Happy 2020!! Can you believe it, a new year, a new decade! This time of year is all about organizational tips, decluttering challenges, ways to start the new year clutter free, which by the way, are all my favorite topics. So much excitement and motivation to get organized this time of year. Goodness, I love it!
But as much as I love to declutter and organize I sometimes look around my house and get a little aggravated. Sometimes I wish I could organize it once and it would stay that way….forever, no maintenance required. 😉 Ha. (As stated in The Incredibles…”I just cleaned up this mess.”) I often find several areas of my home that don’t stay as neat and clean and organized as I would like, not necessarily because of lack of effort, mainly because we live and play in our home. Do you have any of those areas in your own home you find yourself constantly tidying? So I am writing this blog post as much to myself as anybody. A confession that not all rooms stay organized, even after organizing them and certain rooms require more effort than others to keep neat and tidy. While organizing does wonders and decluttering makes all the difference in the world, some areas will still require organizational maintenance, regardless…at least in my house. This is something I recently realized and apparently it still needs to sink in.
As I sit down to write this I am in our office/playroom and currently our playroom side is somewhat tidy, but can always use some work, especially after Christmas. I often see pictures of beautiful, Pinterest worthy playrooms and I can’t help but think to myself…”how do they keep it so neat”, or “does all those toys really stay neatly in all those bins”? It made me think about my own home and my realistic vs unrealistic expectations for it. I started thinking about what areas easily stays organized, what spaces need maintenance from time to time and what spaces require constant maintenance in order to stay organized. Sometimes I get frustrated because I find myself setting unrealistic expectations that my house has to be “perfect”, completely tidy or neat at all times (haha…who’s is?). I don’t know about you or your living situation, but with a 6, 4 and 2 year old in our house I am not sure this is going to happen anytime soon, if ever. And even before kids, there were still areas that in our home that needed extra attention from time to time. So I thought I would give a real and honest run-down of a few areas in my personal home that need refreshing more often than not. My goal is to always be real and authentic, so here it goes.
Spaces that require constant maintenance: (And sometimes they stay unorganized or messy because I am too dang tired to mess with it right then.)
-
- My boy’s bedrooms – This area requires more of a tidying up as opposed to re-organizing, but it sure does need constant tidying. I don’t clean their room for them every single night, but I have to “encourage” them and assist them to keep their rooms somewhat tidy. I am constantly in there straitening/refolding clothes and shutting their dresser drawers (why is this so hard to do…just shut the drawer). Their job is usually picking up things off the floor, straightening their beds and tidying their shoes as most of them are strung on the closet floor instead of on their shoe shelves where they go. (Their beds are never perfect, but I want them to slowly start leaning how to make it so I don’t criticize their bed making skills much. They have to start somewhere.) One day maybe they will do all of this without being asked, but for now I am not holding my breath. I am trying to teach them better habits, but it is also something I realize that takes time, work and being consistent. So for now it is just something each day or every couple of days we have to work together to get it looking presentable again.
- The playroom {side} – *Sigh* Oh the playroom. I have recently realized this is a constant (uphill) battle right now in our home. Especially with a 2 year old who enjoys getting things out but is not as good at putting them up. And I don’t know about y’all, but some nights I am just plain exhausted or we have bumped up against bedtime because we were doing other things and guess what…the playroom stays messy. This is always a little bit of a hot spot for me, so again, I am writing this mainly to myself as a reminder that this room is going to require constant effort and maintenance. With every Christmas, birthday and any other special occasion, this room (or wherever you keep toys) will probably need to be decluttered and re-organized, and other times in between more than likely. But the flip side is, it’s a playroom! It is meant to be played in, therefore it is going to get messy. I have done my best to organize it in a way that makes it easy for my boys to put away their toys with categorized bins and whatnot, but in reality, unless I am in there helping them,….things just get shoved places so the floor looks clean when Mom (aka me) comes to inspect their work. So again, I work with them and show them where things go, but at the end of the day it won’t stay as organized as I would like and that is ok. 🙂 It is something every so often I have to take a little time and assess what actually gets used and played, then re-organize, re-categorize and re-arrange, and yes, it will get messed up again. This room (at least in our home) is not a “one and done” type room.
- Books! – This is another thing I am constantly picking up. My kids love to read, which I am grateful for, but that means books are typically strung about. I have tried several different organizational storage solutions and while those seem to be working fine, they still don’t get put back as neatly as I prefer. Some books are halfway destroyed thanks to…ahem..Keller and when put away they are never all turned the same way and they don’t stay in size order either. Haha. I say a lot of that jokingly, but they are days where I prefer it to stay they way I organized it, but I know it won’t. These books are read and used, they are not a display that is to only be seen and not touched. Again, we work with them to pick the books up most nights and put them back where they belong, but come in our house at any given time and more than likely you will find a book in some random spot.
- My car – Keeping my car “somewhat” tidy requires constant maintenance. It definitely doesn’t stay clean on its own. We travel probably an average of 1-2 weekends out of every month. And by the time we hit the road it is dinner time or lunch time so “not eating” in my car is not an option. There is going to be food, there are going to be spills and there are going to be old french fries, goldfish or chicken nuggets found under a seat or stuck down in a car seat. You should see the things I vacuum out each week. Oh boy. So once a week I try to run it through the car wash , vacuum it, wipe it down and clean it out. It stay clean for about a day or two and then it starts to get filled up again with blankets and toys and crumbs and papers and coats and other random items, requiring another clean out.
