Clutter|Pad Patter 3.11

I don't like clutter at all! However, I've lightened up quite a lot (for me) with our DD and GS living with us for a couple of years. I pick my battles anymore and staying clutter-free isn't one of them. As long as it's moderately under control, I can live with it (don't like it but can live with it).

Our main clutter collector is our dining room table. It's kind of right in the middle of the house and it's my stuff collector. DD folds her laundry there and never quite gets it done. Yes, we have a laundry room. That's one of the battles I've surrendered on. DH is down there right now folding clothes. He can't stand clutter either and we've both had to just "let it go".

 

I am bad about clutter. It's gotten better but I have trouble letting go. Not to the hoarding level but now that I realize how much nicer it is to live with less, I'm slowly letting go of things. It's a process. I've done my office and it needs a bit more. My kitchen is done for the most part and now I need to finish the clothing and master bath. As we clean and get rid of stuff, I feel lighter and less anxious overall.

 

I have 3 big plastic bins of supplies for our homeschool group. I'm the director so I get to keep it all! Thankfully I have a huge pantry and it just sits on the floor in there.

My pantry is my "go to" place for all random stuff that clutters my house. I am soooo thankful for my pantry.

I also have a basket like this. Whenever somebody leaves something at my house that's where it goes. I also have baskets for Goodwill.

I also don't like clutter anywhere...but alas, with 7 kids, I've had to embrace it in certain areas.

 

As much as I love the library, the physical books need to go back & so as to not lose them in the depths of the kids bedrooms, they stay in the library bag but it lives on one of the book shelves & looks like clutter to me

At the moment we have a now useless & dead as a doornail printer on the lounge room floor that needs to go to e-waste; it's next to a big box from the new printer that I'm not convinced is suitable & staying (i got it to print a word doc from my phone but it won't print PDF's from the phone app & it only printed one page from my laptop & then went into' not responding' mode (my favourite -not!)) & a coffee machine we'll eventually get to the charity shop, as well as the useless blender/food processor motor that I have to look up if it's normal rubbish or e-waste b/c DD broke my processor lid thing so the rest of the unit including the blender is useless....
so I hear u on clutter - I wish I just had smaller clutter at this point & more floor space!

 

I really hate clutter!! During the school year it starts to accumulate in different places and this is the time of year that it starts really getting to me. I just don't have the time to deal with all of it until summer vacation starts. I almost always take the first week after schools out and go from room to room filling bags!

 

I am not fond of clutter, the kitchen counter seems to be a magnet for that though. Everything gets moved into the large cherry wood cupboard in the sitting room, literally 5 steps away from the kitchen counter and that becomes a sore point. We love the lady that comes to clean for us every week, but her clearing of clutter defies logic at times and so much time is wasted hunting for things that were erroneously out away.

 

A horizontal surface is my favourite thing.....I hate to say I’m someone who lives with clutter though I will admit I am bringing less cr*p in so there’s less useless clutter than a few years back.

 

Ugh. I hate clutter so much, and it's so hard to manage in a teeny-tiny 900 square foot rental house with 2 slobby kids. I also hate non-clutter (like furniture) that is ugly or serves no real purpose. We have so much hand-me-down/cheap furniture that makes me so unhappy to look at and use. I can't wait to move this summer & just pitch all of it! I'd rather sit on the floor than on one more cheap hand-me-down that I don't like and wouldn't have picked for myself!

 

I just put it this way... the daughter's stuff expands to fill all available space... I will have the downstairs pretty well clutter free - try having a concussion where I had to sit and stare at the clutter, unable to get up and do anything about it. Yeah, once the headache went away I went into clutter removal mode. Now that DD is home on spring break her stuff is everywhere downstairs. Well, I assume it still is as we are all not home at the moment, so unless a magical cleaning fairy appeared...

My mom raised me with the no clutter makes the house look cleaner idea, so that is my goal, because who wants to clean all the time? While I don't anyways. Now if I could just convince dh of this; he is more a hoarder. I tend to walk through some rooms with blinders on.

 

After all the work I went through to get rid of all the excess clutter in this house the last 3 years, I avoid it like a plague. Thankfully with the kitchen remodel, I got rid of the counter area that usually ended up with all the clutter. I no longer stop and throw stuff from the mail on it. If the mail are items I need, they go straight to the office. Now I do have a stack of filing but when it gets over an inch tall, it gets done! Recyclable mail items don't even make it into the house. They hit the recycle bin immediately. Today was easy, everything was paper to be recycled. The ads we didn't get on Tuesday came today! For pop bottles and other recyclable items that come up as I use them, I will put them on a counter and take them out to the garage after dinner. No dishes ever sit in the sink... that's what the dishwasher is for. For the most part, my kitchen looks clean at all times.

Now I do end up with dog toys all over the house. Last thing I do before going to bed is to collect them and put them in the toy basket in the office. Then it starts all over the next day but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

I have way too much clutter in my house, but it's a small house, I have my DD and her kids here ... well just one of the three now, and I've learned to let it go. I am getting better and better at not bringing cluttery stuff in, no matter how much I want *whatever*. I immediately sort my mail when I bring it in ... bills and such go into my purse to be paid, recycle stuff into the bin. I'm currently working on getting my basement cleaned up, decluttered and reorganized, but it's taking me a lot of time.

 

I am not a big fan of clutter either. If things have a spot to go, then I am totally fine with that. Our big issue now is that we moved from a house with one amount of space into a house that is arranged very differently. So things that had a spot in our old house, we just cannot find a spot for them in this house.

The kitchen was the hardest. We had lots of tall, amazing cabinets in our old house, but this house has maybe a fourth of the cabinet space. We bought a baker's rack for the kitchen to add shelves of sorts, but I still cannot fit everything into the much smaller space.

The living room is another tough area. We had floor to ceiling built-in shelves above large built-in cabinets on each side of our mantle in our old house. Now, we have a TV stand we bought and a super small mantle. The things that were on our shelves and in our cabinets before we simply don't have a spot for now.

At the moment, we have clearly labeled boxes in the basement with things we want but cannot fit out at this house. We chose to rent when we moved since it was a new area and we wanted to figure out exactly where we want to buy a house. When we buy our next house (maybe next Spring?) we'll be able to pull out all the things we've kept neatly boxed up here.

 

We have a basket next to our couch where all library books go. Unfortunately...or fortunately it's usually overflowing and so we have books just piled up next to it.