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I think I’ve caught the Spring cleaning organize-everything bug, because my goal lately has been to whip my home into submission. Although I’ve always been quite an organization geek. I love the products, the clean lines, having a place for every last pen and coaster. I love the smell of organization in the morning!
Sometimes I take things a little too far. It’s something I’ve learned to live with.
Recently I came across a quote by William Morris that struck a chord with me:
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”
I am not a hoarder, but I’ve realized that there are items in my house that I’ve held onto, and they suit no good purpose. So as I go through areas of my home this spring, I’m looking at things through those rose colored glasses, if it’s not beautiful to my family or useful to us at this point in our lives, there’s no need for us to hold onto it.
So many people feel disheveled and disorganized throughout their day-to-day life, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. If you feel disorganized, realize that it didn’t happen overnight. So we can’t expect to reverse the entire process overnight. The best way to get organized is to take one bite at a time, just do a little at a time.
Take BABY STEPS (name that movie).
So for the next few weeks, I’m going to take you through the small, baby step I’m taking each week to organize our home, or at least parts of it.
This week’s goal – the dreaded photo tote.
A couple of weeks ago, I pulled out a very large storage tote marked PHOTOS/MEMORIES, in order to put together a gift for a friend, and while I was at it decided to sort through all those old photos. And OH MY GOODNESS, I thought it was going to take me until next year to sort. I had saved EVERY SINGLE PHOTO from EVERY SINGLE EVENT.
The first stage of my project was to purge out all those old, unnecessary photos. When I have five blurry photos and one clear photo from a dinner out, I’ll save the good one and toss the rest. I figured if I store all of these photos in a large tote and can’t see them anyway, then what’s the point in having them. I ended up keeping about 1/3 of the photos I started out with, and now all I have left are the photos that have meaning and are worth taking another look at.
This is what I’m left with AFTER the big purge. Better, much better.
I’d still rather have these ‘worth-keeping’ photos where I can see them and not stored away in the basement taking up space or what’s the point? Right. Is there a point? Do I have a point?
Tap, tap. Is this thing on?
Oh well.
The next stage in this process was gathering the photos from our mismatched albums, along with the ones from this tote and putting them into chronological order. I grabbed a couple of new, matching, yet inexpensive albums and stuffed them while watching the season finale of America’s Next Top Model and armed with a bowl of snacks at my side. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best choice of programming while looking at awkward, snaggle-toothed photos of myself from years past.
I still wanted to have a way to differentiate between the albums. With a quick trip to the Scrapbooking aisle, I came away with thick, white labeling stickers and a set of stickers that look like metal fasteners.
Now I just need to decide what to label the albums. Should I number them? Should I come up with a title?
I’ll figure it out sometime this decade.
I’m decisive like that.
So far, I’m on track. What organizing projects have you got going on? I’d love to hear.
Although if you need me, I’ll probably be hiding out in my closet.
Farewell… forever,
Jerrie says
Organizing is good fun! Enjoy the process!
and…What about Bob? LOVE that movie!
Crystal Rae says
Ohhhh…. Scrapbooking sounds like something I need to do. Way to go organizing your photos. Looking back on old pictures is so much fun. It makes me want to go get mine out. 😛
Christina Lusk says
Hahaha. I need to get rid of grandparents before my house will ever be completed. Thank you so much for the inspiration and guidance to go through my photo/memory tote(s).
Also, So we don’t end up with 2000 square feet of kid’s school work, we take photos of it and make 8×10 photo collages of it before it hits the road. We only save a few of our favorite things from each year.
Kat @ www.TodaysCliche.com says
OMG I am LMAO. If only I could get my husband to read this post!
Still, I’m going to print it off and have it on me when he tries to stop me from “organizing” his stuff.
Ha!
It’s like the Library of Congress around here.
BTW, thanks for stopping by my site, http://todayscliche.com
Cheers,
Kat
lizcooper says
My dad always labeled our photo albums by year…what went on each year was in each separate album. I started doing that when my husband and I first got together but now I have tons of photos on disc and hard drive that I haven’t gotten prints of. I need to do this and start my album process so my kids can look at albums just like I did growing up!
Life with Kaishon says
I don’t have any organizing projects going on right now. And I am very happy about that 🙂
Gerri says
What About Bob????
Good for you…Mine are still waiting for me. 😉 My Mom’s visit through us for a loop. I will attack them again soon. I’m promising myself that. 😉