Life can really get in the way of our hobbies and relaxing down time! In the midst of a crazy whole house remodel, being a 24/7/365 caregiver to my sweet Mother before her passing and being a homeschooling Mom can really create havoc. After my Mother passed away we had 48 hours to clear out her apartment before the end of the month came, so pretty much we just boxed up everything and brought it into my craft room/blogging office.
We just kept piling (boxed & unboxed stuff) in more and more of my Mother's belongings into the craft room/blogging office.
And even more and more got shoved in there, the furniture went into a storage unit. We had taken moving boxes and just emptied drawers, kitchen cabinets, nightstands, closets etc. With no time to waste we got it all done (rent of $2,500 was due in 48 hours!). I am not sure that I would exactly call it "done" because now the hard part comes, sorting, purging, bill paying, donating, cleaning, crying, aching, sorrow...yes, all those things came about and allowed for healing.
I was thankful that the homeschool young man spent some time with me over Christmas break digging through things and sorting piles (Keep, Not Sure, Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Trash, Give to Mom's Friends). I guess the more honest thing was the homeschool young man was my emotional support dog (hahaha, as I lovingly referred to him). He was my pack mule, hauling 30 gallon black trash bags out to the garbage, putting the 30 gallon white trash bags full of keep stuff to another room, hauling the XL moving boxes from U-Haul (BTW those are AWESOME an only cost around .30¢ each!) full of donation items out to a waiting truck and most importantly hugging Mom (me) when I found something that was special to my Mom and I would start crying. Below is a picture of my Mom with her favorite stuffed animal and buddy CHEEZE HEAD.
We got rid of the Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Give to Mom's Friends, and Trash in short time. It was the tedious sorting that became an exhausting process: what to keep, what else to purge, how long to keep important documents etc. Fast forward to life happening, my dear father-in-law became ill on again and off again and he passed away several months after my Mother did. So again began the process of Keep, Not Sure, Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Trash, Give to Dad's Friends. My mess in the craft room/blogging office sort of got put on hold for emotional reasons and life happening.
With this death there was a farm and farm house that we had spent every Christmas of our dating/married life (all but one in which we went to my parents home in Texas that year with our newly adopted baby), we spent every Easter and every Thanksgiving in that house, my husband and all his siblings grew up there, all the grand kids and great-grand kids played there. Here is a photo of the homeschooled young man with his dear Grandpa teaching him about gardening. (sorry it's an old faded picture from a wall calendar that I made for all the grandparents many moons ago).
We enjoyed the beautiful views of the property from the swing, hubby and I spent hours of our dating years and early years of marriage in the machine shed working on Dune Buggy's. There was all that to clean out too, a huge farm machine shed, two car garage and a full basement, not to mention the 5 bedroom house. The siblings all worked together so well to get things under control, purged and sorted. The Lord blessed with the home and property selling very quickly, fast enough to shock everyone in a down housing market!
Moving on into the next phase of my craft room/blogging office clean up, it was daunting to dig through and sort everything. I would start sorting for a few hours and feel like I had made ZERO progress and just made more of a mess of things. I would stop for a few days/weeks and then start again, only to do a few hours, again more of a mess and feeling as though nothing was getting accomplished. Construction dust was all over from our recent remodeling project. It was just a mess and it was mixed in with all my blogging work piles and craft supplies. Something had to be done!
I truly felt that this was just a lost cause. While surfing the Internet the next day I came across a local professional organizing company. This was not just Jane Doe who likes to organize, this was the real deal!!! These people deal with true hoarding situations, situational clutter, bug infested properties, death clean-outs, real estate staging, they help busy Mom's and kids with tons of toy clutter, and just general home and office organizing. I kept their number for a month or so, thinking, I can do this myself, why pay someone; that is so silly and frivolous to do!
Well, I finally made the call and hired the company for 5 hours, the Lord blessed my efforts of giving in to asking for help and I got 2 organizers for the price of 1. They were training a new gal and she came as a free apprentice. What a blessing! They were so down to earth and non-judgmental. We laughed and had a really good time! It was like having my girlfriends over for a decluttering party.
