Collaborative post.
Have you ever looked around your family home and decided enough’s enough? I feel like this often — a wave of determination comes over me and I decide that’s it, I’m going to have a massive clear out and become the sort of mother I see on Pinterest who has all of her pasta in storage jars labelled with chalk pens in perfect calligraphy.
Of course, the reality is far from the fantasy. Often the house ends up looking worse than when I started because halfway through I get overwhelmed and have to abandon the whole idea. If this is you then I see you. There is no judgement here.
Here’s what my house clear-outs normally end up looking like:
The enthusiastic stage
I’ve made myself a coffee, checked out the latest Mrs Hinch cleaning tips and I’m ready to go. I start in the living room, randomly taking things off shelves and out of drawers. I may even have been organised enough to set up separate boxes and bags for rubbish, recycling and stuff for the charity shop. All is good.
Things start to go downhill when I pull some family photo albums off the shelf. I end up spending half an hour looking through pictures of my children when they were babies and wondering wistfully about where all the time has gone and why I never did get around to making that precious memory scrapbook. My coffee has gone cold.
The chaotic stage
Everything is looking worse than when I started and there is stuff everywhere. Mainly, there are cables. How did we ever accumulate so many cables and what are they all for? I spend an hour reading Wired’s cable organisation ideas and trying to figure out what they might be connected to, but none of them seem to fit anything in my home.
In a moment of recklessness I decide to throw them all in the bin, knowing full well that tomorrow one of my children will ask for a cable and I will have to order a Switch charger on Amazon.
Entering my regret era
This is where it all starts to get a bit much and I regret ever starting. I’ve managed to streamline the Tupperware cupboard, which I’m very pleased with, but the rest of the house feels out of control.
I consider selling up and starting afresh. I could sell to We Buy Any Home for cash and never even have to have an estate agent come round and judge me for having two sandwich toasters. Two sandwich toasters? What is my life? It’s very tempting. I could have money in the bank is as little as a week and move to a remote cottage and live off the land.
Tidying up again
At this point I make myself another coffee and realise I have to put everything back again. I sigh heavily. I have two bags of rubbish that won’t fit in the outside bin and a huge box for the charity shop that I put in the boot of the car. I know it will sit there for at least a month. Everything else I put back where it started.
I pour a glass of wine and switch on a Death in Paradise repeat. That’s better.