By Ana Rubenstein
I am not naturally an organized mother. I am not an organized person. Are you? I wonder if organization is a skill you develop over time or something you are born with? I think it is something you can learn, but, honestly, I have been too busy with other things in life that I skipped this subject altogether. Shame on me as I have been called disorganized many times over the years and even felt bad about it. After I had kids, disorganization reached its peak and I started to justify to whoever wanted to listen. “I have no time to organize the house. I am always chasing the kids around or they are always taking everything out of place.”
If you entered my house right now, you would find clutter, things out of place, unfolded laundry sitting on my couch, my kids’ toys laying on the floor, dishes in the sink, and, honestly, an unmade bed. If this sounds familiar to you and resonates somehow, stay with me. Should we keep accepting the “disorganized label” and feeling overwhelmed by the clutter in our house or should we do something about it?
Today, I am choosing to do something else. With mixed feelings, fearing of failure and hoping for the best, I declare I am committed to becoming organized. My strategies this time are very different from the ones I used in the past. Now, for every time it comes to my mind “I am disorganized and there is nothing I can do about it”, I will replace it with empowering questions such as “What can I do to organize it? How can I create time to do it? Which home-organization expert can I learn from? Which accountability partner can I ask support from when I am not being organized?”
More than asking myself questions, I can always come back to my biggest motivators. I want to be a role model for my kids, have a decluttered house that brings me joy and peace, and I want to inspire other moms to do the same and to feel the same way about the place they call home.
Are you ready to get started? Right now, I am following Marie Kondo’s method. If you want to check it out, she has a book – The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing — and a new series on Netflix – Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Basically, this organization expert teaches us to go over all our material belongings, hold them one by one, and ask ourselves “Does it spark joy?” If the answer is no, it is time to discard it or donate it.
In my case, I started to bring organization to our house by organizing one drawer at a time in our dressers. To make it more exciting, I am calling this project “The Octopus Mama 30-Day-Declutter Challenge” and I already have been making daily updates about my progress on my Facebook page – theoctopusmama – and on Instagram @theoctopusmama.
I invite you to join me in decluttering something every day – drawer, closet, even the surface of furniture. You can choose to follow Marie Kondo’s method or any other one that fits your soul. Just become organized with me! We might not have 8 arms and 3 hearts like an octopus, but we are mothers and we can do anything we put our minds and hearts too!
And if you are already organized and have a tidy, decluttered house, please, share tips, pics of organization strategies that work for you, or whatever can inspire “organization beginners” just like myself.
The Octopus Mama 