The following is a member post from Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, where she covers spending, savings, and the fun stuff along the way.
In the Beginning
I am generally a little messy. I had the classic scary room that teenagers are known for. I’ve discovered the weird fuzzy stuff that grows in forgotten cups in corners of rooms. I’ve even reached moments in life where I thought burning the pile of paperwork on our counters would be way better than actually sorting through it.
Please don’t misunderstand, our house actually looks okay, but keeping things out of the way is definitely not the same as tidy. I’ve always known that I feel better when my environment is nice and organized, but leaving stuff lying around in neat stacks is a tough habit to break.
Strangely enough, I ended up marrying a guy a lot like me. To make a long story short, we both struggle to keep our home neat. But we are making progress.
The Change
A few weeks ago, we decided to host our board gaming group’s Halloween potluck party and took the opportunity to thoroughly clean the bottom floor. Our pantry was horrid but easily handled. Our kitchen needed a wipe down but otherwise was in good shape. The real problem was the fact that all of our board games and hobby paraphernalia were just left around in stacks against the wall in the dining room.
Hubby and I decided we needed a change.
After looking around online for the best last minute deal the day before the party, we found some bookshelves that would work at Wal-Mart for $40 each. Mr. BFS stopped by on his way home and found out that the exact ones we needed were actually on sale for $16 each! Needless to say, we took it as a sign.
He bought four of them and headed home. It ended up taking him about 2 hours to get all of them put together the next morning while I ran the last minute party errands. When I walked into the house, the change was amazing!
I don’t mean, “wow, it looks great”. I mean that I literally felt like some weight was taken off my shoulders! The games were all displayed on the shelves and the hobby items had their own places too. The four shelves fit perfectly along the main wall and look fantastic with the rest of our furniture. It changed the look of our entire bottom floor!
It Stuck
I thought my initial reaction would wear off after a few days, but it’s been 3 weeks and I’m still ecstatic! My husband’s been smiling more too. If I had known some shelves against a wall would make me feel this good, we would have bought them 3 years ago when we moved in! Take it from me, if you’ve been putting off organizing your main living space, do it!
I don’t know if my husband and I will ever conquer our slightly messy ways, but I do know that we’ve put everything downstairs back in its correct location for almost a month now. We’ve even kept up the living room better than usual.
Have you ever had a similar experience with some simple organization? Is there a certain place in your life that may need a little work?
I do not often dust or vacuum, but I do like to keep things in their place. The keys go here, my wallet goes there, etc. My wife is the opposite. As long as everything is disinfected, it doesn’t matter if we have a bunch of papers and clothes lying around the area.
We are still working through this and have made compromises, but at this moment, nothing has stuck yet. We will get there some day!
That sounds about right to me. As long as nothing smells, I’m usually good with it, lol. Now we have successfully kept our bottom floor completely clean for more than a month! We just hosted another board gaming party last Saturday and barely had to do anything to get ready. :-) Yay!
Yeah, I think we’re on the same page there. We’ve got some work to do before we start hosting parties though!
That’s the nice thing about 2 floors – the guests never see the mess in the office or guest bedroom, lol. The great room (living/dining combo), kitchen, and half bath are all downstairs. :-)
I LOVE throwing things out. I love nothing better than opening a cupboard and clearing everthing out, chucking most of it and putting back the few things that remain. Same goes with cleaning. There is nothing more satisfying than sitting back after having cleaned the house.
Can you visit me for a few days? :-) Come on, everybody wants to visit a suburb of Houston, Tx for a few days, right? :-P
Ha, I hear ya there. My wife and I are considering moving soon, so we sold our bedroom set…. Now we’re sleeping on the floor.
Mr. BFS and I slept on a twin-size air mattress for 2 years and a queen-size air mattress on the floor for 2 years in college (yeah, yeah…we were in new love and didn’t mind being REALLY close, lol). :-)
Crystal, You wrote about my 2nd favorite topic(s), decorating and organization. After personal finance, I am obsessed with design. My splurges frequently are in that area. There is definitely a link between your environment and your mood. Congrats on the “quick fix.” And this was a really compelling read! Good job!
Thank you so much. I wasn’t sure what to write about on the Yakezie (this was before Sam’s genius idea to give sample scholarship essays), so I really hoped this topic would go over well. :-)
It is amazing how an organized room can make a huge difference in your life. I did something similar in our home office a couple weeks ago, and I still smile when I walk past it.
