The Rest of the House: Before and After

Six month ago, when I read "The Headgates" and got rid of a bunch of things, The house felt nice for a little while, but pretty soon little things started creeping up into rooms and popping out here and there.  I wondered where all the stuff was coming from.  "It seeps through the walls!"  I thought.  Well, no, it was actually seeping through the nicely organized closets I had kept too much in and were quickly becoming unorganized closets.

Trying to keep the perspective this time that  I only wanted to keep those things which I thought we needed and giving away the rest was really helpful.  I even got rid of some things that I wanted to keep, but realized there was no good reason to keep them.  I realized the stuff took too much from me in time, mental space, energy and physical space.  It's just not worth it.

I learned a few things about myself in the process.  The most painful was that I was not as neat of a housekeeper as I always thought I was.  The house got clean at least once a day - sometimes twice (okay, twice was rare).  The different rooms got a thorough organizing and cleaning once a week (sometimes once every two weeks, to be honest), but I realized that the majority of the time - the house looked messy.

Sometimes my husband would dare mention that it would be nice if the kids learned to clean up after themselves.  I responded by thinking he was a little ungrateful for the hard work they put in every morning during family work time.  I also thought he didn't understand how impossible it was to keep after them all day to put their things away.

I had, of course, tried this way of doing things.  "I'm just going to focus on making sure the kids put their things away when they are done using them!  Once they are in the habit, it won't be such a big deal."  So I went through the day stressing out whenever they got things out, or when I'd find anything out of place, and feeling like I was focusing on the negative as I called out all day, "Bud, you forgot to put your football away",  "Little Miss, you left some papers out", "Spice, don't forget to put the hair things away", "Bazinks, you have 2 pairs of shoes in the front room",  etc, etc.  As I tried to keep the house picked up throughout the whole day.

Then suddenly, I would have something else to do for a little bit besides following them around and making sure they put their stuff away and I would find afterwards, to my dismay, that things were looking messy again.  It was too stressful to live that way.  I decided to relax a little and to be okay with letting them get things out and making sure everyone picks up their things before every meal.

I didn't exactly follow through with this either.  It's hard to check the entire house before every meal.  I did check it always before breakfast, but I did sometimes let some things slide (a little toy in the corner here, a few things under the bed there, some clothes off of their hangers in the closet) I didn't always notice these things and I also didn't want to discourage their efforts by being too nit-picky.

The result was that if I ever had any unexpected guest, I had to give several reasons why things weren't clean right then.  "If only people would come over right after family work time," I thought, "they would see that my house does get clean and that I am teaching my kids to work and that we are not total slobs."  Most people, however, including my husband, came in during the evenings and things just didn't look as nice by then.

What I didn't realize was that I hadn't addressed the root of the problem.  There were just too many things to keep track of!  There were too many things to get out.  I would have saved myself a lot of time and effort if I would have realized this sooner.  That's okay though.  Better late than never!

As I went through the house and started taking pictures of the rooms "before", I would make some excuse as to why it looked so bad right then.  I started to realize that maybe my husband was right in feeling like we needed to do a better job about living in a clean environment.  I had gotten used to seeing a pile here and a little mess there.  I knew when we were getting to it so it didn't bother me that it wasn't being cleaned up right then.  Seeing my house from the perspective of others as I took the pictures helped me open my eyes to the fact that, most of the time, the house did not look tidy.

The last few days (and I'll admit it's been very few since I finished getting rid of stuff through the entire house) have been so serene.  I still have to tell children to put things away, but with only a few things to be got out - I don't feel like I'm doing it all day and they don't feel like they are either.  I have a high standard for what each room needs to look like and everything has a place in which it should be.  AND there are not so many things with so many places to be, that it's easy for everyone to keep track of what goes where. 

I've been going through the entire house before breakfast, checking under beds, in closets and drawers for anything out of place.  For each thing I find that is out of it's place, I move us up one less step on the family ladder (we start with a possible 5 steps every morning).  The first day, I found like 10 things out.  They were disappointed because they thought they had done a good job cleaning.  However, they quickly understood the higher expectations and the second day I found only 4 things.  We've been doing this for about a week.  There was one day where I found nothing out.  Yesterday, I found 2 things.  They are getting better at noticing when something is not in it's place and so am I.  The challenge is now going to be how to not let things start creeping into the house (For example, Spice asked if she could make paper dolls from a cereal box the other day.  I even let her have some loose paper to make them some clothes.  Now she has a little collection of paper dolls.  They are loving playing with them, and I love their imaginative play, but it sure seems like children can use anything to make more stuff out of!)

So now, to the rest of the pictures.

On Saturday, all I had left to clear out was one hallway closet, three basement closets, the laundry room and the main room in the basement (I'm not sure what to call that room.  It's not really a family room since we seldom go down there.  I guess it's kind of a "man cave" room since that's where the TV is and where we store the movies and some games, but Rock only watches a movie like once every two weeks or so.  I guess it's more an extension of the toy room since that's where the kids play when they have friends over.  They'll make little huts with blankets, the futon and banana chairs; or play with their babies in the little built in play house.

Again, I didn't take "before" pictures of every place.  I would look in a closet and think, "there's not much in here, I'll just take a few things out real quick.  There was always more than I realized though.  I'll let you know what I remember getting rid of in the places I didn't take "Before" pictures in.  I'll start from the top levels of the house going down.

The top level is the bedrooms and the computer room, which I've already posted about.  Down some stairs, you get to the front room.  There's not much in there so I have no before pictures.  Someday I'd like a couple of recliners in here, but for now it's just a piano and some music (the kids decorated the piano with some Halloween lights).  There is also the two boxes of stuff I want to sell (curriculum and Geotrax - we spent so much money on that silly train set!), but those will be out of there soon.

