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I am nearly thirty years old.
That’s WEIRD.
30 has never been a scary age for me. 20 freaked me out, because I always thought of myself as child-like and 20 was a decidedly ADULT age. But once I had hit that ominous level of adulthood, 30 just seemed like a minor transition.
It helps that I feel like my life is somewhat on track. At this age I hoped to be married with a child, and I am. I hoped to be a dog trainer, and I have not only trained service dogs, but have just started my OWN DOG TRAINING BUSINESS.
But I’m still leaving my 20s, and there are some things I haven’t done.
Some people make a “30 things to do before 30” list. I didn’t do that, mostly because I:
a) couldn’t think of 30 things
b) never got around to it
c) knew that I wouldn’t be able to achieve them, anyway
I would have included items such as “become a published author” and “find a hair style that doesn’t make me look fat or like I have no ears” and it’s hard to achieve the near-impossible within a limited time frame.
So then I thought I’d do a “30 posts til 30” thing, where I reflect on various aspects of my twenties, getting older, etc… but that would have had to start on Dec 30th.
But I DID make posts on those days, so maybe it still counts?
Anyway, today is a combination of New Year’s Resolution/Nearly 30 post.
I decided what I wanted for my 30th birthday.
A CLEAN HOUSE.
And I don’t mean just a newly-scrubbed house. We’ve done that before. It just gets dirty again.
Our big problem is that we have a small house and a lot of STUFF. We also have very few ways of organizing that stuff. Hence our entire house has basically turned into a disorganized heap, with tunnels cut through it for us to be able to pass from one mess to another.
I may have some slight hoarding tendencies.
I also have difficulty with making somewhere LOOK clean. I understand the concept of CLEANING. I rub it until the dirt comes off. I can CLEAN.
But I can’t seem to make things LOOK clean.
Meanwhile, there are some people who walk into a room, rearrange a few things, and presto! The place looks immaculate. I watch and gape and am like “SHOW ME YOUR SECRETS.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be a teachable skill. When I ask people how they did their magic they just say things like “I moved some stuff”. I posted the question on message boards and got useless answers like “make it part of your routine to do certain things daily”.
So the only answer I can think of is to just get rid of the stuff that’s making my place messy.
Really, what I need are shelves and storage containers (we have limited floor space but a lot of unused wall space and a big storage area under the stairs), but we’re tapped out for money right now. My work has now cut me down to 17 hours a week, which doesn’t even really cover daycare. I’m the ONLY one with cut hours, too.
That’s so good for my self esteem.
ANYHOO,
I need to declutter and organize.
What better time to purge my life of old things but the time before my transition to age 30? Like a butterfly crawling from a cocoon I will shed the detritus of my 20s and emerge as a totally new and tidy self.
Or something.
The only thing is that this is a completely impossible and overwhelming task to contemplate, so I will have to enlist some help from friends.
I hope there’s somewhere out there who wants to go through my old clothes with me. Preferably one of those magic poof-it’s-clean folk.
If any of you have organization tips, now would be a great time to share them.
If By Yes 
I’m glad you’re feeling so good about turning 30. I found it hard, not quite as hard as 27, but 30 was difficult and I forget sometimes that I’m 30. My big thing about not wanting to turn 30 was I REALLY wanted to have a baby by 30 or at least be trying to have a baby or at least not trying to prevent the having of a baby. But alas, perhaps by the time I’m 31?
I hope so! Babies are awesome! I don’t know if you’re already trying for the baby or if you’re waiting for the “right time” but let me pass on a tip that a friend gave me:
– It’s never the right time, but when the baby comes, you just DEAL with it. They just get absorbed into your family life and it really turns out okay.
Also – babies aren’t nearly as expensive as I thought, with the exception of child care, which is probably cheaper where you live. The world is filled with people just desperate to give you their handmedown clothes/toys/exersaucers/high chairs. Near-strangers gave me bags of clothes.
I agree, I totally agree and I am ready and feel that this as as right a time as any. LH (loving husband) on the other hand does not feel this is the right time. He wants to have a job before we have a baby which I can understand since I’m the one with the sole income and it would be reduced a lot when I go on mat leave. But I also believe that he could get a job within 9 months before I actually have the baby! But I’m not going to force the issue… yet.