After reading that you might be thinking I am a little OCD and crazy or maybe you can relate. 🙂 Whichever it is I hope it helps sheds light on a lie (I know I tell myself) that everyone else has a clean house all the time. I love to look at beautiful pictures of neatly organized spaces for inspiration, but it can also leave me feeling defeated that not every area of my home looks like that. I hope this was helpful in reminding you that while pictures are great and definitely motivating, it is important to keep a realistic and healthy perspective of your home. Your home is meant to be lived in. So areas and things that get used more often are going to require a little more maintenance and effort.
While I just shared the typical messy/unorganized spots of my home, I also thought I would share a few areas that once organized are fairly maintenance free or require a slight re-fresh every now and then.
Spaces that stay organized: (for the most part)
-
- Linen closet – I tidied up this area last year and now it is pretty much maintenance free. This was a quick and easy area in my house to re-organized. I got rid of a unneeded sheets and blankets, added these size medium bins from the Container Store for cleaning supplies and viola, it has stayed organized since the day I re-did it. Decluttering was key. Getting rid of any unnecessary excess allowed for everything left to fit nicely on the shelves and I am able to maintain the neatness when switching out bed sheets, blankets or getting cleaning supplies out.
- Coat closet – This one has also been easy to keep organized. The recent update I did was switch out the old mismatched hangers with these matching hangers and now the coats fit more nicely in the closet and have a more uniform look. Also, I put most of our board games on the top shelf. We don’t have a ton of storage so I had to get creative. It works well that the kids can’t get game after game out and lose all the little pieces like they have before. This particular space takes very little maintenance, if any at all.
- Our pantry! – I did an overhaul on our pantry a while back and put several bins and baskets from the container store on all our shelves and added some OXO containers for cereal and flour, sugar, etc. and it has been game changing. (I plan to do a more detailed post on that soon.) I labeled each basket so everyone knows what type of food goes in which bin. For the longest time I thought having baskets/bins would restrict the amount of space I had, but it has only made it better! We have a very small pantry so these items have helped maximize our space and make it look pretty too. Once I re-organized it, it has been very easy to keep organized.
- Our bedroom – Besides daily straightening/making the bed, etc. this space stays pretty neat most of the time. The time it gets the most messy is when we travel and have returned. All the bags go in our room till I can muster up the energy to unpack everything. As much as we travel you would think I have this packing and unpacking thing down, but another confession…I.hate.packing. I do. I hate it every time I have to do it, but we go and I pack and then I unpack. Other than that, our room stays pretty tidy.
- Our office {side} – As much as we try not too (even with systems in place)…over time things will get piled up on our desk and our filing cabinet and every so often we have to do a quick declutter, re-sorting and organizing and then it is back full-functioning. We probably do this once every 6-9 months or so.
- Our closet – Besides our pantry, our closet has been my favorite recent transformation. I recently did a re-sprucing (it had been a while and needed doing) by switching out every hanger in our closet with these matching velvet ones from Amazon. (I chose the color Ivory.) That alone made a HUGE difference. I also re-arranged how my clothes were hung, took out a dresser and replaced it with a bench to make the room appear more open, and tweaked a few other things. Now it stays pretty well organized (unless my kids decide to play in there or try on all my shoes…which they do). I would say I do a big closet clean out about every 6-12 months or so. Otherwise, it stays pretty organized and functional.
- Kitchen Cabinets – We remodeled out kitchen about 2 years ago and during that remodel I did a major clean out. It felt so good to take everything out, go through it and decide what we actually needed used and what just took up space. Then with my new empty cabinets I strategically put everything back and it has been easy to maintain. **One underneath kitchen cabinet is actually on the forefront of my list to re-organize as I recently pulling something from the back of the cabinet and it looked a wreck!** Again, this is an area that if organized right, can stay fairly maintenance free (at least for a while).
- Garages! – I have a whole post on garages coming soon, but for now this is an area that probably needs to be re-visited/re-organized every year. Stuff accumulates, things pile up and before you know it you can’t park your car in the garage anymore. 🙂 We try and do a big (and I mean big…like takes all day or two days) clean out once every 12-18 months!
So I write all of this to show that while some areas can stay organized, there are a few that might not and that is ok. And if you are one that can keep everything tidy and organized all the time, I tip my hat to you, because I am not. Some areas of my house get messy and some nights I am too tired or too busy with other things to clean it up. But as I look around the messy playroom I am often grateful because that means it is being played in. Sometimes the mess simply means things need to be put back in the appropriate spot and sometimes the mess (in any given room) means my current system isn’t working and I need to try something new. 🙂
What areas of your home are you able to maintain with little effort and what areas require maximum effort? Please share any tips you have for keeping rooms tidy, I’m always looking for new strategies to try!
XOXO,
Sarah
*This post contains affiliate links. If the link is clicked and opened through a web browser and not the app I will potentially earn a small commission.*
tacklingtheclutter.com 