My Mom used to give my sister's and I ultimatums and tell us "If you want to go to the pool today, you have to clean your room" (Our youngest sister Evie was usually excluded from this chore since she was only 4 or 5.). So my sister Amanda & I had devised the perfect plan for cleaning the junk out of our rooms AND keeping the clutter...Give it to Evie.
We had what we called "AUCTIONS" in our youngest sister Evie's Room. We would gather all of our clutter that we didn't want to clean up, and we took it into Evie's Room. At that point we would display and barter our items to one another. Ultimately, the end result was forcing our baby sister TO PAY US to hoard our junk, so our rooms were clean AND we didn't have to throw our treasure away. It was awesome. I think the best bargain I sold to Evie was 25 cents for babysitting 25 of my stuffed animals for a year! She was thrilled, and I got to go to the pool!
As I've grown into adulthood I still do tend to hoard things (my workmates will attest to this FOR SURE). I do, however, try and keep some sort of organization and system in place with my madness. Especially since we're expecting an additional roommate coming to live with us in October ;) I've been trying to make sure that we've got good organizational systems in place at home. My friend Beth tells me I'm nesting. I say I'm just cleansing my inner organizer. My husband, Tommy, definitely appreciates my need to clean. But he also thinks my urges sometimes have inconvenient timing when he is in the mood to relax and hang out and I'm twitching because there are dirty dishes in the sink...
TODAY, I had one of those urges...I walked into our bedroom and there was unorganized laundry EVERYWHERE. Tommy does a lot of laundry. But by the time he washes a load, folds a load and carries it upstairs he isn't in the mood to put it away. So it accumulates in these piles that start out folded and then just get spread all over the place. It ends up being hard to tell if it's clean or dirty! As I started trying to clear up some of this clutter I opened one of his dresser drawers and found this:
I knew EXACTLY what was going on here... He's the guy who needs his undershirt to match the button up he is wearing on top. The problem is, when he puts his laundry into these drawers he can only see 4 or 5 of his tshirts at a time, because they are stacked on top of one another. So, apparently his remedy to this is just swirl them around in the dresser drawer until you see the color shirt that matches your button up and go from there.
I decided it was my wifely duty (I'm NOT nesting) to try and help him overcome this chaos. So I refolded all of his tshirts with my awesome Old Navying skills and got right down to work. I thought, if there was a way that he could see all of his shirts at once MAYBE probably not though it wouldn't turn in to this swirly mess. So here's what I'm trying out:
So, I'm trying out this new method and we'll see how it goes. I folded all of his shirts and stacked them sideways so he can see every shirt he has and just pull out the one he needs. I did the same thing with his pants and shorts too. And guess what else? THE DRAWERS ACTUALLY CLOSE NOW!!! Ha. I think they closed before, but Tommy just has this thing where he likes leaving drawers open.
Definitely have started the itch to organize my space more, so please share your organizing tips and tricks!