I have similar problems. (As I just left an organizing question on the DoCo, lol.) But I’ve found that when tackling LARGE projects, like whole-house stuff, room by room is the way to go. You can even divide the room into quadrants. And the first, most important thing you can do is throw away crap. There is much crap to be thrown. Oh, so much. It helps a lot. It’s a start, at least.
Yes, that is definitely the first task!
Decluttering is a noble goal. And it really will make you feel better. There are all kinds of philosophies related to the idea that new & exciting things can’t / won’t happen to you if you don’t make physical room in your life… I find that helpful to remember sometimes.
I’m one of nature’s organizers but I have years of experience living with hoarders. My top tips (and it’s funny, Hubs just started clearing out his man-cave today and we’re going through much of the same stuff) are as follows:
1. Pick small, manageable tasks. If you are not naturally an organization junkie, saying that you are going to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS will just frustrate you and make you feel bad, because you won’t be able to do it. Example: today, Hubs’ goal for his man-cave is to sort through his 100s of books. They don’t need to be organized. He just needs to briefly look at each one and decide if he’s likely to read it again, or not. Half an hour and he’s over half done – and there is more shelf space for new books!
2. If you aren’t sure about whether or not something is needed, put it in a box (you can after all get cardboard boxes free from grocery stores) and put it in the storage space under the stairs. If after six months you haven’t thought “gee, I’d really like to have that Blibbering Humdinger back in my living room” you can safely donate or sell it.
3. As for shelving, accept that for now anyway you will probably have to go with cheap-ass shelving. Will it be pretty? Probably not, but I’ll bet it will be prettier than just having piles and tunnels everywhere. We have lots of modular black plastic shelving in our house. We also have those clear plastic carts with 3 or 5 drawers, on wheels. Are they a ‘forever’ solution? God no. But they are tidy, you can always see what you have, and you will find that as you start putting things on shelves or in drawers that the purging of unnecessary stuff gets easier.
And BTW, I don’t find that “doing a little bit every day” works for me AT ALL. Some days, I get the urge and can do a massive job all at once (like earlier this week when I sorted all the boys’ Lego and completely cleaned their room from top to bottom). Some days I’d rather stick a fork in my own eye than do more than wash dishes. Don’t feel bad if you’re a ‘in spurts’ kind of a cleaner / organizer.
All great tips, thanks!
What Hannah said.
Also? Don’t BUY stuff you don’t need – if it would be “nice”, then, well… you don’t need it.
We live in a small-ish 2-bedroom with a SMALL one-car garage – The only reason we’re able to keep things tidy is that we don’t have “stuff” – If we did like decorative or handy things, or enjoyed shopping, we’d be in BIG trouble because we have enough to manage with all the well-used skiing/kayaking/camping gear that we keep!
Yes, luckily neither of us is much of a “things” person. We do have a terrible weakness for books, but that’s it. Odd for a mild hoarder to say, but it’s true. I get attached to my stuff, so I don’t like to replace it!
I am not one of nature’s organizers, and I was raised by a loving, wonderful, highly skilled mother… who happens to be one of nature’s great slobs. So when I got to be an adult with a house of my own, I had NO CLUE how to proceed. None. I only knew that I did not want to live in the mess I’d grown up in. Like you, I seemed to know in principle how to clean, but somehow it never *looked* clean.
I learned a few things along the way, and slowly improved, but I still never felt I “got” this whole house-cleaning-keeping thing. It felt like squalor could leap out at me at any time.
You’ve heard of her before, and yes, she’s saccharine.. but… Flylady. She gave me the strategies that work. My home will never be Martha Stewart Perfect, but it’s comfortable. “Lived-in” in a warm and welcoming way, not “euphemism for disgusting”. Most importantly, I have tools that work, and it doesn’t take all damned day, either.
Hannah is right: decluttering will make you feel better. So much better. Lighter, airier, freer. I kid you not. (Flylady’s all about starting with the decluttering. You can’t have a clean house if all you’re doing is shifting piles of stuff.) Baby steps, small tasks, and, oh, how I love my Flylady timer. Totally, totally works for me.
