Getting Started

The Ultimate House Decluttering Project has been a very long time in the making.  Really, ever since we moved to our house 5 years ago.  It started before that, though, when we rented our first house.  It had a big attic, and we began collecting stuff for "when we get our own house someday".  When that time came, though, we decided to do some decluttering so we'd have less stuff to move.  Even after that effort, we filled the 2-car garage of our new house with lots of things, planning to unpack and incorporate them into the house eventually.  Unfortunately, that plan never did come to fruition.  I became pregnant a month after we moved in and suffered all-day sickness during the entire pregnancy.  We were barely able to get things unpacked and organized at all, let alone incorporate all that other "stuff" from the garage.  And so it began. 

Trying to keep up the house, homeschool and take care of babies pretty much takes up most of my time, and the house just gets worse and worse.  To make matters worse, in June 2009, I was diagnosed with cancer.  Needless to say, that took a huge toll on the house as well.  So lately I have really been thinking about this and how I can finally, once and for all, declutter this house and make it liveable for my family!  Some things in my favor at this stage of the game are: the "baby" is almost 2 years old and occupies himself playing with the other children for a good portion of the day; the other children are old enough to actually help and to learn how to clean up after themselves; things are a little more settled now - I'm not pregnant, not nursing, cancer treatments are over, and we are on the road to "normal". 

So lately I have been suffering from the flu and spending a lot of time thinking.  Why is it that when we are sick and can't do anything, that is when we think of all the ways and things we could be doing?  I began googling about cleaning up a really messy house and I stumbled upon a TV show called, "Clean House".  We do not have a TV hookup, so I had never heard of this before.  After going to their website, I realized that I was not the only one!  In desperation, I signed up for a free 30-day trial of Netflix so that I could watch the show.  Wow.  My first reaction was, these people are like us!  Their houses are disasters too!  Even though each one had a different story and different reasons for why their houses were this way, the team on the show used the same game plan with each of them.  I was a bit disappointed to see that they didn't really give much air time to the actual cleaning up of the mess, but nevertheless, I began to be very inspired by the changes they made in people's homes and lives. 

So with this inspiration and the desperation of knowing that something had to change, I began the Ultimate House Decluttering Project.  I started a list of every area in the house that needed to be cleaned out and decluttered.  This basically encompasses the whole house, but I had to start somewhere!  I committed myself to tackling at least one of these areas per day.  At this point, I was still recovering from the flu, but I knew I could handle some easier sit-down projects, so that's where I started.  So, here goes the day by day chronicle of the Ultimate House Decluttering Project!