BabyStep 9: Decluttering (And Some Other Stuff)

Today's BabyStep teaches us that the key to a calm, collected, clean home is to declutter.  FlyLady says that you can't organize clutter, you can only organize the things that you love.  This makes sense- the less you have the easier it is to keep it all neat and tidy. When I did FlyLady before I did this step, and it really did help.  Only this time around, there really isn't going to be much decluttering going on.

When I moved from Indiana back into my parents' home a year ago, I did a major decluttering job.  I didn't want to pack and move any more than I had to, so a lot of things were either sold off, donated, or thrown away.  I only took what I actually needed into my parent's house, such as my clothing, bathroom toiletries, some office supplies, and very few books and movies.  All of my kitchen supplies, the majority of my books and movies, and some furniture went into a storage unit my sister was renting. 

Then I moved out of my parents' house to my current shared apartment this fast February.  In this current situation, there are two of us living in a small one bedroom apartment.  There is no room here for me to even bring in a bed, so I sleep on the couch.  Literally all I have here is the bare minimum.   I have clothing, but only the in-season items are in the apartment.  The rest goes into boxes in the basement.  I have my bathroom stuff.  I have my bed sheets.  I have 5 framed pictures that sit on some shelves in the living room just to put a touch of "me" in the place.  That's about it.  If you were to walk in here and glance around, you would have no clue a girl also lived here, that's how little I have in the place.

In a way, this will work for me by allowing me to get into the deep cleaning portion of the FlyLady program sooner, but I do imagine there will be a few decluttering posts coming in the future.  But for now, the best I can offer you is FlyLady's Decluttering Instructions.

I would also like to point out that at the bottom of the Day 9 BabyStep page there is the instruction to add a 5 minute Room Rescue to my morning routine.  Nowhere does it say what exactly this is, nor does she link to it.  I have taken the liberty of digging through FlyLady's cluttered hard to navigate website and included that link here.

Now on the the "Other Stuff".  I would consider last night another fail.  10:30 rolled around and I had not done any of my before bed routine, and I had a funny feeling that wasn't going to change.  I had another headache that had persisted all day and I just felt drained.  I also felt bogged down by some pressing financial problems I am facing. I know this are just excuses, because I have not felt well before and still managed to do my routines.  This time something else was missing that played into the situation.  I lost my motivation. 

Here is how the apartment looked when I went to bed last night (as how it still looks now, 13 hours later.):

Sink with dirty dishes, Hot Spot uncleared.  The cat box didn't get scooped, nor did I bother to take my makeup off.  Ugh. I will pay for that last one in a few days when my skin yells at me. I realize that this is all hardly the end of the world, but it was a definite lapse in establishing my routines.

I really don't really have an answer as to why I lost my motivation, nor do I know what to do to change it.  Is the FlyLady system flawed in that not enough has visibly changed in the house to keep me motivated?  Am I flawed and truly lazy at heart?  Or was this just a fluke?  Even now, I reeeeeally don't want to get up and take care of these things, even though it wouldn't take much of an effort.