Day 3

So hopefully, the Evening and Morning Routine and the daily quick clean is helping to make your day a little calmer, a little more organized and you are starting to see some improvement.  Well today, you are going to see a lot of improvement with little effort.  Today you are going to declutter.  You won't get all of your clutter gone today, but you are going to put a noticeable dent in it and you are going to be so surprised by what you can accomplish with so little effort.

If you managed to get all of your laundry caught up, then great!  If not, don't worry, just make an effort to do at least 2-3 loads a day until you do get it caught up and then decide how many you need to do each day to stay caught up.  I'll be posting a Laundry tip sheet later in the week to hopefully help stay on top of things.  At any rate, you are going to need those three hampers or containers you used yesterday for today's task.  This is a helpful hint I modified a little from FlyLady.  If you aren't familiar with FlyLady, then check out her website one day at www.Flylady.net.  She has an excellent system in place that may work better for you.  I never could commit to it, but she has had tons of success helping people and her followers swear by her approach.  Even if you don't follow her system, she has some great ideas.

1. Get 3 containers (hampers, boxes, rubbermaid containers etc.) and put them in a central location of the house.  Line each with a trash bag.
2. Designate one container for Throw away, one for Give away, and one for Put away.
3. Get your empty laundry basket.
4. Start in your bedroom and set a timer for 5 minutes.
5. Go through the room and pick out as many things for your baskets.
6. Go to the containers and put the things you gathered in the correct container
7. Go on to each room until the containers are full.
8. Throw the throw away bag away immediately.  Put the give away bag in your car to drop off at your designated donation site, and put away the put away container properly.  Don't just put the things in the correct room, this time put the stuff where it belongs.  
9. Do this 3 more times.

If you are like me, you don't want to throw things away because you think you might need them.  That's ok.  If you have a place for it, then put it there.  If not, then find a place for it.  You will be amazed at the things you have multiples of because you never had a designated spot for them before.  For example: in our old home we never could find nail clippers when we needed them.  Because nail clippers aren't that expensive, I would pick a couple up here and there so we could have them when we needed them.  I didn't worry about how many I bought over the years because it seemed like the old house swallowed them up.  Now that we are in the new house and I have designated a spot for the nail clippers, make an effort to put the clippers up when I'm done and nag the husband and kid to do the same thing, we have about 6 sets and I'm not done unpacking everything.  Don't get me started on pens.  I've donated about 6 dozen pens to my son's school and I'm still finding more.  

Don't get caught up in the "I'm going to have a yard sale" mentality either.  If you keep telling yourself that and never do, then what has that got you?  If you still insist on having a yard sale, then find an area to keep all the stuff you are going to sell and get cracking on it.  Use a spare room and give yourself a date.  Pick a date and get everything together, cleaned and tagged for that date.  Give yourself room to postpone a LIMITED amount of time.  If you have to postpone more than twice, get rid of it.  

Clutter makes our lives more stressful and gives us more to clean.  If you hate housework and want to do less of it, you have to have less stuff.