Clean Sweep - Using the Buddy System

I am not an organized person, despite what it might seem like on my blog. Worst yet, I'm an organized person trapped in a hoarder's body. This has kept the hoarding from reaching reality television cry for help level, but it leaves me feeling like an utter failure most of the time. Combine that with being thirty weeks pregnant (aka nesting phase) and you wind up with an emotional wreck of a housewife. So, in a less than gentle moment, I let my husband have it. Didn't he care? How could he just come home and never want to work on the house? He was totally anal when I met him, what happened?

He lovingly explained that when he married me he had to learn not to care so much about everything being in it's place. It seems that we both started pushing each other more towards the other's line of thinking.

Now don't get me wrong. It feels like we live in the world's most cluttered, disorganized house, but I watch t.v. - we don't! Not by a long shot. And I'm happy to say that I stay fairly on top of the actual cleaning tasks (toilet, vacuuming, laundry, etc), so our house is "clean." But I want my house to be welcoming. It doesn't have to be a flippin' museum, but I want people to come over or drop by and not leave wondering if my 2 year-old completely rules the roost.

So my husband and I came up with a plan for the living room only. He had a meeting at work, so we had limited time and I wear out easily anyway. We easily spend the most time in our living room, so it seemed like a good place to start. And it worked, we got the whole room clean and clutter free in less than an hour. First, we pared down the dreaded toy box that had grown larger and larger as my 2 year-old added to his treasure trove. Then we took down the Christmas tree, an activity which I generally dread. We made a basket for books and bagged up DVDs/tapes we no longer watch.

It wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it worked so much better than me doing it myself. For instance, I had pared down the toybox only 2 weeks ago, but I had a hard time getting rid of and putting away all his toys. Instead my husband filled an entire 13 gallon trashbag with toys and let me jump in and save a few I knew James loved. A small store size bag of toys was rehomed to the toy chest in the basement to be rotated with the toys we kept in the living room. Our son now has about 5 carefully chosen toys he has ready access to in the living room.

It worked because we buddied up. My husband was able to approach it with fresh eyes. He knew that most of the toys wound up all over the floor because our son was trying to get to the few toys he did play with, and he reminded me that we are the parents. It's okay for us to graciously accept yet another obnoxious toy and then make it disappear after a few days.

So you know that room you are avoiding, or, in my case, that house, because you just don't know where to start? Grab a buddy and get going. Husbands are convenient, but good, honest friends work too!