i need courage

[crunchymum]

:blah

about two years ago when i started working with my friend who's a professional organizer, we had what we affectionately called "The Room of Doom"... it's spare room of sorts, and before we built the garage (with an attic above), it was honestly the only place to store stuff... we do not have an attic or basement, and very limited closets. anyway, i *know* we have too much stuff. for sure. and now we have said attic, so that helps a bit (you know, so we can actually put away our christmas decorations. :giggle ).

but because this room was never defined, i think it's so easy to become the catch all... and it's been in various states of clean/useful the past 2 years. when i initially worked on it, it was terrible! seriously embarrassing. and then it was sort of a music room, book room, storage closet... now i really want that room for our "creating" room, but over the holidays, and from all the "finishing up" stuff we've been doing (carpentry and stuff), it's almost as bad as it's ever been. :blush really. and diamond in the rough has seen the before pictures, so she can tell you how bad it was.

and i'm reading "the emotional house" and it's clear that i want to *live*, really live, in ALL areas of my house. and i feel stuck with my creativity because i don't want to destroy my dining room for sewing anymore. :no2

but ladies, it's SO BAD!!!! i need so much courage to even start... and it's disheartening to me that i've done this major cleaning thing in this room already, and here i am having to do it again. i feel like i need everyone out of the house for 3 days to put a dent in it, and that's not happening... so i have to figure out how to do it with kids and a baby and other things going on and trying to keep up on other stuff. :ph :pacing i want to throw everything away but i know there are things i truly need/use, mixed in with the stuff that needs to go - so i have to sort. i'm bad at sorting. well, not bad, just slow.

just venting.... thanks for listening. :blush

[Drew]

It's really hard for me to get started on projects like that as well so I can feel ya. :hug2

[Amber]

You can do it :cheer

[Blue Savannah]

:cheer :heart :heart :heart

[gamomof2]

You can do it!! :cheer :heart

I know that overwhelmed feeling. My best advise is just do it a little at a time - bite sized pieces. Don't think about all of it as one big job. Maybe decide that you want to work on it for X amount of time each day, and then set a timer. Do that much work, and then stop. It might take a little longer, but at least it wouldn't be so overwhelming.

[Aisling]

:hug :hug :hug I've been SO blessed by reading about your home journey so far, and feel totally confident that you're going to tackle this one, too! (And I'm going to be taking notes all the way! :lol :heart)

[mummy2boys]

You can do it Jen!!! :yes

[simplegirl]

:yes agreeing with ashley! i've seen those before and after pics of other rooms you've tackled! YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!! do you have family or friends to maybe help with the kids? i find that if i have a good hour or two with *undivided* attention (the interruptions are my doom in these projects!) then once the dent is put into the room, the rest easily follows. :hug :cheer :cheer :cheer :cheer :cheer

[HummusDip]

Is this a room you've posted pics before when you cleaned it up? I know I've seen your kitchen and other spaces...but I seem to remember a room...a bedroom that you cleaned up and it looked great..maybe a white bedspread with green walls? :think Am I crazy? Was that someone else? If not, is that the room you are talking about?

I say go for it either way. Why not ask your dh to take the kids for a couple hours so you can at least work on it undisturbed for a bit and then just set aside X time in the day to work on it. Even if it's just a half hour while the baby naps and the kids watch a movie. Do you want to make it your sewing room then? A craft room? That would be cool......

[RiverRock]

I've also been blessed and inspired by your home organizing. :tu And, I feel your pain since I am in the midst of tackling a similar problem. We have a storage closet that I guess is about 8' x 8', that I am in the process of re-purposing as a scrapbooking room so I can finally get my photos organized. I have shoeboxes full of photos that are still in their sleeves, and each child has a box of memorabilia to be put into some sort of scrapbook. It's been slow going, but when I feel the urge and have an hour or so without kids I just tackle a few boxes. I have a hard time making a plan for such things because there are layers to my problem. First the room has to be majorly decluttered and some items moved to other areas for storage, then I have to assess the needs of the room and pull furniture from other rooms or buy new stuff. If that sounds easy, too often the new storage areas need to be decluttered and rearranged to accomodate the new stuff. All of this could get overwhelming, but what is working for me as I organize my entire house is to do a bit, re-evaluate, then do a bit more. Since I've been on this board my home has come a long way with being slow and steady. It's okay to be slow at sorting. :hug2

[crunchymum]

thank you, ladies... i just need to keep telling myself i can do it! :heart

jessica, yes! it's the layers that get to me. it's not straightforward at all, and i do believe that our clutter/messes are telling us something, trying to send a message of what's not working. but the message it's giving me is not clear because there's lots of things that need to happen. *sigh* a big thing i think is how to have a regular system for donations (toys/clothes) and also outgrown clothes to be stored, before making their way to the attic. but that's not even the bulk of the mess, it's just that everything works like a rubics cube and everything has to shift at the same time - does that make sense? so it's overwhelming.


