When Clutter Own's You

 

clut·ter/ˈklətər/

Noun:                 A collection of things lying about in an untidy mass.

Verb:                  Crowd (something) untidily; fill with clutter.              

 

I have a secret, everyday this secret is impacting on my life, my happiness and the relationships that I'm having with my kid's, husband and those around me. It's getting more difficult to hide IT from the children, the eldest is starting to ask questions and I've realised that Mr Opoes and I have had this secret in our lives for the last 9 years. The impact of this is hurting my family, our time spent together normally involves running away from the house, having people drop by the house is confronting and I'm becoming more and more depressed with the situation.

 

We're about to entire the fourth month of living in our new house and during that time we have had clutter all around us. The car can't be parked in the garage because there's no room, we have boxes sitting around the house waiting to be unpacked, I haven't seen the floor in our bedroom for weeks because it's been used as a dumping ground, any clear space gets covered in seconds with stuff and with all this around us we aren't the happiest of people. The children are fighting more, Mr Opoes and I spend far too much time talking about clearing it up but no time actually doing it and my relationship with him is also suffering because our clutter is so in your face that we can't see past it. 

 

I've read books, searched the Internet and even watched television programs dedicated to helping people fix their problems. For me personally CLUTTER is overwhelming, embarrassing, never ending and consuming. In the past I have started to de-clutter but then something happens to distract me, I've lost interest OR I get started and then realise that this piece of furniture would be great to store the kid's toys, we don't have the money to purchase it and doing this will just mean ...........

 

I become side tracked, Mr Opoes spends about 15 hours a week travelling back and forwards to work so he can't really help me and most of all at the end of the day I just want to sit down and do nothing. So if you put all this together and the fact that we have stuff that we JUST DON'T NEED then it's no wonder our house never looks any good.

 

I found a quote the other day here and I think  from now on that I'm going to have to live by this simple yet effective rule.

 

"If you look at your entire house as one unit of junk,
you'll never do anything because the job is too overwhelming.
Take it one drawer at a time."
Janet Luhrs

 

So starting next week Mr Opoes and I will be working together to get the garage sorted so that we can park the car away every night, empty all the boxes, clean up the bedrooms and living area's so that we can use them, donate to charity all the things we don't need, take stuff to the dump and maybe sell a few items that we just no longer need.

 

Because I want to keep it really I'm going to show you photo's of what my bedroom and the garage look like now and in two weeks time I'm going to show you how we have progressed with the task of DE-CLUTTERING OUR HOUSE. I hope that I haven't scared to many people and that by doing this I start to feel more organised, creative and that I become a more productive mother and wife.

 

Our Garage.

My side of the bedroom.

 

Megan