[Contest is closed. Winners are Mindy (comment #42), Bethany (comment #106), and Sandra (comment #131).]
“There is no reason to complicate your family culture just because the culture at large is complicated.” – Tsh Oxenreider
As a somewhat disorganized person, I have been drawn to Tsh Oxenreider’s new book, Organized Simplicity: The Clutter-Free Approach to Intentional Living
In this interview with Tsh, I asked questions that are relevant to my family; I hope they are relevant to yours, too. Leave a comment at the bottom of this post for a chance to win one of three copies of Organized Simplicity!
Interview with Tsh
What suggestions do you have for delegating, motivating, and holding your children accountable in the cleaning of your home?
I’m a big believer is leading my example. My kids are little right now, so my husband and I are mostly the ones molding the world for them. When they see me clean, they want to clean. I like taking advantage of this little stage, when they think it’s fun to clean — I give them a spray bottle of water and a rag, and let them clean cabinet doors and windows.
I also think it’s important to do a little at a time, as we go about life. Every now and then, those day-long cleaning sprees are useful, but since kids tend to have short attention spans, it’s helpful for them to see that if we just do a little all throughout our day, it really doesn’t take too long.
My kids also like lists. So even if it’s a no-brainer, I’ll make lists. Part of their chore list is “put away jammies,” for example. That’s obvious, I think. But it’s not so much for the kids, so they get a kick out of crossing that off the list.
And finally, I need to regularly remember to show them grace, especially since they’re young. They’re not going to fold towels perfectly. They’re not going to naturally think to pick up the clothes off the floor (at least mine don’t…). Holding them accountable for age-appropriate responsibilities means loosening up my expectations and showing them grace. It tells them I know they can do what they’re capable of, but that I don’t expect perfection. I’m not perfect — why should they be?
Some of my children don’t want to part with anything. How can I make it easier for them?
I always make sure I’m setting an example. Am I holding on to things I don’t need also? Secondly, I encourage them to ask the same questions I ask myself — is it beautiful? and is it useful? I take these from the quote from 19th century architect William Morris — “Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” This can mean different things to a kid than to an adult. I need to remind myself that sometimes. My daughter’s rock collection on the window sill is beautiful to her, and since I believe the relationships in our family are more important than a perfect house, I also have to throw out the window my idea of what should stay and what should go.
Lastly, when they’re younger, I help them go through their items and decide whether things stay or go. As they hear me process, the same decision-making hopefully embeds in their minds. “You have seven My Little Ponys, and you don’t really play with this one, so how about we put this in the donate pile, so another kid can have a turn playing with it?”
I tend to have organized cabinets and drawers, but disorganized surfaces. How should I tackle this problem?
You and me both. I think the issue there is more of a time one than a need for organizing skills, because you already have the skills you need — the cabinets and drawers speak for themselves. It’s just a matter of making the time in your daily routine to put up clutter. I’ve found that setting up specific times throughout my day — 20 minutes after lunch; 15 minutes before story time, etc., surfaces slowly but surely start staying more organized.
I also know it’s time to get rid of stuff when not everything has a home. If the reason it’s out in no-man’s-land is because I have no where to put it, then I need to either find a place for it, or it needs to go. If it needs a home, and there’s no room for a home, something else has to go. I can’t defy the laws of physics; I only have so much room for my things.
Project: Simplify
Today Tsh kicked off Project: Simplify, a five week project for tackling those messy hot spots in your home. The first target is your wardrobe and closet. I was really excited when I read: “Yep — this week we are going to touch every. single. item of clothing in our wardrobe, and make a decision whether it stays or goes.”
I keep a “donate” bag in my closet floor. When I come across items I’m not wearing or that no longer fit, they go in the bag. Actually touching every item of clothing in my closet, however, is huge. It’s a big project, but one I’m determined to tackle.
How to win one of three copies of Organized Simplicity (do one or all, leave a separate comment for each)
- Leave a comment on this post and tell us where’s your biggest hot spot, that place you can’t keep clean?
- Tweet about it!
- Share on Facebook.
Giveaway ends on Saturday evening, March 12.