I’m going to check her out right now! You and I might have the same mother. It makes me feel guilty when I move away from her way of doing certain things, because she was a good mother. But tidy she was not. Hence, tidy I am not.
I feel like I get control of the house…for a day. You are correct, squalor is always waiting to leap out.
Thanks for your comment. I’m not Carol, but I really enjoyed it as if it was directed toward me 😉
Flylady. Oh, Flylady. I know that she’s awesome (my mother went on a Flylady kick years and years ago… was I still in high school at the time? Possibly…) and I’ve tried to pick her up before, but her first task for me was cleaning my sink.
So I did it. Unfortunately, my experience was much like Wombat Central’s.
It was a pain in the ass process and at the end of it my sink didn’t look any different.
Also, I discovered that she was setting goals too high for me. She promised that if I cleaned my sink once I would never have to do it again, as long as I wiped it dry with a nice cloth every night.
I’m sure that’s true, except that I’m still struggling with figuring out how to deal with the fact that there’s ALWAYS some dishes waiting in the sink, despite the fact that I wash dishes daily!
That first step was too hard. I never went back.
I agree with MaryP about Flylady – Flylady’s philosophy/encouragement/specific advice on how to improve things around the house truly helped me! 🙂
But I find it’s like anything else – take on board what resonates, and leave the rest – so if her method of cleaning the sink the first time didn’t help – skip that part! I’ve gotten in the habit of drying the sink out, and it makes a huge difference. My husband now does it sometimes as well, which I never ever thought would happen.
Mostly what helped, I think, was a subtle change in my attitude, which actually took quite a lot of time. Years. But each small step was progress that helped. So, if you have an electric dishwasher, maybe consider changing mindset so that it’s default state is empty? If you don’t have a dishwasher – well – either the trick of keeping the dirties in the cabinet to wash all at once will work for you, or it won’t: I haven’t ever tried that.
But a similar thing with thinking of the default state of the clothes washer/dryer as being empty – not starting a load I wasn’t going to do through to the end/putting away – that made a big difference to me.
I understand getting distracted and not wanting to get rid of anything because it might be USEFUL (right now I’m bringing myself to recycle 10 years of old electric bills, none of which is less than 4 years old – yes, I have hoarding tendencies) – but letting go of things a little at a time, a few a day – really does make progress, over time.
I find the mantra “I can do anything for 15 minutes!” useful. 🙂 (I can even purge things for 15 minutes! 🙂 )
And I find the idea that housework (even done imperfectly) still blesses the family to be useful (and I’m on the agnostic veering towards atheism side of the spectrum) –
It was many years ago that I was on the Flylady emailing lists, it took years before that before I was even open to the ideas – and it’s been a long long time since I’ve actually thought of her – but the attitude change I (slowly) got from her has made a lasting difference in our house, and my attitude towards it.
Good luck!
PH and I are also people who love a clean house but have no idea how to achieve one, both for reasons which are totally dissimilar to yours:
We both had our houses cleaned FOR us.
I had a maid. My room was magically cleaned FOR me while I went to school each day. Otherwise, I’m sure my mother would have enforced the making-of-the-bed and such. But as it was, I got accustomed to living in pristine conditions BUT NEVER LEARNED HOW TO MAKE THEM HAPPEN.
PH’s father is obsessively neat, and so NO MESS ever touched their premises. When PH hit puberty he rebelled against his father by living in filth in his bedroom. He now knows that he hates living in filth, but he doesn’t have the necessary skills to deal with it, either.
I love decluttering! If we were in the same province I’d be there in a flash. In terms of tidying for it feeling better the keys are right-angles (everything piled neatly in a square or rectangle) and clear surfaces. Those two things make everything seem tidy!
In terms of dealing with a room, I also find that I can’t do it a little at a time. The problem is that to deal with things everything has to get way messier for a brief time.
I looked at fly-lady for a while too…read an article…thought it might be good…but am just not that sort of structured. I prefer doing one big clean/tidy a week. Though I do think it has good points like keeping the one area tidy that’s most important to you and so on.
By the way, I’m really excited about 30 for some reason 🙂 I was terrified by 25 but I’m feeling really good about my life these days and 30 is going to be the start of a new job and new life!
Good luck with the goal!!!