You would not believe what we got done in that amount of time. It was scary though, they had a totally different game plan and approach than I was using in my past attempts at getting this mess under control. We started by emptying out the ENTIRE ROOM into my dining room!! So, you could not walk in my dining room, I kept thinking hubby is going to come home for dinner and freak out because the other room had exploded out into the dining room!
Deep breath here, we then wiped down all the surfaces in the room, walls, windows, floors, baseboards etc. Then decided what furniture would go back in, wiped it all down, placed it back in the room. Then we went item by item and decided if it was TRASH, KEEP, DONATE, NOT SURE. They brought these huge black construction size trash bags and they even had cute shopping bags with handles for the donate items. We also utilized one of my all time favorite things; the curb side FREE pile (everything disappeared within 30 minutes of being drug out of the house!)
See how the room is really shaping up? I'm tellin' ya, call a professional, don't be embarrassed, do it NOW!!! CALL NOW OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! CALL NOW!
I have a clean, empty, uncluttered surface to craft on, to scrapbook on, to do whatever I want on!
Really, you must look past the Bob The Builder blue & yellow paint, the homeschooled young man used this room when he was a little boy and hubby has yet to get around to painting this...LOL. So I just go with it!
We incorporated a bunch of my late Mother's craft bins and craft items in along with my scrapbooking items. Plus, I had a ton of stuff leftover from teaching crafting classes and that all fit into these bins and the organizers labeled all my bins. They gave me ideas on how to store things more effectively. They hauled out all the trash bags for me and they hauled away all the donation items too! I was just left with this....
All my goodies had a home, the remaining items that I decided to keep from my Mother's stuff were put into a tote for me to go through when I was ready at a later date. The organizers found a lamp I was not using and they set it up, with an outlet strip (that was found in a drawer) for easy access to plug in my crafting toys, they organized all the bins, drawers and cabinets. They put together a display tower that I had in storage and got everything set up and ready for use! I did not need to buy anything, we just repurposed things that we came across around my house and/or in my Mom's stash.
All my cardstock, scrapbooking papers, rubber stamps, inks and ink pads, embossing folders, ribbon, glue, scissors and all that stuff was all organized into these bins (from my Mom and my stash). THEN THEY LABELED IT ALL!!!!!
In less than 5 hours....that is right, we were not even finished with the 5 hours yet! I know, totally unbelievable. So, they asked me if there was anything else that I wanted organized since we still had time left. I was just numb, I could not believe that we had done all this work already, after I had tried and tried to do it myself and just would give up after a few hours.
Onward we moved to some cabinets in my dining room and they straightened up our homeschool supplies, books, my junk cabinet (the one with hammers, screwdrivers, light bulbs, etc), then moved to the living room (which had been filled with boxes of my Mom's stuff and my craft stuff that I had started sorting and failed at). Now that the living room was uncluttered and the former items that were in the boxes were now beautifully organized into the above photos, the organizers then staged my living room furniture and rehung my drapes so they looked nice and fancy with crisp folds (like in a magazine!)
And then, just like that, it was time for us to say our goodbyes, we hugged and they left. With all the trash gone, no need for me to worry about dragging the donations somewhere; they were gone too. All that I was left with were a few cute bags with handles that were going to friends (homeschool blessings I passed on to some friends) and a small box containing gifts that needed wrapped for Christmas.
Praise the Lord! It was sure hard to make that call for help, that first step is always a killer one! However, my family is so blessed and so am I.
I left to get myself the best gluten free pizza in town and waited for my husband to arrive home. I got a text right away saying "Great job!" The homeschooled young man came home and told me that the house looked really great! So I would say it was a win-win situation and well worth the money!
Below I have included a few links (I received
nothing in return for posting these links) for you to get the help you need. My clutter was deemed as "Situational Clutter" due to the deaths and home remodel that contributed to my clutter.
National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals
The Institute for Challenging Disorganization
Find My Organizer
This has been so freeing and such a burden has been lifted. God is a God of order and not of clutter and disfunction. I'm less tired now when I am at home, I don't dread my craft room/blogging office anymore. Lift your burden and don't be afraid, call a professional (cleaning ladies and maid services are not trained in handling clutter) and get it done!
Moe
