i have a problem

since i found this, i am in love. 
i am very attracted to organization.  i love the idea of it. i love reading about it.  the problem is, that i am not an organized person and i fear i never will be.  not unless of course, someone say, like stie came to live with me and hold my hand and tell me what to do.  on my own, i am lost.  i've tried flylady, i have done M.O.T.H(managers of their homes), sidetracked moms.  i like the ideas they present, i just have a hard time implementing them.  a place for everything and everything in it's place sounds like a dream home to me!  my husband may not believe this when he reads it but clutter does bother me.  it does stress me out.  but i never know how to tackle it.  he tells me constantly that we need to get rid of stuff and those are words you just can't say to a pack rat.  i keep almost everything for the day i "might" use it.  i am slowly coming around though, adapting the mindset that i will go ahead and get rid of something now and if i do need it again later i'll just buy it when i need it.  it actually works sometimes.  my kids are worse than i am, (mainly because i am not training them in something i can barely do myself) and worser still because there are 6 of them and they never throw anything away even when they are done with it (i won't even tell you about their room). 

jay got tired of tripping and stepping on toys so we designated one of our 5 bedrooms into a toy room.  for the most part it has cut down on the problem of having toys all over the house, and all the toys have a home, a whole room in fact!  now it happens that i need to make that room a bedroom again and i have no idea where the toys are going to go now.  i have tried minimizing the toys.  twice this year i have gotten rid of bags of toys, going from four toy boxes down to two, leaving only the transformers, leggos, cars, and polly pockets. even with just those, it's still a lot.  sadly, i have told the kids they can't have anymore toys.  i don't know what else to do. 

and clothes.  all of our closets are full.  we have a zillion sweatshirts and jackets and guess where they live?  in the kitchen on the backs of chairs.  when we are out, we come home, walk into the kitchen, throw our jacket or sweatshirt on the back of a chair, done.  when we leave, we know where to find our cover up though!  yes i have gone through the closets and gotten rid of clothes we don't wear anymore, but i may have to go through again.  i love my husband dearly but he has like 50 jackets, ok, 15 lol and he is always up for buying another.  i can't talk.  my obsession is shoes. 

books.  one can never have too many, right?  wrong.  we do.  i can't bring myself to get rid of any though.  not one.  unless it is torn to bits and if i can't tape it up then i have to throw it out.   we actually have more books than shelve to put them on.  jay has books from college, and he and drew are avid readers.  we have a zillion childrens books. we need a library for sure!
magazines and catalogs.  yep. i have a ton of those too.  can't part with them.  real simple, cooking light, health-those are the ones i subscribe to. then i have a ton of scrap mags that i get, read, and not throw away.  how do you throw away something that is supposed to give you inspiration?  it may not inspire me now, but someday down the road it may be just the thing to cure my scrappers block!  sheesh!  (pitiful, i know)

i can go on and on but the last thing i will say is that my time management skills suck.  i am such a procrastinator.  sometimes i procrastinate a thing right out of my own head and forget about it entirely!  i start another project before finishing one and then i have 3 things going on at once, i may get sidetracked(it's easy to do with the kids) and find myself frazzled and depressed then i stop and finish 1 or 2 things or nothing at all.  drives my poor husband crazy.

so i want to raise my glass and make a toast to all of you who are organized and have organized and ordered homes, God bless you!  you definitely have a gift!   please share your tips with me if you have any to spare!

Comments

[Sarah]

I'm an organized person, and I like things in their place....but life has not always allowed me to do those things. I HATE having messes and things not where they belong, but having kids and a dh who is a pile person, well...messes are just part of the deal. I clean things almost daily and I still can't keep up. I can keep my house the way I want IF I don't do anything else but keep up with the house all day. My problem is that I too am a pack rat, so trying to find space and places for all the things I keep really gets difficult. I always think a bigger house, more rooms will be the solution, but I'm now in the biggest house we've had yet and I still don't have enough room! LOL I need to have Clean Sweep come and help me part with some stuff. Funny thing is that I HAVE gotten rid of a LOT of stuff in the last year and a half we've been in this house - cuz I just had to - NO where to put it and I absolutely hate boxes of crap everywhere with no place to go.

[MandaKay]

Umm yeah - not organized here. With kids I think it is just almost impossible to be organized in the full sense of the meaning of that word! :)

[daph]

Wow , I had to check and see if I had unconsciously wrote that, but I only have one child. I wish I could help, but I'm in the same boat. All I can say is keep trying. That's my plan, each day is a new day, a little at a time, blah blah blah(smile).

[adrienne]

WOW girl, you know I have it down to a science. I love being organized. The only thing I can tell you is to try to stick with a routine that works for you. I am a firm believer of a place for everything. You have to REALLY purge. Believe me you have more room than you think. You have to be able to let go of "stuff" I know I didn't get to this point until I could do just that.

[deann]

boy oh boy - could i just copy and paste and call it MY blog entry for today - sigh!

seriously, that site simplemom site is sooooo cool! would you share it with our team - i think alot of us would find it useful?

xoxo,d

[Nina_VK]

seriously, how do some people do it!! Our house is not organized either! Sometimes I get in the mood to organize things and it works out for a good 2 days before everything is back to the way it was. Oh well....maybe when the kids are out of the house. lol :)

[Lynne]

Thank you so much for the website link! I'm an organized mess myself and I hate clutter.

[Rebekah]

I found that clutter & messes stress me out more than I used to realize. I can walk by it for days, but the stress grows, until the day when I would explode and deal with it all at once. This was not an effective system, it stressed us all out in the long run.

I'm finding that I can create a solution to one clutter/mess/lack of space problem at a time. Then I have to stick to it & make the effort to require my kids and hubby to stick with it. Then it becomes a habit (after a few weeks of hard work at keeping them all in line) and that system becomes self-contained and part of life. Then I can move on to the next problem that needs a new system. So I say, make it a project & find a system that you will like & use for each problem (start small), then stick with it :)

[Trinas]

I think I am gonna love that site! I am so on the path to better organization in my life!