About Tsh:
Tsh Oxenreider is a wife to Kyle and a mama to Tate, Reed, and Finn, and her book, Organized Simplicity
{Disclosure: Book links are affiliate links. Copies provided for review and giveaway.}
I cant seem to keep the area by my front door free of clutter. i thought removing the shelf would help free clutter thinking that was just a catch all spot but it seems worse now. i have a 9 yr old boy. we put things by the door so we dont forget, it adds up and stresses me.
My biggest hot spot is probably the server in my kitchen. It’s wonderful for extra work surface, but it’s also one of the handiest flat surfaces in the house. I have been wanting to get this book for awhile now. It would be fabulous to win it. Thanks for hosting this, Dawn!
Mine would have to be my office/guest room. It becomes our “catch-all” room, and we pile things up in there. 🙁
I can’t keep my kitchen island clean; it’s the hub of our home and everything ends up there!
My biggest problem is closet.
My biggest hot spot is the extra bedroom! It serves no purpose sometimes than all purposes other times. It has become a storage area especially after my father started bringing truck loads of stuff (he is moving to Peru).
My kitchen. I have 2 short countertops & they seem to be the landing spot for just about everything from my keys, phone, kids papers, new items yet to be away, I even found a pair of my husbands socks on there once (OMG!).
I would have to say it is my dining room buffet. This is in the main room of my house, and my husband has, what I affectionately refer to as Horizontal Space disease. Whenever he sees a clear horizontal space, he feels the need to fill it with something… 😛
I started Tsh’s challenge today and even got several of my friends who I mostly only know online to join me. Having the challenge, and the friends doing it with me, is a great help. In fact, when I woke up this morning and checked in with the friends, several of them had already started (they live in earlier time zones than I do) and that gave me motivation to catch up with their progress. Although her choice of clothes in your wardrobe as hot spot #1 surprised me and seems like a big start, my fear is she will pick office as a hot spot. I have been working on that for a long time now, and feel like it is never done. I mostly stopped using it as an office once our baby arrived and I found it easier to use my laptop on a stand in front of the couch when nursing. This has meant that is has become a place to dump stuff that has no other home (including items I am meaning to get rid of) and a man-cave, for my husband to get some quality time with his computer.
Shared on Facebook.
My families biggest hotspot is our island in our kitchen. Its big and the first spot everyone seems to gravitate to and dump their days collection on!!!
I also tweeted this…
http://twitter.com/#!/smiling_eyes/status/44987539576201216
my own room is the biggest problem because no one besides me and my husband go in there, the high traffic spots get cleaned but our bedroom has also become the “catch all” room.
My biggest problem area is my living room. We don’t have any sort of foyer so backpacks and shoes are all over the place!
LOL my problem is my whole house… truly! My closet is a disaster but then again so is the top of my dresser and areas around my room where things get piled! My dining room table is constantly covered with stuff, my bonus room has become a storage/workout/office/spare bedroom… shall I go on!!! I could definitely use this book!!!!
Shared on Facebook
My hot spot is the closet in my office. It’s a catch-all for craft supplies, gift wrap and most anything else that doesn’t have a home. I’d love Tsh’s book. Her blog is wonderful and very inspirational.
Ha, ha….mine is my whole house too!! As a FT single mom, it can be a challenge to do it all. The worst tends to be on the counter by the door…and my office workspace..okay, and my closet!! That’s why I am considering doing the hotspot challenge! ( :
Kitchen counter for sure!! Papers, phone chargers, menus, recipes. It’s a clutter magnet!
My biggest hot spot is the kitchen counter and it’s driving me crazy! Unfortunately I have other hot spots too, but the counter is the one that I hate but always seem to have.
The side table where I sit on the couch – I leave the mail there, magazines I’m reading, pens, hair clips, you name it! I really need that book! 😉
My surfaces! I am the same way, clean and organized drawers and closets but my counter that is in between my dining room and my kitchen is always full of stuff. Drives my hubby bonkers.
Mine is the kitchen!
My hotspot is definitely my desk. It’s like command center, but it becomes useless the messier it gets!
Shared on Facebook.
My laundry room is one big Hot Spot. Like a dumping ground. Don’t know what to do with it? Toss it in the laundry room. It drives me mad, especially at how quickly it can deteriorate. Ugh!
My biggest hotspot is my OFFICE! Oh my! My desk is a catch all!
My office/craft room is my biggest headache, but the spot I am always in there with my girls!
