Domestic Engineering: Decluttering 101

Some days I throw out items without considering my family.

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Other days I ask my family for help and input on how to store the things they value.

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Every day is an opportunity to die to self and consider how to bless my family.

Clutter: a collection of things lying about in an untidy mass. - The Oxford Dictionary

Clutter is my daily challenge in managing our home. When I’m on top of it, the rest of my household chores are easier to do. When I am not, our home feels chaotic.

Staying on top of clutter is one way I am able to serve my husband. When our home is orderly we know where things are and it makes our home more peaceful.

It's also an opportunity to train my girls. We regularly discuss how cleaning up after ourselves is a way to love and bless others.

Cleaning the home falls into a "Medium Rock" for me. Yet there are aspects of it that directly serve my family (one of my "Big Rocks"). A tidy and orderly home is my goal, not an immaculate one.

For today's post, we are going to discuss the two steps to decluttering.

How To Declutter in Two Steps

1. It Starts with a Mindset

• Every object you own, at some point, owns a piece of your time.

~ Mindy Starns Clark, The House That Cleans Itself

• Containers, drawers, and shelves are imposed limits.
• If you're a stuff shifter you're living above your clutter threshold.
• It's not "Will I ever need this?" or "Should I keep this?" Rather "Does it fit?" and "Can I keep this?"

~ Dana White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind

While the above ideas are helpful, I also need to daily remember the following:

• Everything belongs to God. I am a steward of the gifts he has given me.
• God is good and sovereign. He has taken care of my greatest need to be made right with a holy God. Therefore, I can trust him to provide the physical things I might need tomorrow.
• If I’m responding in anger or anxiety about the messiness of our home, I’ve allowed it to become too important in my life.

2. The Daily Outworking

• Less is my goal and declutter is my plan, so keep what is used the most.
• When I get the urge to declutter, begin with what is visible.
• Use a black trash bag to keep from second-guessing decisions.
• Put things away immediately to avoid having a "procrastination" box to deal with.
• Consider “Where would I look for this first?” and “Would it ever occur to me that I already had this item if I needed it?”

~ Dana White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind 

• If a task will take less than two minutes, do it immediately.

~ David Allen, Getting Things Done

Also, I try to consider:

• How important is this to the rest of my family?
• For example, a tidy home blesses my husband. Before he gets home, I try to do an evening pick up of the house. 
• Meanwhile, my daughters love making crafts. This means it’s not okay for me to toss their twenty new drawings without checking in with them first.

Include Your Kids

For us, keeping our home tidy includes the following practices with our girls:

• Teaching how to put books away with the binding facing out around 2 years old.
• Built-in five-minute pickups during the day with fun music.
• Our current favorite songs to clean up to are Oh My Goodness, Look At This Mess and Tidy Up Rhumba. Does anyone else hate Barney’s clean up song? 

• Having designated drawers for favorite items and crafts. 
• These are labeled with pictures to help our non-readers.
• Having assigned clips in the hallway to hang up favorite pictures. 
• If the pictures start falling off, the girls have to get rid of some.
• Training how to put toys and shoes away as soon as our kids are walking.
• Confiscating random trinkets left around the house. If the items aren't requested during the next two months, they get tossed. The girls know this rule and thus far it has made the drama of throwing out Chick-fil-A toys disappear. 

Reality Check

Adding more little people to our home has revealed how much I want to be in control.

It's easy for me to get angry when another mess is made because it means more work for me. Instead of delighting in my children's work and encouraging them to be creative, I focus on myself. 

It's hard for me to get rid of items because one day I might need them. What I like to consider wise preparation for the future is often me actually trying to take God’s role of provider.

Now please hear me on this. I am not saying owning a lot of things automatically means you are trying to be an all sovereign provider. For myself, my hoarding tendencies often stem from a bigger issue of not trusting God with the future.

Favorite Resource

I've read several books on organizing and cleaning over the past few years. With most of them, I came away with long lists of to-dos that quickly led to burnout.

Enter my favorite cleaning book: How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind by Dana White.

This book is not only practical but also really funny. I haven't read any other cleaning books that have made me laugh out loud several times. 

If you want ideas that are easy to make into a lifestyle for managing your home, this is the book to read. I highly recommend checking it out (at your library if possible).

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* Photo by Gades Photography on Unsplash.
* Photo by Steven Johnson on Pexels.