There must be something to feng shui or whatever it is called because you are right, it is like a weight is lifted off your shoulders when you see that clutter taken care of.
Yeah, I thought that feng shui was hogwash, but it may be 100% dead on! :-)
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Great article crystal. I totally understand the need to have everything have a home (and the need for it to be returned after use). My worst area is definitely the coffee table – It seems to be a catch all for everything without a home.
Our problem areas downstairs is the counters and one side table – it usually gets pretty bad before I will tackle the junk mail. Upstairs is a complete problem area other than our bedroom, which we keep up with. The office and guest bedroom are just stacked with boxes and crud like that. :(
I totally hear you on the junk mail – It’s terrible. After thinking of the best way on how to deal with it, I’ve started to retrieve the mail, look through it by the door, put anything relevant on the coffee table, and toss away the junk and catalogs right away. My roommate has not quite gotten onto the bandwagon, but I hope she will come around soon. It’s really dropped the amount of trash laying around. One other idea I had was to put a recycling box next to the front door, so I could just stand by that while sorting through the mail and not even let the junk mail into the house.
We actually have a similar junk mail policy, but what gets us is the mail that you won’t need forever but need to keep around for a little while like good coupons or bills that will be auto-paid. That stuff builds up forgotten all over the place, lol.
I am a messy kid, generally, but every so often I get on a kick to clean my work spaces and my fridge for some reason. The work spaces makes me feel so much better! I feel more productive and I can’t explain it. This includes a simple cleaning out of blog mail boxes and my computer desktop.
Oh, blog spaces! I actually had to create more folders in gmail just to put things temporarily to keep my main Inbox cleaned up, lol. I only have items that need my immediate attention there. :-)
My husband is a neat freak, so our house is constantly organized. I have to say that if it weren’t for him and if I had my messy ways, I’d be living in a total disaster area! But you’re right, living in an organized environment makes me feel happier.
I’m just a little happy that my husband is as bad as me so I don’t feel guilty about being the only mess maker, lol. Congrats on having uber-organized hubby!
My husband and I could both be described as hoarders, but we’ve been diligently working to get rid of our clutter and live in a tidier and more peaceful space. This past February, I took on the worst room in the house by far, our dining room, and blogged about it here: http://thesavedquarter.com/2010/02/28/dining-room-after/
The transformation in the room was amazing (it won an award for the challenge website where I submitted the link!) and you’re so right about the feeling of a weight being lifted. Walking in before was almost suffocating; now (nearly 10 months on) it’s still inviting and my favorite space in the house.
I’ve also noted the connection between hoarding stuff and not having a lot of money. I have always had a fear of throwing things out in case we needed it again later, not knowing if we’d have the money to replace whatever it was I tossed. Having money in reserve has eased this fear and has made it far easier to let go.
I just took a look at your post and it is like night and day! Your dining room looked a lot like how our office looks upstairs right now and you “after” pictures looks a lot like our dining room now. :-) Congrats on claiming your piece of clean and happy!
Great post. I find keeping things tidy, saves time. When you have things organized you don’t spend time looking for the keys, wallet, cell phone charger, etc when you need them. Sometimes it’s easier said then done!
I love this little basket we use for our keys and phones. The only problem is that when we do forget to put our stuff in there, it is a mini-crisis, lol.
It’s amazing… the power of organization! I need more shelving for my garage, it’s messy, mounted shelves on the wall would be great! ;)
Sounds like you and Mr. BFS made a wise decision!
Good luck with your garage! Thanks for the support!
Organization is so important! I wrote a post about it a while back, and I described how you can save money by staying organized.
It’s still a struggle every, but if you keep at it, it will make a huge difference!
Thanks for the advice. I think we will need to hit another room pretty soon. :-)
Messiness follows me every room I nest in as I’ve got SO MUCH stuff on my plate. I tend to lay everything out there, so I can see what I need to do and do it.
That said, I clean at least twice a week to make sure things get out of hand b/c clutter annoys me.
We pick up about once a week when we get really busy. It usually takes 30-60 minutes depending on how bad we were… :-)
I consistently live with my bedroom, house, and quarters containing my stuff all over the place. I am just a lazy fool that has no sense of urgency. It’s interesting b/c my time that i have the most energy to clean is late at night, after I read and write… and when I should be sleeping. It is what it is and usually end up going through everything Sunday morning before football starts.
