Susan Arant

By SUSAN ARANT

There are times that the sheer volume of activities in a day can be exhausting. We all have busy lives with hectic schedules and at days end, I relish the time that I can walk through my door and be home.

In theory, being home should provide a sense of calm, yet on a daily basis I used to find myself stepping over an obstacle course of shoes and backpacks and needing to push back stacks of mail to put my bags down.

It occurred to me recently that my real-life sanctuary, was a bit disorganized and my “home Zen” may be a bit out of balance.

That old adage “a place for everything and everything in its place” began to have new meaning. So each afternoon, the kids and I started doing a “ten minute quick clean.” I turn on the music, put on the timer and for ten minutes, we tidy up. Putting things away definitely makes a difference ​—​ a well-kept room has a calming affect on me.

To help, I bought baskets and wall hooks and all sorts of fun organizational products. However, it didn’t take long to figure out that if we kept shoving things in drawers, doors and bins there soon would be little room left to hide things.

That’s when I called in a friend. She is a professional organizer and is now my decluttering guru. She made the process simple and painless.  Her words of wisdom:

• Choose an area to declutter,
• Create four piles: keep, donate, trash and undecided,
• Everything must go into a pile.

Put the donations in a crate and load them into the car. Place the trash in a bag and dump in a bin. Put the undecided in a labeled box in the attic – should I ever have need of anything in the box, I can easily find it. Purchase appropriately sized storage organizers to neatly store everything I want to keep and place back in the drawer or cabinet.

Yes, organizing the house is a process, not a product that can be bought at the Container Store to make this happen. Just putting all of your stuff in a bin doesn’t make it organized – just more easily contained. I am now much happier walking through my backdoor. I’m no Martha Stewart, but I am pleased with the results of our hard work. There is a new sense of peace within my home and I’ve determined it is a “peace that comes with-bins.”

Susan Arant is a Four Points resident and part of the Gene Arant Real Estate Team Keller Williams Realty.