My two toughest spots would be the kids’ room (shared by a 10yo girl and a 7yo boy)! And, also our dining/homeschooling room! Wow! That place looks like a new disaster every day!
My entryway is probably my biggest hot spot. As a very busy mommy of 3 kiddos ages 6.5, 3, and 22 months, and a 4th baby on the way in June I am blown away by the sheer amounbt of stuff that we have accumulated. Especially when it comes to things that stay by the front door such as diaper bags, shoes, hats, scarves, gloves, coats, backpacks, purses, stuff that needs to go upstairs, etc! Oh and the laundry room is pretty brutal too since it is also our mudroom off of the garage and it is just too crowded!
Paperwork & Records – financial and otherwise. My husband is self-employed and works from home so the issue that was overwhelming to begin with grew to an issue almost beyond measure…especially since I am now working full-time to provide a second income and health insurance. I am also the bookkeeper – GASP! – but somehow I get invoices out (though not always on time), and I get quickbooks updated by tax time and each year my CPA is a little less overwhelmed with what I bring to him. However, if I could be more organized with our paperwork (personal and business), I could free up significant time to assist my husband who is working what seems like 24-7 to give his customers an excellent service, network, and bring in new business.
I used to hire a professional organizer regularly, but our budget no longer supports that option. This looks like an amazing book and I can’t wait to read it and share it. Free or otherwise.
I posted about the giveaway on my facebook page!
As a homeschooling family, I can not keep the dining room table free of clutter (and school projects) at all. It’s a happy clutter, but still annoying at meal times.
I shared on Twitter @allthngzrelated!
My hot spots are the entry way and the buffet. The entry seems to collect all the things that come in the house and then also hold all that needs to go out of the house. Aurrgh! And everything that collected on the table throughout the day gets moved to the buffet (it’s short) when clearing it for a meal. Sigh!
I am so excited to get started on my closet and I am interested to find out what else the book had to say!
My biggest “hot spot” for me would be our foyer. No matter how many times I try & get the kids to put thier shoes away or put in the foyer closet, they end up leaving piles of shoes all over in there. It’s the first room people see when they come in & it’s constantly an ugly spot. 🙁
My biggest hotspot is the kitchen counters, I end up dumping everything there when coming in from the car etc…
I shared on facebook
I love the Simple Mom site. Thanks for this interview. I’ve always been drawn to living simply, but things are a bit more complicated now that there are kids around. We live in a small house, which definitely helps control the clutter, but I find my basement is always catching our mess. No one can see it after all! I’m really hoping to get that under control soon.
My kids closets are dreadful. I really need to go through and give/throw away a lot of things. And the front entrance closet. It is always chaotic during the winter, and a little better during the summer!
My biggest hot spot right now, is my whole house! I have never been organized and I tend to collect things, so that adds to my issues. My family is so used to the clutter but I know it bothers them. I would love to win this book so I could transform my house and my life.
My office! Just trying to make time to manage it!
My biggest hotspot is all the magazines I have piled high in various corners of my house. I am a magazine-aholic of the worst kind and cannot bring myself to send any to recycling…..
My office at home is a catch all and no matter how I try… it’s a bloody mess. Mostly things that have NO HOME. It’s my winter 2011 goal for organization. See how badly I need some inspiration! 🙂
ps: my husband calls me into the family room, evertime “HOARDERS” is on TV. That’s sad.
Karen (canada)
I can’t seem to keep the living room clean. The kids things migrate and I haven’t had the energy to tackle even one room. I need to take a vacation just to get the simplicity project started. Please help!
I have two hot spots – One is the kitchen counter, specifically, one corner of the peninsula that seems to be the “don’t know where it goes so put it here” spot. The other is my own desk area, which is an armoire. Since the doors close over the mess, I don’t keep it neat. 🙁
Great interview – thank you! My biggest clutter challenge is the desk (home management center) next to our kitchen which my husband lovingly calls our “home mismanagement center” at times. No matter how often I organize and rearrange and file & put away things that land there it magically piles up again. Your comment encouraged me in the interview that there is only so much space for our things no matter how organized we are. Time to start tossing more I think. I just cleaned my closet today for Project Simplify. Felt great!
My desktop is the place I cannot keep organized. Maybe it is because I have yet to embrace it as a workplace. We live in a small city apartment and my desk is actually the mirror-backed bar installed by the previous owner. I think the way I have taken over and disguised its last use is rather clever but it doesn’t feel “just right” and so I don’t utilize it well. It is just a dumping ground.
