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Community Corner

Clearing House

Necessity helps mom columnist declutter home.

It is surprising how much you can get done when the motivation is big, or you need to get something done.

Just this week, some fellow moms and I shared our insights on how we conquer clutter in the home. While many of the moms hold the enviable position of owning what sounds like tidy, clutter-free homes, I confessed that my house is a mess. My house has tons of clutter, and although I am constantly working to vanquish it, I can never seem to get a handle on it.

On Wednesday, I went out for dinner with my daughters and a friend of mine and her daughter to celebrate my friend’s birthday. Just before our dinner was concluded, my friend’s daughter mentioned that she and her mom were going to have a sleepover of sorts that night and fall asleep together while watching movies. When I got home with my kids, one of my daughters mentioned that she was jealous that her friend was going to have a movie sleepover.

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My daughters and I sometimes have movie sleepovers in our family room, but since I knew that my husband was planning to watch the Sweden/U.S. World Cup Soccer game that night on DVR, I couldn’t set my daughters up there. So, I decided to lay out their blankets and pillows in a spare bedroom upstairs that has its own TV.

The problem is that the room, which is filled with all sorts of items that need to be filed and sorted, hasn’t been properly used in months and has basically become a catch-all room. I have been meaning to clean out the room for months, but because there are so many other projects on my to-do list, I never got to it.

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My daughters were pretty tired, and I knew that if I let them watch a movie, they would happily fall asleep in a few minutes. So in less than 20 minutes, I had the room cleared out and vacuumed, had the TV turned on to a Disney movie, and had all their bedding spread out on the floor in front of the TV. While my girls watched the movie in the darkened room, I quietly sorted out the stuff in the hall that I had moved out from the room. Much of it went into the trash, some went into a box to be sorted later, and the rest went into storage in the basement.

After a while, my daughters clicked off the TV and went to sleep.

The room isn’t perfect (there is still a cluttered desk that needs to be tackled), but at least I can now cross off one major task off my to-do list. I guess it goes to say that when there’s a will, there will always be a way.

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