"The Room"

I'm still in shock at how neat our house looks right now - not a pile to be seen, clean counter tops and tables, bed made, laundry caught up, folded, and put away. It's like a miracle. The cleaning fairies are smiling down upon our house - or maybe I just finally got motivated to get stuff picked up. Either way, things are looking good and surprise visits don't send me into panic-mode.

But...

We have this room in our house that is supposed to be our office, but it ends up as the catch-all for my last minute tidying sessions. Because I have no shame and I need some accountability, I'm going to show you what it looks like right at this moment...

{Right side of the room}

Most of the stuff you see on the left side of the room will be taken care of with Christmas, but I also have a number of items that I have purchased and stored as "just in case" gifts and I really need to organize them and clean out so that when I need a quick hostess gift, I can actually find it!

{Left side of the room}

{Head hanging in shame, cheeks aflame} The thing is, I have all these piles throughout the house and I don't know what to do with them. I'm afraid to throw them away because "what if..." and all that; but at the same time, I don't know what I should file it as..."Miscellaneous Papers and Receipts that May or May Not Be Important" seems rather long, don't you think? What it's really going to take is several hours (or days) of me sitting down and going through it all - not just making new piles to be dealt with later, but actually doing something with it (file, shred, or toss).

{Hallmark is right, life is a special occasion - I'd enjoy it more with less stuff!}

Last week I received a preview copy of The Money Saving Mom's Budget, and as a result of my reading, I've set goals for the month that are broken down into goals for each week. For example, one of my goals for the month is to work on actually cleaning the house, but I've broken that down into different cleaning aspects for each week (floors, dusting, etc.) to make it a little less vague. I try not to have more than two to three goals per week because I know that if there are more than that, I'm setting myself up to fail. I know me.

So now that you have seen my "hidden room", please tell me that I'm not alone - I'm not the only person out there who has such a room/closet/space! We keep the door shut on this room, which helps the house to look tidy, but doesn't do much for getting the room cleaned out. Hopefully the goals that I have set and the lessons from Crystal's book that I'm implementing will help this room to have an open door policy in the future! I'll keep you posted...