Housework

Here's a question to send out there to anyone who has to clean house -- don't we all?

What's the process of doing the job? Did you always know how to clean? Have you always been able to organize? to throw things out? to give stuff to someone who can use it? Has your house always been neat? -- you know, like the pictures in Better Homes and Gardens? Or, do you live with clutter? Are you a packrat? How do you convert clutter into neatness?

I'm working on de-cluttering. A woman taught a lesson at Church and inspired a lot of us to get going. Something about three bags and going through a room filling them. One bag for doesn't belong here, sort out, put elsewhere, later. Bag two to donate or give away. Bag three for throw away. Maybe it works for some of you; I had trouble with it because it encompassed too much.

My daughter caught the idea from the same class and went a step further by finding an 8-CD Book-on-Tape at the library. It was called Get Organized: Clean and Simple: Reclaim Your Home, Your Office, Your Life. Written by Marla Dee with others who were considered experts in a particular area.

In the first place you need to look at your room you want to clean. Then you have to figure out what you want it to look like. Then you S.T.A.C.K. That's Sort, Toss, Assign, Contain, Keep it up. See the book or tape for details since I'm such a novice with the system. But it does make sense the way my daughter explained it to me.

One of the biggest reasons our lives get cluttered in the first place (so I'm informed by what the tapes say) is that we are indecisive. Don't know what to do with something that's in our hand so we set it down. After a while we've set a lot down and we have clutter and disorganization galore. Then I suppose procrastination sets in and if that gets out of hand, the job becomes so overwhelming we can't even get started. When we try to fix the problematic mess, we become so frustrated that it's pretty easy to give it up.

Look at me -- I'm writing about it instead of tackling the job.

What I'd like to know from those of you who don't have a clutter problem is -- what thought process do you go through to keep your lives neat? Share, please. You can help so many of us.

The second thing I'd like to know is if any of this rings true in your own cluttered living?

Got to stop for now. I'm going to help a friend pack.