De-clutter

When you enter our house from the back door, the door that everyone uses except the door-to-door politicians, Jehovah Witnesses, and UPS, the first room you come into is the back porch. After walking through the back porch, you come into the dining room. When we first bought the house, we thought it would be neat to utilize a pool table as our dining room table instead of a traditional table. So we bought a rather large pool table, and then we purchased a ping pong table top to go over the pool table. This gave us a multifunctioning apparatus - a pool table, a ping pong table, a dining room table, and a dumping ground for everything in our house that doesn't have its own place. I am ashamed to say that in the six years we have lived in this house, the apparatus functioned as a pool table or ping pong table for the first year, and for the last five years, except for a couple of parties where the table was actually used as a dining room table, it has been a dumping ground. When I come home from work, I drop my keys on the table. When Jason comes home from work, he puts his keys, wallet, and the mail on the table. When the kids come home from school, their backpacks go on the table. After I dig out the papers from the backpacks, I put them into piles - things to be returned to school, homework, and papers for Jason to look over. After Jason goes through the mail, it goes into piles - bills for him, magazines for me, family mail such as wedding or party invitations. The newspaper ends up on the table, and so forth. Even though the table looks much more attractive without the ping pong table top on, we keep the top on so we can dump our junk on it without messing up the pool table felt. After many days of "dumping," either Jason or I cannot stand it anymore, and we de-clutter the table. However, negative things can happen when this occurs. Last week, Jason threw away a stack of magazines my mom had given me to look through for Christmas presents for the girls because it just looked like more junk. Where else was I supposed to store those magazines? At times, I will find invitations to birthday parties, weddings, or home parties that were two weeks prior - I had them in the very important stack, but that stack keeps growing, too. Yesterday, when I walked in the house after work, I could not stand the atrocity on the table anymore, and I made a commitment to not only de-clutter the table, but to clear it. So I began. I couldn't believe what all I found - Elizabeth's report card from last year. Doves from the inside of a silver dollar that were stored in a butter containter. Elizabeth's basketball evaluation from summer basketball camp. A wedding invitation (whew, that hasn't happened yet,) a printout from the computer with some Christmas ideas for my mom (that I printed out last summer,) lots and lots of hair ties, the Magic Bullet box with some attachments still inside, a VCR that doesn't work, a ton of artwork created by the kids (had to throw that away at the bottom of the trash can,) McDonald's toys, gymnastics pictures, my library card, a wallet sized family picture with Jason's side of the family taken over a year ago, last year's dance pictures, a half written story by Elizabeth about learning how to play tennis, snapshots, snapshots, and more snapshots, an invitation to a toy party (I had already told the hostess I couldn't make it,) Family Camp crafts from our cottage at the campgrounds that we had to clear out because we sold the cottage, and lots of other odds and ends. Yes, all of this stuff was on the table - the first piece of furniture someone sees when they walk in our house. What a first impression.

Well, after clearing the table, I got inspired. If I can de-clutter the dining room, I can de-clutter the whole house. The rest of my house wasn't nearly as bad as the table - I do like to have things in order. But there were things laying around the house that didn't belong where they were - three drawings Elizabeth had done for Jason to take to his office that were still at the top of the stairs, 2 Junie B. Jones books on the end table in the living room, scotch tape on top of the microwave, canning jars and pint containers on the countertop, once full of garden goodies but now washed and waiting to be stored until next summer, a popcorn tin full of popcorn from Christmas 2004, receipts on my dresser from last Christmas (I don't think at this point anyone will be returning anything.) I reorganized our shoe rack - I discarded of several pairs of kids shoes and designated each of us a shelf. (Jason has to have one and a half, but he shares a shelf with Anna.) Some things I just left - like the energy saver Reindeer that sits in front of our never used front door to keep out the cold air. He's been there for two Christmas's in a row - and he stays even during the summer even though he's also a Christmas decoration. Hey, it's less than three months now until Christmas. At least I took down the "Congratulations Daddy Mommy Elizabeth and Anna" sign that Elizabeth made six months ago and hung in our kitchen. No, we aren't having another baby, she was just congratulating all of us on being a happy family. It hung right below a golden foot of Elizabeth that was made in preschool. I know, not your typical kitchen decor, but she wanted it displayed, and there was an empty hook in the kitchen. We only meant for it to stay up that night, not for 2 years.

By the end of the night, I felt pretty proud of myself. My house looked pretty good. However, all that clutter had to go somewhere...you should see my closets. That will be another project for when I have another inspiration.

Confidential to new blogger T.T. - I was able to get on your site last week and I left a comment, but I can't access it any more. It says I have to be invited. Suggestions?