Table of Contents

-Introduction
-Monthly Mission – Laundry
-Check Out These Pages! – Relevant pages and new site additions
-What I Learned From Living In A Show House

Introduction

What a crazy summer break for us. We decided to “just look” at some houses one weekend and stopped by a few open houses. Bam, we’re moving! We had to get our house ready to put on the market over the span of about 3 days, but we did it. Now, we’re quietly living in a show house. Talk about decluttering and cleaning and keeping it that way, at all times! I hope we can take some of these new habits along with us to our new home.

So, in between packing, moving, switching school and everything else, here’s a quick newsletter. I hope it finds everyone well.

Click the logo above to learn more!

Some people prefer to do their laundry once a day vs. once a week. But if you’re not sure what your style is, or how to keep up, check out this month’s mission. To read about August’s monthly mission, click here.

If you’re in a hurry to put some order back into your home, perhaps Mimi Tanner's unique method will give you that jumpstart. Check out her method at Declutter Fast: How To Get Your Home In Order Almost Immediately.

Here are some pertinent pages on the website you may have missed along with any new pages.

Home Filing System - Keep all your paperwork in order so you can find what you need at a moments notice, and learn what to keep and what to toss.

Declutter Home and Life - Getting organized involves a lot more than just tossing some extra possessions. Read more about organizing beyond just your home.

Closet Organizing Ideas - If you're looking for some ideas to help organize your closets, check out this page.

Travel Planning Tips - Are you taking a vacation this summer? Here are some helpful tips to organize and plan that trip.

Organizing Kids Rooms Stuff - If you have kids, they have a lot of stuff. Here are some helpful ideas to get them better organized.

Time Savers - To help streamline your life, here are some daily time savers.

What I Learned From Living In A Show House

So, on a whim, we decided to buy a new house and we had to put our current house on the market in a snap. We hadn’t planned this so we hadn’t previously started purging or putting stuff into storage or having a garage sale or anything.

The good… we found that we really only needed to put a few pieces of furniture into the garage in order to open up the space in the house. One night stand, one toy bin organizer, a chair and a small table. That’s it! That shows me that we didn’t really have too much furniture stuffed into this house, even though sometimes if felt cluttered. Continue on to see where the problem was.

The bad… the hard part was boxing up all the little things that litter the house. We had to pare down how many small things were out and about. For example, we packed up some books so the book shelf wasn’t stuffed and some board games too so the shelf unit wasn’t over full. My daughter boxed up several boxes of craft supplies and partially done projects. All those little things that should have a home, but either don’t, or just don’t get put away, needed to be boxed up or put away somewhere very tidily. The daily “stuff” clutter was the main problem in my house, and I’m guessing, in many of your houses too.

Now, the kitchen counters are mostly empty and super clean and shiny. The couches are not piled with things people dropped off on their way into the house. There are no piles of clutter along the edges of the rooms, on top of desks, tables and other flat surfaces. All laundry is put away, the towels are hung with care and there is not a drop of toothpaste spattered in the sinks or down the counters and cabinets. You get the picture.

Lesson learned… own less stuff and your house will look awesome! Own less stuff and it will be SO much easier to tidy up every single day. Those mostly empty kitchen counters, and other flat surfaces around the house are a breeze to clean! I really do love the sparse look of things. As I mentioned before, it just feels so much more relaxing. There are no piles taunting me that need to be dealt with. Every morning we wake up and get ready for the day and do a quick tidy up and wipe down to have the house ready to show on a moment’s notice. All together, it takes maybe an hour, depending on how much help I get.

After three weeks, I’m looking forward to being able to leave the house without worrying about whether or not the kids left the toilet seat up, or left their socks on the floor or if a couple dirty dishes were left on the kitchen counter. I am loving this new clean spacious look, but I’m ready to live somewhere in between a show house and a messy cluttered house.

We came home from a day at the beach the other day. In the past, on these sort of days, I would hate coming home to the mess we left. It was definitely a pleasure to return home and just be able to relax and not feel upset about all the work that needed to be done.

I definitely hope that some of these new daily tidying up skills move with us to the new house. To have the kitchen counters mostly clean, to have the bathrooms free of built up toothpaste and to have most areas of the floor clear of piles will be a pleasure.

What can you box up and store away as if you were moving? What can you actually live without that you thought you really needed? Try living in a show house for a couple weeks and see what habits are most important to you and what you don’t mind letting go.


Until next time, happy organizing!

Tracy Greene
Plan-and-Organize-Life.com