Is this a room you've posted pics before when you cleaned it up? I know I've seen your kitchen and other spaces...but I seem to remember a room...a bedroom that you cleaned up and it looked great..maybe a white bedspread with green walls? :think Am I crazy? Was that someone else? If not, is that the room you are talking about?


:no you're not crazy (at least i don't think so :P~ :giggle ), the room you're thinking of is our guest bedroom. that will be another issue as soon as we move dd into a room of her own. right now it has the baby's clothes and our extra linens. i need a linen solution, btw. anyway, you haven't seen the Room of Doom... trust me, you would remember. ;)


i think you all are right - i need to take it bit by bit... it sure would help to have dh take the kids for awhile so i can make a dent...i'm going to ask him.

[crunchymum]

well, i'm digging in, girls... :giggle we found an awesome, awesome deal on legs for a work table tonight at ikea, and i am digging my way out. it will probably take a few days, but i think i have the motivation to do it right now!

[RiverRock]

:woohoo I'm hoping your motivation will rub off on me! Yesterday I bought photo albums to hold a total of 1200 photos, plus a couple of frames for displaying 4x6s (22 photos in total). My family deserves to be able to appreciate the photos we have just stored in shoe boxes. I'm not trying to hijack your thread, Jen, but to offer you comraderie. Your not alone in the quest to conquer "the room of doom". Do you want to form a team...we could call ourselves something like "The Doombusters." :giggle

[BHope]

I'm excited your starting. I feel the same dread about my craft closet. Unfortunately, I refuse to start it until I buy the storage I need, and well... that's not happening any time soon. :bag

[ArmsOfLove]

:hug :pray4

have you decided how to define the room yet?

can you define it in part by storing different "rooms" in storage assigned to different areas of the room? Our bedroom has to be several things but by defining this "area" as the office and "this area" as the clothes storage, etc., it has helped a LOT

[crunchymum]

:woohoo I'm hoping your motivation will rub off on me! Yesterday I bought photo albums to hold a total of 1200 photos, plus a couple of frames for displaying 4x6s (22 photos in total). My family deserves to be able to appreciate the photos we have just stored in shoe boxes. I'm not trying to hijack your thread, Jen, but to offer you comraderie. Your not alone in the quest to conquer "the room of doom". Do you want to form a team...we could call ourselves something like "The Doombusters." :giggle


that's awesome, jessica! i feel the same way about my pictures, and i want to tackle that this year, too... i will be your caped comrade in the doombusters. for sure!!! :giggle :rockon\



:hug :pray4

have you decided how to define the room yet?

can you define it in part by storing different "rooms" in storage assigned to different areas of the room? Our bedroom has to be several things but by defining this "area" as the office and "this area" as the clothes storage, etc., it has helped a LOT


i think that's a really good idea. i'm going to have to see how it comes together... i'm leaning more and more towards calling it our "creating room", which is broad enough to encompass more than one thing, kwim? we basically were able to get two tables, which can be pushed together for one big surface if we need it. the bases are adjustable, so i can have one or both at standing height, or lower, or at an angle like a drafting table, whatever we need. i was super excited because the bases are usually $30 each (so for a table it would be $60 plus the cost of the top) but they were on sale for 12 bucks! :jawdrop :rockon that's why we got 2. :lol

manda, i need storage, too... i'm just going to have to work with what i've got until i can get storage, too. i saw this rolling thing tonight with wide, shallow drawers that would be perfect for paints, paper, pencils, etc. it was like $100. :/ i'm going to have to start scouring craig's list, i think.

ok, i'm just here taking a little break! progress is good, i can see the floor at least, :lol our hall and guest room are baring the brunt of the junk overflow right now as i'm sorting, but that's only temporary, right? :shifty i also realized that a lot of the junk in there was painting supplies from our recent house projects, and some ladders and misc. things that need to just go out to the garage, so that makes me feel a bit better - at least i don't have to find a space for it *in* the house. the thing that needs to wait until morning is sorting through about 3 boxes of random stuff that got shoved into boxes when company was coming. :blush papers and such are always the hardest. so i'm going to finish the broad sort in the room (mostly just piling things into catagories!) and then go to bed. :yawn