Great giveaway! I’ve got Tsh’s book on my Kindle App but would love to have a copy to UNDERLINE!
my closet is my hot spot…it’s larger so it has my stuff, mementos from my kids, etc…way too much.
this is the perfect challenge for me, just hope it’s not too overwhelming!
My biggest hot spot is my kitchen island–everything collects there. Any day I probably have 100 Legos, mail, Polly Pockets, mail, Barbie shoes, mail, pictures my kids have drawn, mail….You get my point. It is awful.,
Awesome interview!
My biggest hot spot is my living room floor. The kids are CONSTANTLY dragging their toys in and leaving them all over the place.
I completed my closet clean out yesterday and I’ll be working with the kids on theirs for the rest of the week! It feels so good to PURGE! I can’t wait to purge some of those TOYS the kids drag out and never play with. lol
My small basement storage room quickly becomes cluttered with holiday decor, toys that don’t have a place elsewhere, unorganized art supplies and outgrown clothing. I need more of a system for getting rid of things we no longer need, but I often hold onto certain items (say, my kids’ Halloween costumes) until I am convinced I’ve found just the “right” new home for them.
I have been really wanting her book, I adore the site, its been so helpful. Our biggest hot spot now is our sons closet, I can’t seem to keep the clothes he has outgrown organized in case we have another child, it’s a mess!
Hi there,
My biggest hot spot was my laundry room. Seriously, I couldn’t even get to the washer without some serious acrobatic effort. I’ve been working on it this year, so my new biggest hot spot is the home office. It’s so bad that if you saw it, you’d think I need to be on an episode of Hoarders! Sad but true. What do I do with all the homeschool stuff? The books? The picture frames? The piles and piles and piles of paper? The CDs? The old hard drive? Oh, I could go on… Can’t wait to read the book! 🙂
My hot spot is my laundry room, which is also the first room we enter when we arrive home. There’s, laundry, coats, bags. We also do not have a garage, so we try to fit the kids outside toys, car washing supplies, tools, and more in this tiny room.
I can TOTALLY relate to surfaces. I am such an out of sight, out of mind person right now (2 under two??? Is that why?!) and need to keep the bills on the counter otherwise they won’t get paid. Oh, and that stack of thank yous I still need to write. On the counter. And the recipes for the week. And… The list goes on.
Sigh.
I constantly battle keeping my kitchen island clear. It is big and wonderful, but is a magnet for everything. It is just too easy for everyone to lay stuff there.
Our other big problem area is our office/school/computer room. It serves a lot of purposes to a lot of people and it tend to be a catch-all for everything.
Our bedroom. It’s on the third floor and everything seems to end up there making it look like the attic instead of a tranquil, romantic master bedroom. Help! 🙂
Our biggest hot spot is the office. It’s impossible to keep it neat!
I think my biggest hotspot is my bedroom especially the top of my dresser. I feel that since no one sees it it’s not a big deal if it’s a mess… but oh how happy I am when it’s clean.
My kitchen island is the worst! No matter how hard I try, I cannot keep it clean. I feel so refreshed and calm when it is clear, but it never lasts long. Seems like everything that needs to be put away gets put there until there is time to deal with it.
ps: I liked your facebook page too!
I shared on Facebook
I retweeted, http://twitter.com/#!/MrsBarry311
My hot spot is my dining room table. Complete dumping ground.
Luckily I already purged our closets the other week. We try to do that every few months to make room for the next size clothes!
I can’t seem to keep our rolltop in the entryway clean. It is a magnet for EVERYTHING!
Shared on Facebook.
My hot spot is definitely my 2 desk areas!!!! As soon as I clear it off it is messy again by the next day! It has been almost 2 years since I decided to leave the medical field and caring for others to stay home and care for my 3 small children and our office space is still a huge disaster!! But I will never give up…..it WILL get done some day. Moving 3 times in 5 years hasen’t helped. I have a burning desire to SIMPLIFY and ORGANIZE!!
Oh dear. Where in my house is not a hotspot? If I have to pick the worst one, I would have to say my kitchen counter. It seems to collect all the odds and ends that enter the house. I can tidy it up one day and by the next day I can’t find it for all the stuff!
