Decluttering

I've been quiet lately. I've been busy lately, and I've been tired lately. I finished my night class a month or so ago and I was completely burned out. Being a single mother, working full time, maintaining the house and yard, cooking, cleaning, groceries....it's all on my plate. Would you believe it if I said sometimes I wish I had a little more help and a lot more relaxation?

I chose the name for my blog because I was inspired by another blog Blissful and Domestic, and from that website I realized I could do a lot more with what I had. Maybe I had lacked the creativity or determination I needed, and I would read and see Danielle's posts about how she makes the most of things and I felt inspired. I thought I need to build on my own bliss. I have a wonderful little boy, two furchildren, a great house, a great job, and some great friends. Things are pretty good for me, I just have to choose to see them that way. 

Something that creeps up on me however is clutter, and the more it builds the less I like addressing it. Last week I decided to thoroughly clean one thing a day or night. Last weekend I went through my son's closets where we keep toys, books, VHS tapes, and DVD's. There were some books that weren't donation worthy and some toys that were broken, those landed in the garbage or recycling bin. Some he has grown out of with age those are in a bag for me to bring to a coworker with a younger child. The rest are neatly organized. The DVD's however were a real problem. There were so many there was no way I could really fit them in the bookshelf with the other media, they had to be on top in large piles, unorganized and just waiting to fall over and make a mess. 

I read an article once that explained it's unfair for parents to clutter a child's room with hand me downs, too many gifts, too many clothes, too many things, and then expect the child to keep it meticulously organized and clean when it really appears less like a child's room and more like a hoard of junk shoved in a clown car. I'm fairly sure my son's closets were heading to the circus. We had 100+ DVD's. It was just too much. I bought a binder and got to work!

My oldest child was on the scene to help. <3

This picture doesn't even show the entirety of the collection. Some boxes had two or three DVD's. It was insane. As much as I love the cover art. The collection needed to take up lass space physically. 

There were still a few more cases I emptied after I took this picture. It's strange parting with them all. But the amount of space we've regained in my son's room is amazing and worth it. Why cling to containers when the good stuff takes up so little space?

The final product. A binder with a capacity for 97 discs. It had three and a half pages of space left, this means I put 91 DVD's in this thing. Talk about a space saver. I left some Disney movies in their cases....because well, Disney. LOL. I'm not perfect. But in the last week I feel better for making out living space more livable and getting rid of things that clutter instead of enhance our space.

This week I have successfully built on bliss.