Hahaha, we usually pick up Sunday before football too since my father-in-law comes over to watch the game with Mr. BFS, lol.
I’m sitting here watching Hoarders while reading this post. How appropriate! Not saying that you’re a hoarder, but the whole weight off the shoulders thing. :) I’d love to hire a maid and consider it my civic duty to the economy. Alas, I can’t afford it, but BF does a great job cleaning.
I can’t watch Hoarders anymore since there are so few happy endings (I used to watch it all the time though). Plus, the messes sometimes make my skin crawl…icky. But yes, you are totally right that you can almost see the weight lifted off of them! :-)
Clutter really bothers me. I routinely or regularly have this need to keep my office or any place I work or live free of clutter or disorganization. I don’t have OCD, but every couple of weeks I straighten things out. It isn’t like it is a mess, but I keep it straight.
You must be super productive! I always get more productive when my environment is in order. :-) Congrats!
For someone who professes to be a minimalist I am an awful clutter bug! Really been trying hard to keep things in order and I have been scheduling purging tasks every week to make sure things are kept clutter free and in the right places.
Great post, the little things like this really do release a lot of stress from our lives.
It takes a while to get a system down. Good luck with beating back your clutter buginess, lol. I know I may never defeat all my cluttery habits…
Hey Crystal, I’m with you on this one. It drives my wife crazy to look at my desk. I just have so much going on, and my way of dealing with it is to lay everything out and take care of business as I clean. This doesn’t work well when we have people come over and there isn’t enough time to take care of the work. So things get piled up!
Yep, that pretty much describes us too… :-)
Clutter annoys me to a certain extent, but my girlfriend is more organized and neat than I am. Couple that with the fact we’re moving to a 850 sq.ft. condo, and… we will have to be quite organized to avoid clutter!
(and I will probably have to find some stuff to give away :S)
Good luck! I remember our 550 sq. ft. apartment…
I have a hard time keeping things organized and tidy as well. I once tried to remove 20 things from my home office, and it was a struggle! I do have shelves, and they are full.
i KNOW I would be more productive if I was more organized! I am just getting there slower than I would want!
Be Well.
Paul.
http://www.AllAboutGratitude.com
I’, not happy it took us 3 years to get shelves, lol, but at least we got them eventually. You’ll get there too!
I’m actually quite messy! My desk is a mess and sometimes if I leave things organized (and not leave them out in front of me), then I forget about them. It’s almost like I have early onset dementia or something.
Good on you for keeping things organized- I hope to aspire to that soon too lol!
It’s just the bottom floor, but I’ll take my victories where I can get them, lol. Don’t worry, getting sidetracked is natural…no dementia for you. :-)
haha i got a good laugh after reading this one. you know, in our household, after we decided to become more organized and “clean”, which is as simply as putting something back wherever it was picked up from, we realized that we didn’t need to have the maids over every 2 weeks. now they come every 3 weeks, and i feel that is aggressive. once a month would do just fine – but the wife prefers 3 wks :)
I definitely had one of those moments … after watching Suze Orman’s “Women and Money,” one of the qualities of a wealthy woman that she listed was Cleanliness. I realized she was right … my job involves visiting clients at home, and the houses that are clean and well taken care of give me an impression of greater wealth, and in turn that attitude reflects in their manner and carriage. I’m still working on my cleaning spree, especially because I only live in 300 sqft and it gets messy very fast, but I can hardly wait to tackle my desk.
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I don’t mind messy as long as things are clean. My husband is the opposite. What works for us is that I have three spaces to spread my mess (my desk in the office, the buffet in the dining room (where we put incoming mail) and my dresser.
This keeps it under control and makes us both happy!
Our lives can be so cluttered up by all the things we keep over the years. I have reached the conclusion that the only things that are worth keeping are: 1) my laptop 2) some clothes 3) money 4) friends 5) sanity.
I told my wife that when we move in the future, the only things I will pack with me is a suit case full of money :-)
I love living a simple life. The only personal belongs I must keep are 1) a netbook 2) some clothing 3) money 4) car and everything else is expendable. I once told my wife that the next time we move, the only things I want to take with us are are kids and a suitcase full of money :-)
Totally agree. Too much stuff = clutter = cluttered life. The less stuff I have, the easier my life seems!!
Totally agree Wil. Too much stuff = clutter = cluttered life. The less stuff I have, the easier my life seems!!