No doubt about it – the kitchen table is our biggest hot spot. Mail, keys, dirty dishes… it all gets piled up there.
Pretty much any flat surface is hard to keep clean, two areas in particular are the table in the foyer and my desk where I work or do bills.
My biggest hotspot is my closet. I cannot keep it organized. Seems to be a big collection bin for the things that have lost their appeal, but not ready to get rid of. Equally hot is our entryway. It is a giant dumping ground! Not a pretty site when you walk in the door! I could go on, but I’ll stop for now!
I also posted the giveaway on Facebook! 🙂
downstairs the family hotspot is the desk space in the kitchen… upstairs my hotspot is the nightstand drawers
I wish just one area was our problem. Our whole house is one big clutter mine. Watch where you step you may break your neck on legos, baby dolls, homework, shoes. Oh I just wanna give up. Lol
I shared on Facebook! 🙂
I also have many hot spots! Most flat surfaces closest to the door is the worst. Mail and school things clutter it up in no time! I am excited to go thru my clothes this week. I’m mostly afraid that the closet will be completely empty when I get done! 🙂
The kitchen and eating area is the hardest area to keep clean! Mostly because it ends up being a dumping ground for all of the papers from school and church. How do you keep them all organized?
Definitely our back hall. It;s our main entry for the family and it;s always cluttered with coats, hats, shoes, bags, and sometimes leaves from outside!
We don’t have a decent closet downstairs, so the things that gather by the front door are our biggest problems. Coat, shoes, backpack for each kid, and shoes we take off, so as not to get the floor dirty (or more dirty!).
My desk! It’s supposed to be where I organize the items we need to keep, but it ends up being where I stash them out of sight….
Our office seems to be the one place that is always a wreck. It’s the room that catches all the overflow (and we have a lot of overflow in our little house). I’ll attempt to organize it, but then get overwhelmed, lose steam, then the clutter just starts creeping right back in. Grrrrrr!!!! I think I just need a better system for the whole house, but where to start???
The large kitchen counter collects “stuff” every day. My husband likes to fill any horizontal surface with his “stuff.” His office is so full of “stuff” that he is now working in the family room and has spilled off the desk onto chairs and the floor. The garage is so full of “stuff” we cannot get the car inside.
My kitchen table! UCK! Papers, school books, etc. PAPERS!
Shared on Facebook. : )
My biggest hot spot is the counter top of my kitchen island. Stuff just always piles up there, no matter what. And instead of cleaning it off, I will just slice and dice around the stuff! I definitely need help!!
p.s. love the blog 😉
Yikes! The kitchen counter is the drop-off-hot-spot when we come into our house. Next? My desk. I love it clear, but piles are a constant threat. 🙂
shoes…they seem to gather by the front door, by the back door, in the kitchen, in the living room…they are always in the middle of a path either in or out. I put baskets by these shoe-infested areas, and the shoes fall all around the baskets – but never in. I can’t wrap my brain around it. I put them back in their rightful closets at the end of the day, and sure enough, by the next day, there they are again in a clutter pile in the middle of a walkway. I think they must walk out of the closests on their own, while we are all sleeping.
Master bedroom, hot spot, hot mess!
Posted to fb
We have two, the kitchen table and the entryway. These are both places that tend to collect things. We walk in the door and drop everything in one of these two places.
tweeted
My spot with worst clutter is my office. Paper is my biggest problem after 40 years of marriage and still is. I know I will be organized in Heaven but need help here on earth!
My living room seems to not stay clean. I have 4 kids and the younger 2 seem to think it’s just another play room. They make forts, make Lego land or racetracks. I try to tell them to keep the toys in their rooms, but it migrates out into the living room everyday……grrrrr!
Shared on facebook!
My biggest hot spot is my laundry room! ugh! It catches everything that doesn’t really have a place…..and it gets bad!
Oh, the hot spots I have! My dining room seems to be the catch all for school work/arts. It is out of control!
my closet!
Every flat surface in my home!
Mine is the entry/kitchen area and usually it is paper and things that didn’t get put back where they belong.
My biggest clutter hot spot is the kitchen counter. All the things without a home end up piled there!
