This is our story of cleaning the nest. While we must say that we were never as bad as the horder on Oprah (the one where there were little paths through the house and stuff piled literally to the ceiling) - it has been pretty bad in the nest.

We actually did have an interior designer come in and she recommended an organizer. The interior designer swore that we'd ""earn back"" all of the money we spent on this effort if we'd get organized and stop wasting time and supplies. In the end, she was indeed right...our productivity went up, we no longer damaged ""work in progress"" and were able to finish stuff faster and neater. But the journey was very tough.

The organizer...how can we describe her? An army seargent? Her style, just not did not match ours. We had many piles of stuff in the closet. She insisted that we remove all the piles and put them out onto the main area that we just created. Then she made us a sort the piles into categories that make sense to her, but not to us. These were literally piles and not piles in containers. Then she ran off, leaving us with unlabeled piles of stuff. Our closet still had stuff. Our clean floor had stuff. Garbage bags everywhere. It was worse than before! That organizer lady never returned.

We were determined to get the job done, even without the organizer lady. We organized our clutter into neat boxes and that our boxes very neatly. But all we had accomplished was to box our clutter rather than get rid of it. Then, we preceded to accumulate more clutter. Even though we had organized some of our things into good systems (putting our labels into file cabinets in labeled file folders and filing away are different colors of card stock), some of our stuff still was just stuff laying around.

We've come up with a new method that is more practical for real people than the Clean Sweep method.

• Gather all of the necessary items - garbage can, empty containers to sort into, marker and labels, tape, scissors, container to store your supplies, extra garbage bags
• Clear an area for sorting.
• Resolve to keep your house ""put together"" at all times.

So, if your place is cluttered, how in the world do you create an area for sorting? We do a multipass sweep through the house. Admittedly, this sounds like it wastes time and all books advise ""touch it once"". Yes, that's more efficient, but be real...we clutter keepers can't just sit down and go through all the stuff! So, that's why we did a sweep through the house with our garbage can and a box for Goodwill. We looked at some large things...ok, is that a keeper, a donator or a tosser? Do that for a quick 1/2 hour... Be real with yourself...are you really going to use it again, do you need it? If you're a serial cleaner like we are, you should be able to determine fairly quickly whether this is something that ended up in the keep box 5 times or whether you just bought it yesterday.

As you gather up a box or two of Goodwill stuff or a bag or two of garbage, trust us, you must purge this stuff from your life. Luckily, our nest is only 5 mins from the Goodwill Donation Center. So, as we boxed it up, we tossed it in the trunk of the GooseMobile. Garbage was set out immediately. If you're being honest with yourself about ""garbage"" vs keep, you should start to immediately see a difference.

Another strategy we had...grab some of our bins that we hadn't opened in a LONG time. Start there. Sounds odd doesn't it...shouldn't we clear out the surface clutter first? Well...we hope that you took care of the ""easy surface clutter"" in your 1/2 hour pass (ie the supermarket ads from 3 weeks ago...). You need bins to sort into and organize your stuff. Where will you get those? How about the bins full of garbage/donation items? Do a 1 hour quick pass and empty as many bins as you can. This does NOT mean empty bins onto the floor!!! It means toss/donate as much as you can. At our nest...our ratio was 2 keeps to 1 toss.

So, where are we? We have some empty space opening up because so much went to garbage and donation. We now have empty bins to sort into. :) Now, designate a ""do-able"" area...start doing a detailed sort. Lots of times, this means a paper filled area. Create a bin for ""shred"", use your garbage can for non-private ""toss"" (empty envelopes, circulars etc), then another bin for file. Once you've got the pile sorted, shred the shreddables. That's cathartic. Do not think that you're ""shredding your life"". Yes, SallyGoose thought that that's what we were doing. No...we're making room to continue to have a nice life!!!

Now, the most important thing...We realize that ""cleaning"" often means making a bigger mess, temporarily during sorting etc. After all, you're opening bins and taking the stuff out, getting it sorted etc. But in order to retain the energy to continue, you MUST keep your house orderly. Don't do 10 bins at once and have it all scattered throughout the house! Do 1-3 bins, toss the garbage, take a load to GoodWill. Make sure that your sorter bins are labeled and have tops. At the end of the day, stack your bins neatly so that when you wake up, you see a clear area with neatly stacked bins. If you leave the garbage in the house in bags and your stuff in piles...you'll feel overwhelmed!!!

Let's take a moment to talk about bin strategy. We learned the hard way...don't buy HUGE bins, unless you're storing bulky, light weight items (Yarn CAN fall into this category...). But really, buy smaller bins that fit on your shelves! Silly but true...you need to have a strategy to store this stuff and you should MEASURE before your buy! You want as many bins to stack nicely on those shelves, rather than buying bins that leave lots of empty, wasted space. HUGE bins are too heavy and will lead you to stack outside of the bins since you can't lift the bins to get them off the shelf! 2 smaller bins are better and you won't have to tear through one big bin to find what you need. Also...buy the bins the same size or compatible sized (ie 2 bins stack next to each other or some deep depth and some half depth.