Empowered to Declutter! My house still gets messy

Over half of my closets have empty space in them!

I have been caught up on laundry for a while and I love the site of my empty laundry baskets!

Anything that has been thrown away or donated hasn't taken up space in my home (or my thoughts) since it left!

Progress is being made but... my house still gets messy.

Why? Because we still live here. At the time I write this, our kids are 7, 6, and 3. We are nearing the end of summer vacation and routine has been tossed out the window. The nightly kitchen reset doesn't happen every night, I get behind on dishes, and old habits die hard so I'm not always excited to mop.

Even though my house doesn't look ready for a magazine photoshoot all day, every day, I won't let that stop me from continuing this declutter journey. I enjoy spending time in the spaces I've decluttered, and I really love how quickly I am able to tidy up our living room when it starts to feel overwhelming. My new-found ability to let go of "stuff" in order to live peacefully is empowering. That's enough to keep me going!

A big part of this journey has been to break generational clutter. Our kids are young, but I can already see that they are pack rats. Our youngest has the hardest time letting things go, and all of them have all sorts of collections covering every surface in their room. Now is the perfect time for me to teach them that not everything can be special. Some things are worth taking up space in our homes and some things are just not.

Daily "mess" becomes much more manageable when clutter is no longer holding me back. Being able to truly live and enjoy the space we are so fortunate to have brings me more joy than hanging onto stuff I could never enjoy because it was shoved in a closet or hidden behind more stuff. Decluttering will be a life-long process, I'm sure, but this initial project is teaching me a lot about how I want our family to live and prioritize our things and time.

So yeah, my house still gets messy. But the more I declutter, the less I have to clean. And that's a huge win for me!

XO, Courtney