Everyone knows the frustration of not being able to find something important that you needed five minutes ago. I hate how frustrating it is to not be able to find things I need, and, to add insult to injury, you end up wasting a bunch of time searching for said item. Super inefficient.
The past few months I’ve been reading a lot about minimalism. In Francine Jay’s book ‘The Joy of Less,’ she uses a phrase that I have come to use frequently—so much so that most of the members in the family can quote it too. “A place for everything; everything in its place.” That’s it. Simple enough, and super helpful in motivating myself and other members of the household to actually put things away where they belong. AND, better yet, if someone can’t find a place for something, it’s time for that something to find a new home. Have a mentioned how much I love minimalism? It’s a bit addicting and cyclically motivating to minimize more and more. In fact, my husband fears that I am now so excited about minimizing that I will minimize him. 🙂 That’s not going to happen, but I do really enjoy minimalizing what we own, which in turn means there’s less to organize and less to clean up, which—you guessed it—takes less time, making it more efficient. And more efficiency means more time for those I love. Win win.
I’m not a huge fan of cleaning or tidying. I’ve often been known to tell my family members “I’m not your maid,” thus encouraging them to clean up after themselves. I like having a clean home—a space to enjoy life in without having to be constantly tidying and a place that I won’t be mortified if someone were to drop by unexpectedly, which has happened a number of times recently. Keeping up on putting things away throughout the day after they’ve been used (a place for everything, everything in its place) helps the clutter to not build up. I run into problems when I don’t have a place for something; it creates a kind of paralysis in me and then the clutter gets stuck. But when there’s an established place for something, away it goes. By the end of each day, there’s inevitably clutter from the day’s activities. <Insert the 10 minute tidy up here.> I do this every night right after the kids go to bed. I take 10 minutes to go around the main areas (living room, dining room, kitchen) and make sure that everything is put away where it belongs. Once I’m done with this, then it’s my “free” time to do the things I enjoy before bed. And, when I wake up in the morning, the house is ready to be lived in and loved in once again.
I will admit that we own far more than we should, and I have a long way to go on my minimalism journey, but I’m addicted to it and adamant that I will continue to find a place for everything, even if that means a new home.
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