and finds that their rooms remained somewhat clean and organized. We’ll see. My friend Kathy is Kathy Norton. She owns Advanced Home Solutions and does cleaning and organizing of homes and offices. She offers organizing and de-cluttering from entire homes to closets to kids rooms. She welcomes weekly, bi-weekly and monthly customers. One-timers are also welcome. She has 18 years experience and believes that if you stay organized, you reduce stress. You can find Kathy at 978 874 2120.