This room has a closet for coats and shoes.  No before pictures, I just got rid of old coats and old shoes.

Next to this room is the kitchen, maybe I'll talk more about the kitchen on a different post.  I'm liking it a lot right now.

Down a few steps from the kitchen is the Living Room.  Here's one side of it (again no before pictures - there's just less books now):

Here is the before pictures of the other side of this room:

It didn't look quite so bad with the doors closed.  I guess this is what you would term our "TJed closet"  (see more about a TJed closet here - maybe I'll add a couple things to interest them to the bottom shelf on a rotating basis - like  books or something.  I don't know, we'll see).  We were also keeping our devotional boxes in here, but those are now upstairs in the computer room (where we like to do devotionals these days). 
I just threw away some things.  Here is what is kept:

Top: Games.
Right: Our bean jar, a bin of math manipulatives (abacus, wrap ups, compass, times-tables flashcards), and at the bottom is our nature journals.
Left: Games (we also have a game closet downstairs, but these are the games we play most often.  Hmmm.... come to think of it, maybe the ones downstairs should go...)

Next to this room is a half-bathroom (with nothing in the drawers but extra toilet paper) and the laundry room.

Here is the "Before" pictures of the laundry room:

The stuff in the basket came from the project room.  Everything else is just cleaners that the kids can't reach to put away or that don't fit into the cupboard above.

This is the cupboard above.  Lots of different cleaners.

This it the other cupboard above.  The bins have things to use for our leather couches.  Rock usually takes care of that so I wasn't sure what exactly we needed out of them.  I still need to ask him to look through them.

I eventually want to have only a few basic ingredients for homemade cleaners (like the recipes found here), but I have to work up to that as I try different recipes and find what works well.  I tossed a bunch of cleaners that I don't use anymore (mostly because the kids clean the bathrooms and those cleaners had harsh chemicals so we hadn't used them in a long time).  This made room so that I could put the stuff that we do use in the cupboards.  I didn't want to have to get everything out and put everything away whenever it was time to clean the bathrooms, though, and the cupboards are high, so I left three little cleaning baskets out (with the safe cleaners) where the older kids could reach them and put them away on their own.

Here's how it looks now:

I did keep one bottle of the harsher chemicals for me to use if I had to, and the Comett, just in case.  Everything else is things we use often or still need.

Not a lot of  difference on this side

Here is one hallway closet (by the laundry room).  We had all sorts of miscellaneous things in here.  Most of it just got tossed.  I put the games in the TJed closet.  This closet is next to the garage door so I kept some "going out" things in here.

Before:

After:

 It's kind of blurry, but I just kept sunblock and bug spray, tapes (packaging, duct, etc), a bin of gardening things (some seeds, gloves), a few "educational" coloring books (butterflies, wildflowers), a picnic blanket, and some Brainquest cards to play in the car on long drives.

Next to this closet is the door that heads to the basement where we have the project room and the toy room (which you've seen), a hallway closet, a bathroom (with nothing but extra toilet paper in the drawers), the food storage closet, and a few stairs that lead down the the "man-cave, game, play room-extension" room.

Here's the hallway closet next to the bathroom:  We keep "Guest" things in here - sheets, blankets, pillows, towels.  Except for on the bottom shelf which holds a sheet that the kids can play with. (No before pictures on this one)

Then down the a few stairs to the "Man-cave, game, play-room extension" room ;-) (no before pictures- there wasn't really a change here).

Yes, there is a big TV that the futon is faced towards, but, alas, it didn't fit in the picture ;-)  The TV has a Wii and a DVD player under it.   No one has played the Wii in months.  Obviously, it should go, but apparently there is something about "knowing that it's there should we ever choose to use it" that makes the boys of the house think we should keep it. 

In the closets behind the futon, I got rid of a lot of electronic things and wires. I didn't even remember what they were for.  I didn't take before pictures, but here is the back of the van filled with the things I pulled out of the basement closets:

 
Here's one closet:

All of the top shelf has movies we should get rid of, but they are not mine to give away.

 

 

 

The middle shelf has CDs.

 The Thirld shelf has Church DVD's.  The bottom shelf has Wii accessories.

 Other closet:

I threw out some games and kept these.  More should probably go.  If we don't play them in the next few winter month, I'll get rid of them.

And that's it.  Our entire house.

Okay, not really. 

There is one more closet/area - the food storage place.  I almost went through it, but I'm scared of the spiders.  I think I'll wait until Rock pulls out the Christmas decorations that are in there and then I'll toss the stuff that is under them (there are a couple of boxes that I'm not sure what's in them, but obviously if I haven't missed them all year - they should go.  The storage room has food, tent, sleeping bags, a baby swing, suitcases, empty boxes and bins, Christmas decorations, a Christmas tree, paint and other "fix it" things for the house (and the two boxes I don't know about).  I hesitate to show it here... here it is anyway:

This is the hallway that leads to it.  We have two mattresses stored here for guests and two fans for summer.

Here is one side of the food storage room:

Here is the other:

There is a bin of legos in here that I'm ready to part with, but I forgot about it until just now. I should probably get rid of the swing too. This closet will look better come Christmas time! 

Well, at least everything else is done and the kids are too scared of this area to go into it so the mess won't infiltrate into the rest of the house. 

Okay, now that really is it.  Now you know all the dirty secrets :-) 

I'm sure loving how it feels in our house now.  I'll have to figure out some way to get some of my neighbors to come over unexpectedly again so they can get a different impression.   (Just kidding - I really didn't do any of it for the neighbors!)

Does anyone else have pictures of how their 6 month purge went?  I'd love to see them!