My biggest hotspot is probably my bedroom, unfortunately. I manage to keep all the ‘public’ areas clean an tidy, but stuff just gets dumped into my room, clothes tossed on the floor, etc. It doesn’t help that we just moved and not everything in the bedroom was put away to begin with. I keep thinking – This weekend, this weekend it will all disappear, but it never does. 😀 My closet is regularly purged, so that isn’t a problem. If I haven’t worn it in over a year, it gets donated to a local charity or thriftstore.
I have wanted a copy of Tsh’s book for awhile now! I would love to have a copy!!
Thank you,
Jen
biggest hot spot- i think tsh’s 1st spot- the wardrobe- is SUPER appropriate! i actually went home after work last night and went through a TON of my closet. ended up with two good sized bags- one for trash, one for donate. still have some more to dig through, but looking forward to it!
tweeted! http://twitter.com/#!/bethxness/status/45177869856542720
facebook’ed! http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/bethany.park.kim/posts/10100249200731543
My home’s hotspots are my desk, the master closet and my teenage daughter’s room. Tsh’s hot spot for this week hit home that I really just need to tackle that closet.
The garage – our homes dumping grounds for all things without a real home.
My kitchen. For sure.
facebooked about this giveaway
There are several! It is my breakfast bar that consistently gets covered with laptops, papers, phones, etc.etc. Any bare surface seems to be a magnet to place ‘stuff’! I love it when this space is clear as it is in our main living area but somehow my family is not at all on the same page as me! 🙂
My office/studio closet needs organizing/optimizing. It is the area in my new workspace to be tackled. I am so excited about finding Tsh’s book! I look forward to digging into it soon and then sharing it with friends who always ask me for organizing tips!
I posted this giveaway on my facebook
The kitchen island! It is where I work. So, it is constantly cluttered with my laptop, the phone, papers strewn about, and several mugs of coffee!
My hot spot tends to be my closet so I am definitely going to try the challenge this week!
The space next to my bed! Always full of books to be read 🙂
I’d love to win a copy of this book! Thank you for a chance to win.
seizethebookblog(at)gmail(dot)com
We don’t have a mudroom, so everything gets piled on the counter near the door in the kitchen–purses, diaper bags, coats, shoes, mail, etc. all gets jumbled up. It drives me crazy! Any suggestions for organization of that mess would be great!
Oh, it is my desk. We have a small home so it sits just inside the entry door and is the catch all. As I sit here writing this I have mail, mittens, a mirror, the remotes and baby tylenol within reach. It is the first thing people see and the absolute worst mess. I really need Tsh’s expertise!
Ok, I have tweeted about your giveaway.
I shared your giveaway on my Facebook page.
Thanks for interviewing Tsh and offering her book. May our ordered lives confess the beauty of His peace.
I have so many hot spots. My son’s room, the desk, the homeschool shelf, I could go on. But the one that bugs me the most is our bedroom. My husband works on guitars and doesn’t have a dedicated space for that, so there are guitars and soldering stations and guitar equipment and cases and just an assortment of stuff. Then when another room gets cleaned (like the living room in the event of a guest), the stuff that didn’t belong there tends to get put in our bedroom until it finds a home.
My biggest hot spot would have to be the kitchen counter – it seems everything collects here. After that would be our office (aka dumping ground) and then our master bedroom.
i call it my “purse pantry” – i have two pantries in kitchen and delegated one to purse, briefcases, bills, mail, etc. It is so full now i don’t even like to open the door!
the small space of kitchen counter that I do have…so, I am always on the hunt for where to do the cooking prep I need to do! I need a hidden counter that can only be used for this!
I have hardest time with the most commonly used entry way. There is always dirt and a ton of shoes there!
Our master bedroom! It is always the last priority after everything else is done for the family, kids, and rest of the house. It is a continuing goal of mine to put our room FIRST for a change so we can have a sanctuary after a long crazy day…..one day.
I have the tougher time with the top of my dresser {it’s usually littered with Bobby pins, combs, makeup brushes, lotions, yikes!} and my craft/sewing area. I’d love a copy of this book!
P.S. Simplified my closet just yesterday…it needed it so badly!
I’d have to say my biggest hotspot is my bedroom. When the living areas get cleaned up..things get tossed in here. My 12 yo dd goes through her things often and anything she no longer wants or just doesn’t want on display in her room…she throws in my room. aargghh!