I’m a big-clean person as well. Fly Lady’s regimines exhaust me just thinking about them.
I can’t believe we’re both about to be 30! Aren’t we both 18 year olds who just left home for the first time??
We are 🙂 18 and now 30 🙂 It did just happen didn’t it!
The thing I took from Fly Lady that is helpful is the one tidy area – for me it’s really important that the kitchen counters be tidy at the end of the day and helpful if the landing zone is tidyish (I have a shelf near my door that I dump things on – if I just make them into piles at the end of the day it helps me feel happier).
I would suggest rewards – and making sure that Owl is out of the house during big cleans. Ie. I will tackle the boxes in the study some weekend(that has boxes that haven’t been unpacked since I moved when I was 18) but will then make myself a really nice meal…or go out for a nice meal. You could tackle an easy space and then a horrible space or start at the worst and get easier…just decide what works for you and then make sure Owl is gone and get to it! Good luck! I will some day tackle my study 🙂 Before that though, I’m going to learn to make curtains!!!
Eleanor
I have no good recommendations for decluttering because I have the exact same problem. Anywhere my family lives looks messy even if there isn’t much stuff there. And, I hate to say this, but the children make it much, much worse, because they have lots of stuff and they like to mix it up and tip it out and draw on it and take it apart and tread on it, and then they do the same to our stuff too. So the only advice I can think of is to somehow train Owl to play purely imaginatively, without props, and be blind to drawer-handles, wardrobes, and all forms of adult storage device that he might otherwise explore. But that would be a bit boring.
Yes, baby toys EVERYWHERE.
You could also, when Owl is a bit older, make sure he has the biggest room and make that the play room…ie. toys don’t leave it. Books can (and stuffed animals for imaginative play) but not lego/trucks/playmobile – ie. things that spread and get underfoot. He’s probably too young yet for that though.
Yes, playrooms are great! Right now I’m happy to have whatever will entertain him (usually books) scattered everywhere, but when he’s older, there will definitely be a blocks-stay-in-your-room rule.
I can speak to the kid-clutter! First, expect it. Kids do create clutter. They can’t be playing in a room and not be in the middle of a puddle of toys and stuff around them on the floor.
I don’t let it sit there all day, though. We tackle it a frequent intervals, using environmental cues. One is doorways. When we move from one room to another, we tidy the room we’re leaving. If I’m about to go through a door, we stop. “Oops! Almost forgot to put the toys away!” And since all my toys are stored in bins, that’s easy. (Small ones, specific to toy type, not giant toyboxes in which half your stuff gets lost at the bottom.)
Our other cue is food. We always tidy before snacks and lunch. Also nap-time. If you do small tidies frequently, they get used to it, they get efficient, and it’s quick. Two minutes, three minutes, you’re done. And recall, I’m working with five under three.
The other tip? If they want to play with a toy that has a gazillion tiny pieces (lego, say), I won’t bring them that bin until all other toys have been put away. To clear space for play, but it also makes clean-up soooo much easier.
To help break the task down, and to teach visual discrimination (it’s also a pre-math skill!!) I’ll assign each child a type of toy to tackle. “Rory, you put the books away, please, and Jazz, you’re doing the trucks and cars. Grace, you can do the farm animals, please.” They’re all two years old. I’ll remain in the room to see that it gets completed, but I don’t often have to do any of the actual picking up. With the smaller ones (15-18 months at the moment), I sit down with them and help them. Sometimes I might have to go hand-over-hand, but usually just keeping them cheerful company keeps them on task.
In a house with 5 under three all day, we never — well, rarely — have more than one room a total shambles. And really, since they play on the floor all the time, once the floor is picked up (ten minutes, tops, usually), the room can be tidy again.
The other thing about toys? Because I run a daycare, people assume I’m overwhelmed with them, and I certainly have more than I would otherwise. (My youngest is 18! All that duplo would’ve been gone years ago.) But really, they don’t need that many toys! Books and blocks are our two staples; they’re out all the time. And by “out” I mean in their bins right there in the middle of the floor. Where they can be played with. To me, that’s not clutter, that’s function. But at the end of the day, the bin is put away. (Sometimes just to the side of the room. I don’t have a lot of storage, either. For you, maybe under the stairs?)
