I'm so excited about how the kitchen is progressing!! I have decided to do a larger post about my progress once the whole project is completed! I don't have much more to do, but I figured instead of continuing to write about the same process for every decluttering session I tackle in the kitchen (because it is truly the same process for the cupboards I'm currently working on), I would recap the process with photos after I'm done and talk about where all of my decluttered items went!
What is really exciting to me though is that even though it seems to be taking a while to completely declutter my kitchen (thank you crazy life!), it is actually staying decluttered and functional!! Some might say that it's organized, but I haven't truly organized yet, so it's not "pretty" organized yet. I'm solely focusing on decluttering for now. My counters are clean!! They are staying clean! I'm so happy!
One thing I've learned in the process of tackling my whole home decluttering project is that if I focus only on decluttering and ignore my daily chores, I become very overwhelmed and go into shut down mode. I say daily chores like I have a whole list and spend hours a day keeping my house in order. Ha! If I did that, I probably wouldn't be writing about my adventures in decluttering.
Right now, I have 2 "must do" chores that I HAVE to do every day to keep my sanity. Dishes and laundry. That's it. For me to be able to focus on the areas of the house that need to be decluttered, I have to have the dishes done and a load of laundry in the washing machine. There are other chores that get done, but dishes and laundry are the 2 absolute "must do's"!!
Every night before I go to bed, I have made it my goal to make sure that the dishes from dinner are in the dish washer. If I am able to get the dishes done at night before bed, then the first thing I do in the morning is unload the dishwasher. This gives me an empty dishwasher to load throughout the day as dishes are dirtied. My nightly goal of getting those dinner dishes done doesn't always happen, but it sure does make walking into the kitchen first thing in the morning feel that much nicer when I have a clean sink! Last night that didn't happen. Both kids had baseball games, I had junior high school orientation for my youngest, and then I had plans with a friend after the orientation. Life and crazy schedules happen! My husband was in charge of dinner, and I was grateful for him taking over so I could decompress with a friend! When the afternoon craziness began yesterday, I had a clean sink. By the time I got home, it was full and I was too tired to tackle them at 11:00pm. So before I even had my coffee this morning, those dishes were getting done. Walking into the kitchen after taking my kids to school knowing that the dishes were done made me feel that much more ready to tackle the day. If I have a sink full of dishes and I attempt to do anything else, my brain malfunctions and can't process getting anything else done. And then I feel guilty tackling a project within the house or doing anything if I know those dishes are hanging out, so nothing gets done. It's just better for me to make doing those dishes the first and last thing I do in my day and it is SO MUCH EASIER than letting them pile up! You will never ever regret doing the dishes.
The other chore that I must stay on top of is laundry. UGH. I hate doing the laundry. I really do. My husband does his own laundry. So that leaves me in charge of my laundry and our boys laundry. I have been teaching the 13 year old how to do his, but it's not routine to him yet. It's mind boggling to me how much laundry the three of us generate. Between them wearing school clothes, sports uniforms, and after school clothes, that's six outfits a day...not including what I wear! Or pajamas and towels! But if I can do a load a day from start to finish, it is much more manageable for me to wash, fold and put away 6-7 outfits a day than having a dedicated laundry day once a week. And again....life happens. When it does, the laundry pile gets a little bigger and my mood gets a little crankier about it, but thankfully that doesn't happen too often.
Getting those two chores done and out of the way first thing in the morning has made a huge difference in me being able set aside dedicated time for decluttering and other projects. Are there other chores I should be doing daily? Probably!! I plan on gradually adding daily "must do" chores to the routine, but for now because I have a whole home that I'm decluttering, I'm just fine with what I'm doing.
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