Do you watch home improvement shows on television? I enjoy watching them, and I am struck with how clean and fresh to homes look after a big renovation. Sometimes, they show how the owners live before a renovation. Usually, they have a lot of clutter and too much stuff everywhere. If you are wanting to make your house look different and do a home renovation, I suggest decluttering and working on your routines first. If you do a renovation and love how everything looks, you also have to be able to maintain it. If you don’t, you will be back to living a cluttered life.
People are surprised that I continually declutter. I also move things around often. I switch out seasonal decorations. I change my silk flowers. Just a little decluttering and switching furniture and decorations can make you feel like you did a renovation. It can change the look of everything.
Another area to reign in clutter in your home is your homeschool materials. Most homeschoolers like to collect things — books, paper, supplies, accessories, etc. Only allow yourself to keep the amount of materials that you can easily store. If you have piles of papers and crates and stacks of books everywhere, you need to thin down what you have. Consider how many bookshelves you have in your home. They are dust collectors. I have slowly decluttered books and reduced the number of bookshelves in my home. I am continually thinning out my book collection. I rotate through history and science topics every 4 years, but I am coming close to finishing the rotation as my youngest child is growing up fast!
Start a box to put things you are not using and donate regularly. You can give your home a fresh, clean look by decluttering a little bit daily.
Weekly Home Blessing Task: Declutter Paper/Magazines
Routines:
- Make Your Bed (Do this as soon as you get up.)
- Get Dressed Down to Your Shoes
- Swish and Swipe
- Start Your Laundry
- Decide on Dinner
- Check Your Calendar
- Start the Day off with a Shiny Sink. Don’t leave the breakfast dishes sitting.
School:
- Do a fun Christmas craft
- Eat Lunch
- Clear off One Hot Spot
- Reboot the Laundry
- Declutter for 15 Minutes (Be sure to have your children declutter, too.)
- Drink Your Water
- 15 minutes of loving movement
Before Bed: (This starts right after dinner.)
- Check the Calendar for Tomorrow
- Lay out Your Clothes for Tomorrow (Have your children lay their clothes out, too.)
- Put things at your launch pad
- Shine Your Sink
- Clean Off a Hot Spot
- Go to Bed at Decent Hour
Hi Tami! Can you share more about how you do your rotation of science and history books? Thanks!
Hi, Stephanie! I will post about this next week. Thank you for asking!
Tami