My 30-Day Home Reorganization Challenge

image via The Container Store

I'm looking at the calendar and feeling that our long, long wait for The Man to return to us will come up very quickly and I still have so much I need and want to accomplish before he returns. One of the major tasks I want to accomplish is a complete home reorganization. When we begin living as a married couple and a family of three full-time, I want this home to reflect all of us and be simple, organized and comfortable for everyone.

I spoke to a therapist friend recently who works with people who are away from home on military deployments. She said one of the things they most need when they return home is a very clean and orderly home because for the entire time they are away they are dreaming of home. In their dreams are imagining things in a perfect state. Welcoming him home to a calm and peaceful, organized environment where his things are incorporated in a new way should be a great blessing for him. It's definitely something I want to provide for him.

You know I'm an organization fan and at least twice a year I get a major hankering to tear the place apart and clean everything and then put it all back together. So merging these two desires is quite perfect right now. In the past I have often taken a week or two and put almost all my energies to it doing it all at once. Right now I know that is completely not practical or doable. So I've been considering another plan and this one feels good. Here's the plan I came up with.

1) Made a task list -- I walked through every room in the house making a list of every space that needed to be cleaned and organized. I tried to break it down into tasks that would take between fifteen minutes and one-hour, that I can do quickly each day. 

2) Analyzed my list -- I came up with 64 things that needed to be done. I figured I could fit two in every day and then catch the final four somewhere in between. I decided that rather than assigning chores to each day of my 30-day challenge I would instead allow myself to choose every day which tasks I wanted to do so that I didn't feel locked into anything that wouldn't work for me each day and I could tailor things to what was happening each day.

3) Got busy -- I picked two things to accomplish yesterday. Get started right off the bat with success. I decided to do my two bathroom drawers. Washed all the organizer trays, wiped out the drawers, straightened everything up and re-evaluated how I was using the space, what products I was actually using, etc.

So I will keep you up each week on the reorganization project. Each week I should be crossing off at least 14 projects. Looking forward to it!