Tidy 2: The Closet Vomited

Yep, I went there. Right to the office closet. Several months ago, I walked right into the office closet looking for something really important (cue suspenseful music). I think it was a pencil (cue letdown music).

What would you guess was found? So many scattered office supplies! Office supplies - sharpies, pens, pencils, and sticky notes (lawd, so many sticky notes; my best guess is 1,927 of them!) - had clearly vomited all over. All over the the shelves. All over the floor. Just. All. Over. There was no person in particular to blame. We had all done our part looking for something quickly, not putting things back in their proper place, and tossing random crap in that poor closet. The real issue, though, is that nothing really had a proper place, so everything just sort of landed where it landed.

So I stopped looking for a pencil and "Marie Kondo'd" that little credenza with little plastic bins. And then I put labels on the little plastic bins. So now everything has a proper place, and that credenza has looked tidyously fabulous ever since.

The credenza actually sits in a larger closet with 2 other fairly tall shelving units. And the whole space has needed a serious tidying up for quite some time. So, a few months ago, I added "clean out the supply closet" to my own personal to do list.

Last week, I finally got my chance to shine. I tackled that closet with gusto. I sorted, I tossed, I labeled, I tidied, I sweated. I set out anything that looked like it was purchased from 1985-2015 and put it on a counter for others to sift through and disperse. There was organizing and decluttering galore. I am very happy to report that the office supply vomit has been cleaned up, and my heart is still singing!

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Tidy 1: Yard Sale Tips

The bulk of people, and I include myself of being guilty of this in my younger days, don't know how effectively organize a garage/yard sale. They half-heartedly toss their crap...ahem..."treasures" on some tables, in virtually no orderly fashion. Sometimes like-things land together, sometimes not. Sometimes prices are slapped on a few things, sometimes not. People spend a lot of energy sorting through their unwanted stuff and then just want it gone. No judgement in that all, folks. I feel ya!

However, let this be your challenge. When starting the sorting process, start with some empty boxes or bins. Label them: SELL, THROW AWAY, KEEP. Once you've sorted these, deal first with the Throw Away items and haul them straight to the trash. Then deal with the Keep items and put them away in their proper place. If you need it, take a break for a day or so, and then go back to the sell box. Sort the SELLS - break them all into categories. Think like Target - Be Target!

Tip: Get the kiddos involved. My little helped with this sort.

Obsession 1: Naming the Blog

I love writing. It's possible that I am even somewhat decent at writing. A few people - some friends who love me, my mom who really loves me, and my therapist who is paid to love me, or at least like me a little - have said so. Maybe they are right, maybe they are not. But I find it to be a therapeutic way to navigate through my feelings and process the world around me.

My husband has been hounding, ahem, encouraging me to write a blog for a while now. I had one a while ago that nearly 4 people regularly read. And now that my "mom brain" has basically fully recovered since giving birth 9.5 years ago, I can finally put my thoughts together in a fairly clear format.

I am a list maker at my core. So, in order to make a blog, and want anyone to read it at all, I decided to make a check list on all things bloggy - create a blog, blog topics, etc.

Step 1. Log into Google and create a blog - check. Step 2. First question when creating the blog: "what is the name of your blog?"... Oh, crap; I'm stuck already! And this is why I have not done a blog for quite some time.

In addition to being a total "check lister," I am also a nearly total perfectionist. And I have struggled for days over what to call this blog. I wanted something fun and memorable and amazing about decluttering your life, sparking your joy, or uncluttering your house, but it seemed all the really good ones were taken. Thanks, smart people blogging way before me. Thanks, Marie Kondo.

So, of course I made a list of other possibilities:
-An Uncluttered Cottage
-Scrambled Eggs
-The Chaotic Cottage
-Neatly Scrambled
-Scrambled Eggs Daily
-The Cottage Uncluttered

Maybe I was having a weird craving for eggs or maybe I would rather be back at our cottage; my very happy place. Either way, none of those jumped out at me in a way that a blog name should. So I settled on a name that I think encompasses me pretty well: "Obsessively. Tidy. Me." Am I obsessive? Sometimes. Am I tidy? Usually. Am I me? Yep!

And the thing is, as I also made a whole list of possible blog post topics, it turns out that I may even have a few more things to talk about than just organizing and decluttering.

Enjoy Obsessively. Tidy. Me!