I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 5 bins of toys/books out at any one time.
I don’t know how many toys Owl has (as opposed to pots and pans and household items masquerading as toys!), but I’m a huge fan of bins (or cardboard boxes, if that’s what you can afford).
Thanks for pointing out that getting kids to clean up toys in this way (you do blocks and you do cars) is a pre-math skill! I’ve been getting my dayhomers to do this for months, because with the pregnancy belly I can’t bend over easily. So I’m not taking shameless advantage of their energy! I’m teaching them MATH! 🙂
Sorting and categorizing are pre-math skills. Really and for true!
We are in desperate need of some form of toy receptacle. Currently the exersaucer, kept out for the sake of a friend’s child when he came to visit, serves as the toy bin downstairs. Upstairs it all just gets piled in Owl’s room in a corner on the floor.
London Drugs has the perfect toy bin shelf with 4 or 5 bins for 49.99 and I’ve wanted it for a long time, but somehow the time has never been right to fork out that money…
I have started teaching Owl on how to pick up his toys, but right now that consists of me telling him to put a single toy under the exersaucer. Unfortunately, the dog then thinks all of my gesturing and encouragement are aimed at him and he gets the toy first, so I take it from the dog and put it in the bin and then tell Owl to get a different toy, and the dog in a fit of further enthusiasm retrieves the FIRST toy from the exersaucer again and drops it back on the floor.
Two words: IKEA TROFAST. Best money I ever spent. Love it! I think I need one more before we move, so the boys can each have one in their bedroom.
Don’t you love Ikea?
My friends have a Trofast set up in front of their kid’s loft bed – it acts as steps with storage!
The $49 London Drugs bins I’ve been looking at are a very similar idea, although without the stepping-stairs aspect:
I have one much like that, only with twelve bins on four shelves. I picked it up at a garage sale two years ago for $20. SCORE!!!!
Kids love boxes, right? 🙂 We have boxes that we are using like bins: one has all of the balls and ball-like things (squishy blocks) in it and we keep it behind a chair. Our son pulls it out sometimes, turns it over and plays with all the balls, and then puts them back in one by one (to turn over again) – but putting them back in is part of the game to him…
So if you don’t mind tucking them behind the furniture, old cardboard boxes can help corral things too… (I’ve heard of people putting on a picture of what goes inside, but I’m not yet that organized…)
The picture idea is great…
Well, you know the household I grew up in, and as a result I absolutely loath the site of clutter. The anxiety I feel in a cluttered environment is overwhelming, and I often just want to curl up under my blankets and pretend it doesn’t exist. A friend who also feels anxiety when in a cluttered area used the term “visual noise” to describe how it makes him feel, and I think it’s the most perfect phrase to describe how I feel about clutter.
Anyway, despite all this, I find it hard to keep my place clutter-free. When I start to get stressed about a messy room, I go and tidy the biggest, most visible item in that room. In a bedroom sometimes it’s just a matter of making the bed (if it’s a particularly lazy day and I didn’t already make the bed first thing in the am); in a living room I will fold up blankets and throws and hang them over the back of the couch, and in the kitchen I clear off the dining table or counter of all the items that get piled on over the course of the week. It usually makes such a big difference I feel instantly better, and then have the energy and desire to tackle the smaller “scary piles” in the room.
That’s my tip- I hope it helps!
I also feel smothered and anxious in mess and squalor. I also get easily overwhelmed, so the messier the room the less I clean because I just can’t decide where to start. I start one task, see something else that clearly needs doing, switch to that, and then spot something even MORE important, and so after 30 minutes I’m exhausted and it looks the same.
Me too. I get way too overwhelmed to even start. Then the cycle continues. Mess gets worse, I get more stressed. Ugh!
I have nothing to add because everyone else has great suggestions. I’m just here to commiserate with you! I have decided that now we are done having babies, I can now focus on getting my house how I want it to look – less clutter, no more hand-me-down furniture. I have started on this journey by buying books and magazines on interior design. So in attempt to declutter, I have purchased more stuff. But at least it’s pretty clutter that I can call my own.
