Guest Post: Jill Dow (How to Clutter Bust a Memory)

Photo of Jill's clutterbusting mission

I love creative people. There's no denying it. Tonight's post comes from a loyal reader who completed a mission and sent me an e-mail to tell me about it.

From Jill:

My husband can be known around the house for "clutter busting," except when it comes to one item…his T-shirts. For several years, his T-shirts sat in his dresser drawer or in a box and were either never worn or too thread bare to wear. Many of the T-shirts held special memories (high school sports teams, sports camps, summer camps attended and counseled at, mission trips, college activities…). After lots of discussion, a compromise was reached:

He would allow me to “clutter bust” his T-shirt drawer if I could preserve the memories that went with them. This summer I endeavored to accomplish that by creating a T-shirt quilt.

There are many helpful Web sites that explain the process of making a T-shirt quilt. The one I found most helpful is listed at the bottom of this post (it gives dimensions, material needs, helpful suggestions, and step by step instructions).

Creating a T-shirt quilt is a way to keep the treasured memories in a practical way that "clutter busts" the dresser drawer. There are plenty of other ways this can be done if it is thought about ahead of time...

1. Save your child's favorite clothing (outfit they came home in from the hospital, the pants they wore so many times and for so long they were shorts in the end, the blanket they couldn't sleep without, the T-shirts from vacations, their sport shirts...) and make a memory quilt with them before they go to college, get married, or leave the house.

2. Another one I am already planning on doing is for my husband when he finishes dental school. Using the T-shirts he wore in school, the scrubs he wore in clinic, and other school related clothing to make a memory quilt for this phase of our life.

3. The ideas are unlimited, have fun creating a practical memory quilt from your favorite clothes.

http://www.goosetracks.com/T-ShirtQuiltInstructions.html


Sounds good to me! I'm wondering if it's possibly to make a quilt out of favorite magazine articles. What mission are YOU working to accomplish currently?

Put That Away!

Photo by Le Petit Poulailler

Want to change your perspective with one blog post?

Those of you gracious enough to follow this blog know that I am on a kick to find places for every item in my house. (Which is easier said than done, I promise you!) A clean house, after all, is far different than a house where every item is returned to its proper place every...single...time.

Today I would like to talk about the Golden Rule of Item Designation.

Golden Rule: When finding a place for each item in your home, it is critical that the place be ideal in proximity and in feasibility.

Proximity. If the best closet in your home existed in the laundry room downstairs and you decided that you wanted to hang all of your clothing in that closet, you would likely have an issue of proximity. Would you REALLY want to trapse up and down stairs each time you changed your clothes or put away laundry? Probably not. Soon, you would likely see little rebellious piles of clothing piling up in your bedroom.

Promixity means you pick the closet closest to where you change your clothes every day. So that it's EASY to put items where they belong!

Feasability. The shelf above the refrigerator probably isn't the place to store your everyday dishes. Sure--it's in the same room where you do your eating (unlike the closet where you did your changing). But who really wants to climb Kilimanjaro to set the table? Pretty soon you will likely find yourself serving dinner on paper plates every night or utilizing the kitchen counter as your new storage space.

Feasability means you choose the cupboard where you don't even have to stand on your tip toes to put the dishes away. So that it's EASY to put items where they belong!

Cleaning our homes shouldn't be hard. If it's hard, we need to re-evaluate our game plan.

Pearly Whites and Closet Doors

Photo by djpoblete09

There I stand. Scared. Uncomfortable. Too young to die.

Yet I know that I need to open my closet door and find what I am going to wear for the day. So I do it. A few stray books fall off the shelf and barely miss my left temporal lobe. But I am safe. (For now.)

Ever feel like that? So maybe you're not dodging books or flying hangers. But how does the closet function in your home? Is it a place to hide things? A place to shove things behind a closed door?

Is it possible that we dread our closets, in part, because they are the dumping ground for the things we do not want to deal with? I recently heard a friend say that the cleanliness/health of a person's mouth and teeth directly link to the health of a person's entire body. I have zero evidence to support his claim. (And, for the record, he is a salesman--not a doctor.) But I do think that the cleanliness of a person's closet indicates the true order throughout the rest of the house.

SO maybe your home LOOKS clean and organized, but when it comes to what's behind closed doors, you are actually stuffing things out of sight. Or maybe your closets are carefully tidied and clean. To which I would guess that the rest of your home is following suit.

Care to agree or disagree?