Lately I have felt like I have been in an organizing and cleaning rut, so I turned to Japanese cleaning guru Marie Kondo and binge watched her series on Netflix as I turned my house upside down.
I went from feeling helpless to beyond inspired! This sparked enough “joy” (as Marie mentions in her episodes) for me to take this a step further and video blog the little ways I incorporated my son in my home overhaul! All of these tidying tasks are easily accomplished under an hour AND you may be able to make it through our list in a matter of minutes. We FEEL the difference in our house and we hope you do, too.
Watch us in action! I incorporated my son, Caleb, to show our little housecleaning activity and share what we did together.
ORGANIZING IS AN ‘ART’
I’ve felt pretty guilty on both sides: getting caught for throwing away Caleb’s drawings or catching myself saving piles of those “special art” projects and drawings. Yikes. Can’t a mom win?! I believe I have the winning and creative answer.
For me, getting rid of the clutter DEFINITELY starts with plowing through the stacks of paper and miscellaneous items. Marie Kondo mentions this throughout her series: getting rid of the clutter to simplify your life. Looking into my life, there was one place all directions pointed…the art drawer.
I have a dedicated drawer filled with Caleb’s drawings. Caleb could clearly see it was overflowing! Today, this mom isn’t going to tackle this task alone. I preemptively bought a green binder (Caleb’s favorite color) for him to choose the art to keep. This took him quite a while but we made it through the overflowing drawer in about 10 minutes.
I enjoyed hearing him recall the artwork and also making the decision to throw away A LOT! Actually, more throw-aways that I expected. I caught myself saving a few pieces he passed over. In the end, we have a nice neat green binder filled with my talented child’s artwork.
THROW OUT THE BROKEN CRAYONS, DRIED MARKERS, MISSING ERASERS
We literally filled half a garbage can we had so many broken crayons and dried out markers. Yikes. Organizing loose crayons, pencils, markers was a fabulous task to gift ourselves. Caleb loved this. He threw out the broken crayons, pencils that were missing erasers, etc. What a great feeling! So much space! (This took about five minutes.)
“LET’S SEE WHAT YOUR FLOOR LOOKS LIKE”
Tidying up the room! Caleb found tons of extra papers in his room that we continued adding to the green binder and instead of Caleb picking the ‘favorites,’ we swapped places. He gave me the joy of picking the favorites for his binder and he cleaned up his room. By the end of it, we could see the floor! (15 minutes)
ALL THAT CLEANING MAKES ME HUNGRY!
Time for a snack! All of this cleaning made us hungry. The perfect place to continue our tidying adventure was the pantry. Caleb helped me find anything in the pantry that was almost empty or even better, EXPIRED! This turned into a fun game and is the perfect task for any kid to look and see what is close to going stale. We were ambitious enough to tackle the refrigerator, too! (15 minutes)
VROOM TO THE FINISH LINE!
Finally, vacuuming! This really is Caleb’s favorite part so we saved “the best for last.” (10 minutes)
