My Wife Made Me Clean

By Matt

(This is the fourth segment in a four-part series on Project Simplify with Simple Mom.  Head over to Nursery Closet: Done, Eating Ice Cream While Researching Healthier Meat, and The Challenge that Intimidated the Pants Off Me to read the first three segments.)

It’s true: my wife not only insisted that I tidy my junk, but she also suggested that I should blog about it.  But let me begin by saying that I am VERY pleased with the results! 

So this week for Project Simplify, we got to choose our own “hotspot.”  This is where our home is in most need.  While there are lots of little nooks and crannies that do require attention (such as our apartment’s outside storage closet – YIKES!), one particular room felt like a smack in the face every day… the Master Bedroom.  And inside the Master Bedroom was my NIGHTSTAND OF DEATH!  Note that this was MY problem since it was MY crap.  In addition to this, we also decided to reorganize our entire Master Bedroom.  It was a lot to do in one week, but well worth it.  We hope you enjoy our adventure!

Nightstand of Death

Definition: The place where all of your miscellaneous crap goes to die.  My crap in particular has found its home here for the past 5 years.  If I don’t know what to do with something, IN THE DRAWER IT GOES!  Out of room in the drawer?  THERE’S A SHELF!!!  The shelf is full you say?  Well, then just stick on the floor NEXT to the Nightstand of Death.  It’s so embarrassing.

In all seriousness, this little piece of furniture hasn’t been organized in 5 years.  The drawer held some old journals, my grandparents’ Precious Moments figurines, an unopened 4-pack of C batteries, a broken watch, Mother’s Day cards (so, these weren’t mine, but I probably put them there), and other mismatched junk.  Underneath lay some old books, a can of air, documents for my job, CDs, an extra digital audio cable, a binder full of guitar music, vacationing packets, and a bag of auto repair equipment that I had been meaning to return for A YEAR AND A HALF!!!  Why?  Really, why has this been on/in my nightstand?

So I took EVERYTHING out, I mean EVERYTHING out.  It made quite the mess once all of it ended up on our bed.  But piece by piece I threw some away, filed what needed filed, and put ONE THING BACK IN AT A TIME!  *WHEW*  But now it looks so cozy!

note: see those CDs on the shelf?  They wouldn’t fit in our tote for CDs, so I also went through every CD we own and purged about 2 dozen that we no longer needed. Because we just don’t need that copy of Hanson anymore. Bye bye MmmBop!

And now on to the next section, BOOKSHELVES!

Who Wants to Be a Library Anyway?

My wife pointed out this American phenomenon to me this past week.  Americans like to collect books in order to become their own little libraries.  Books are just SO easy to hoard.  Believe me, I’ve been there.  But rather than BE a library, why don’t I just GO to the library?  It’s so much easier on the budget!  I had done this out of necessity a little over a year ago.  I changed jobs, which meant that I lost my office, which meant that almost HALF of my books wouldn’t fit in our 700 square foot apartment at the time.  So, I learned how to sell books online, thus making a few hundred dollars in the process.

At that time, I had decided to keep just about as many books as could fit.  Well, this made our Master Bedroom feel cramped and haphazard.  Books had to be stacked in certain directions just to fit on our two shelves!  Rather than hoarding as much as I could, why not be intentional and only keep the books that I truly believe I will pick up again (or for the first time)?  So I went through every book on our shelves to make sure I wanted to keep it.   We ended up downsizing 46 books from our shelves.  Selling 17 of them on My Book Buyer earned us a grand total of $38!!  Win-win!

But wait, there’s more!

Mission: Declutter!!

We now live in an 1100 square foot apartment.  This is by far the largest place in which we’ve lived.  The rooms are spacious and storage is convenient.  Yet whenever I looked around our Master Bedroom, it just felt crowded.  It wasn’t typically a disaster, just cramped.  But why should it feel so cramped when we don’t even have a dresser in our room?

I realized after our organizing excursion that it wasn’t a space problem.  It was just chaotic.  There was usually a box in the way or a stack of baby blankets on the Nightstand of Death.  We also had our baby’s bassinet next to our bed (which she has outgrown by the way), totally blocking Steph’s nightstand.  Even though there was enough space in the room, the clutter in our Master Bedroom was disrupting our peace and quiet.  Rather than a place to be, it almost felt like a hallway on route to the master closet.

Moving the clutter and a couple of the larger items really seemed to open up the space and bring in a sense of freshness.  When I’m trying to relax, I don’t want all of my unfinished tasks yelling out at me.  The cleanliness and the openness help me unwind and just rest.

So this week, we tackled MORE drawers, MORE shelves, ALL of our books, CDs, and a couple extra furniture pieces.  Holy cow!  No wonder I’ve felt busy this week!  After all is said and done, Project Simplify 2012 was a great success.  Thanks for stopping by everyone!