It is day twenty-five of the 40 Bags in 40 Days challenge. Are you sticking to your goals this week? We worked on cleaning out our garage and shed on this beautiful day.
Today I wanted to talk about the simplicity of having matching sets in your house. As you have been going through your items are you discovering that you are missing glasses or silverware. Are your towels or sheets missing one or two pieces to complete the set?
Part of maintaining good organizational systems in your house is requires simple amounts of items. When I go to a house with young children, the amount of mismatched plastic cups, plates and dinnerware can be astounding. It is not that it is wrong to have these types of items, it is the volume that can become problematic. The same can be said for plastic food storage containers. We end up with a lot of free water bottles, handed out at the last charity give away, or the extra food containers because we took home some leftovers.
When these items become more than you can store in the allotted space it is time to streamline. With anything in your house, establish how many you actually need at a minimum for your family to survive. Do your kids need twelve cups or six to get through the week? Do your beds need three random pillow cases with no matching sheets, or are two complete sheet sets per bed enough?
Your Challenge
During this challenge think about the items in your house that should have a complete set and whittle out the items that are mismatches, missing pieces or just need replacement. This is a quick way to survey your towels, table clothes, sheets, plates, glasses, silverware and more.
The less you have on hand, the more you will actually have each day. Why? Because you can find the pieces you like and use instead of working to unbury them each day.
Next time you go to put away a coffee mug ask yourself what your favorite ones are? I bet you can donate at least 10 random ones that were acquired as gifts, are the last of an old set or just don’t have special meaning to you anymore.
Think about household items as complete sets and you will fill another bag for the challenge pretty quickly weeding out the accumulated oddballs!
Happy Organizing,
Kristin