Taking Back My Home Week 1

Most moms can relate to feeling like clutter and chaos are taking over their home. Some people, like me, are just prone to having 'stuff'. Add in busy family members who have a lot going on, and the stuff seems to multiply exponentially. Often when our family is busy, our stuff piles up and the clutter perpetuates.

I find it particularly stressful to spend time looking for things. I long for organization amidst our busy schedule.

I am setting out to make 2015 the year I "take back my home" from the grips of clutter. While there are some things that we must hang onto, there is also a lot that I can part with, to make life easier. I am determined to conquer our clutter and organize our home, to help us be more useful and effective.

I am joining up with two weekly challenges, and plan on blogging the journey here. Blogging about it will help me be more accountable, and perhaps will even inspire someone else to join the journey and take back their home from the grips of clutter as well!

I like weekly challenges because they give me the flexibility to work the tasks over a week's time rather than missing a day here and there, and getting discouraged. Some days I have more time to spend, and can easily accomplish several days' worth of goals.

Here are the challenges for this first full week of January. If you would like to join in, mention it on the comments section! Together we can take back our homes and lives. :-)

My first challenge is joining up with blogger Michele for 34 Weeks of Clean 


Because I am a glutton for punishment  overachiever, I am also joining the Declutter 365 challenge at Home Storage Solutions 101.My hope and prayer is that by the end of this year, my home will be organized and efficient, and I will have successfully "taken back my home" from the grips of clutter. For the things that I absolutely must store - I hope to have them conquered and in their right places, instead of letting them stress me.

Home Storage Solutions 101 has a free printable calendar that assigns a 15 minute declutter challenge to each day. I printed the calendar out to get started. While I appreciate the daily assignments, I have decided to make them weekly challenges instead, to fit my lifestyle. Would you care to join in? 
Here are my WEEK ONE CHALLENGES:

1. Clean up every last scrap of Christmas stuff. This includes putting away all the cookie containers, cleaning up the Christmas cards, and packing all the lights and decorations away into the storage area in the attic. 
2. Record any new addresses into my Christmas cards address file for next year.
3. Finish all our thank you notes for Christmas gifts. Mail them out.
4. Write down any new cookie recipes in the Christmas Baking notebook for next year.
5. Complete the week one mission for Declutter 365, which focuses on the kitchen! This week I will be decluttering kitchen counters, under the kitchen sink, and the utensil and silverware drawers. I get a free pass on decluttering the kitchen table. Because the table is pretty much the center of everything, and is used daily for school and meals, it goes through daily renewal already. 
6. I am also catching up on the first few days of Declutter 365, which includes setting up my daily planner and updating my household notebook. I am adding in a necessary task for myself - setting up an easy desktop filing system to deal with the vast amounts of paperwork I receive on a weekly basis, rather than leaving those papers in stacks on my desk. 

I will plan on posting some pictures next week to record my progress. 

Happy organizing!

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