I have an AWESOME book on interior design for the pet owner, called Animal House, and have long wanted to implement its suggestions (such as white coverslips for the furniture, because it looks impressively clean but YOU CAN BLEACH THEM) and empty shelves for the cat to lie on.
But somehow, there’s always something else to spend money on.
*loathe not loath
Oh, and use music. Or the radio. I’m far-less likely to get overwhelmed and stop part-way through a de-cluttering session if I have something entertaining to listen to while I’m doing it.
I love this. I often use music to boost my spirits. Using it to energize you through a boring task? What a great idea!
I used to have a cleaning-music playlist for just this purpose!
Once upon a time Saturdays were cleaning days for me. I’d do the litter box and run the vaccuum and do the garbages… but now I work Saturdays and PH and I only have one day off together and it’s always tough with the baby… and I feel like I never have the energy…
I get my best cleaning done while I talk on the phone! I call my mom and clean the litter box, wash dishes, put in loads of laundry, change diapers, bath my kids, prepare meals, and so on. Go figure. (It gets me away from this horrible, addictive time-suck called “the internet”, so I guess that must be why.)
Oh I wish I lived close enough to come help! With the little ones I use almost identical policies as MaryP, so I won’t repeat that (small bins FTW). For myself I use the three bag/box method. Choose an area. Either a room, a corner of a room, or even just a stack. Pick up each item and decide if it has seen regular use in the last 6 months. If it has it goes in the KEEP box. If it hasn’t it goes in the GIVE bag or the TRASH bag. This makes it manageable if you have to walk away for a toddler emergency or just to do some deep breathing. When you go back to de-cluttering you just pick up the next item and choose a bag for it; you don’t have to review where you left off and hyperventilate about the magnitude. If being that decisive is too scary add a fourth box called STORAGE and use it for things you aren’t sure about. Put it away for a few months and see if you miss the things in it. I am good at managing the clutter, but not so good at beautifying the house, sadly.
I think this is a good way to proceed. PH is talking about taking a week off around my birthday so he can kick start this process while Owl is at daycare.
Carol, your commenters are brilliant! I feel motivated to get my house in order now lol!
I love, love, love your blog. And I love reading the comments.
Brilliance attracts brilliance.
You seem to have done a great job with your 20’s…a lot more than you give yourself credit for. You always have something witty, educational, and hilarious (yes, I think you are hysterical) to say…er, write.
And it always feels so honest and from the heart…
Enjoy your 30th birthday, and please keep writing!!!
I do have some stellar commenters, don’t I? Look at all these responses – you guys ROCK.
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Aye, I’ll be 30 this year too … My sister asked me in June last year what I wanted to do for my 30th, as in, would I celebrate it in the UK or in Sweden. My response was a “but that’s 13 MONTHS away! How the hell would I know?! I don’t plan that far ahead!” But y’know, it’ll be okay. Age is just a number. I only freak out slightly when I recall that the reply to “Stats?” (A/S/L, that is, online) once started with “14”. That was over 15 years ago now … help ?!
Very good suggestions in the comments section. I’ve never enjoyed cleaning but had to clean my room growing up. Hubby never had to, so putting stuff away … well, have a wild stab at a guess. And that makes it a little difficult to keep on top of clutter, because the kitchen table tends to fill up very quickly with bits of shopping and what have you.
One of the things missing from our old house was storage, but luckily, the people we bought our current house from were big on storage spaces, so now there’s room to PUT STUFF AWAY FINALLY! ❤ Really ought to go through stuff and throw away what things that are broken and so on, and give what we don't need to charity, or try flogging them on eBay or something. Maybe a car boot sale – do you have those where you are? Like a yard sale, but there's a lot of people doing it at the same time, and you bring your car full of stuff and sell whatever you can. Or buy, for that matter, you might find a bargain.
Another idea for cheap storage and such things, check online. There's eBay where you could get things cheaper, or Craigslist maybe (never used it), or similar sites. Charity shops tend to give good prices as well, as they get things donated to them and therefore can afford to sell things dirt cheap. They might have storage solutions for you. Or just check the classified ads in local papers or on local notice boards in shops.
Have you heard of "freecycle"? That might be something to check out: http://www.freecycle.org/ You might have something someone else needs, and someone else might have exactly what you need, and be willing to trade. 🙂
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