We have two major hot spots in our home. One is the dining room table. We don’t eat dinner here throughout the winter (too hot right beside the woodstove) and it is conveniently located inside the back door. Everything that comes in the house goes here first. If I am lucky, some of it eventually moves on elsewhere.
My second hot spot is our bedroom. Company coming? Dump everything in our room. DH doesn’t want me too sort through his things on the dining room table? It gets put in a box and in our room. Our room looks like a rented storage shed with a big bed in the middle.
My biggest hot spot is my bedroom. It’s the dumping ground, as I’m the only one that ever goes in there, so if someone’s coming and something needs to be moved quickly or hasn’t found a spot yet, it goes there. Then, with my busy schedule, it takes forever to get it all put away.
The next biggest spot is the end table in the living room. It is my reminder spot and is next to the chair where I always sit, so things,mainly paper items, get sat there to ‘remind’ me that something needs to be done with them. Then, it probably doesn’t get taken care of and either gets dumped in my office or, you guessed it :-), my bedroom in the ‘tyranny of the urgent.’
Help!! I need this book.
my biggest hot spot is our mud room. it’s where we come in and where everything gets dumped.
I can NOT keep my kitchen island clean as hard as I might. It’s the family dumping ground! Thanks for hosting the giveaway, I would love to win!
There are a couple of hot spots – but the one that bothers me the most is mine 🙂
It’s the top of my bureau.
The last time I cleaned it off I was so happy.
It took about 1 hour for something to get piled on it!
LOL… my hot spot is the same as Tiffany’s comment above. Kitchen island. Things come in and go straight there. Every time! 🙂 I would love to read Tsh’s book!
tweeted!
facebooked.
the most horrible spot in my entire house is the part of the kitchen counter that sits between the kitchen and dining area. that is where mail and my husband’s stuff accumulates… even though he his a ginormous desk for his stuff in the next room, less than 10 steps away. *sigh*
All the closets in the house are terrible– they seem to be a catch-all place for everything we don’t know where to put! And now they are so packed it is overwhelming to even think about cleaning them out!
Also tweeted this 🙂 Thanks for the opportunity!
My biggest hot spot is definitely my bedroom. It’s the dumping ground for everything when we have to clean the house for company…all the boxes full of “stuff” gets thrown in there, along with all of the off-season clothes that haven’t made it to the attic yet, and everything else in the house that doesn’t have a home yet.
My house is not too bad but the clutter & messes I do have drive me crazy! The clutter of Homeschool stuff on the dining room table, the craft stuff stashed haphazardly here & there, & the upstairs room that collects stuff but doesn’t have a real purpose! I’d LOVE to win a copy of Tsh’s book!
We’ve just moved into an RV and I’m having a problem organizing most parts of it!! But I think the biggest problem is the kitchen.
face booked also
I have a problem in maintaining order in our hallway closet. It seems that if there’s anything lying around, it ends up in there. I do hope to win the giveaway. I KNOW this book would set me on the right track. I live in the Middle East too.
My hot spot is my crawlspace and my attic scuttle. I’ll clean the clutter from the house only to move it to one of these to areas!!
I consider myself to be a fairly neat person, but the storage area of my basement has me stumped!
Ok I was over on chatting at the sky and got to thinking about this book….I need it more than ever! I think 🙂
My biggest problem area is my closet!
the whole house! We just downsized from 5200 sq. ft. to I don’t know, seems like about 1200(?) and even though I decluttered and decluttered, had moving sales, and donated truckloads of stuff, we still have too much STUFF- some of us, more than others. : ) I (or someone in my family) needs this book!! I shared on FB too.
My hot spot would be my bedroom. I take everything there when I am cleaning and never quite get to later.
My “hotspots” rotate from one location to the next. For example, the kitchen counter progressively gets worse and worse until I declare war, clean it up and forbid everyone to put things there, and the hotspot moves to the office… and on and on it goes. This book sounds awesome…
The worst spot is definitely the garage at my house! It’s in a most desperate need of organizing. We just sit whatever we can out there when it doesn’t need to be inside anymore, and it really stacks up after a while!
My hot spot is the entry way. I have yet to create a good long term solution for this.
My biggest problem would have to be my kitchen. I have tried to organize it and in a day it is back to chaos. With a husband, a seven year old and 4 year old identicial twins stuff piles up quick in almost every spot in the house.