Throughout our entire lives we follow an established plan. We start school at age 5 and our days are scheduled from 8-4. Our parents make sure we go to bed on time.
Soccer practice, piano lessons and Girl Scouts keep us moving from 1 activity to the next.
Then we leave school and enter the working world. We are told when to arrive and what to do. We have schedules, calendars, and deadlines.
But no one tells you when to clean your house.
No one makes you spend the weekend decluttering the garage.
No one shows you how to keep your craft room from becoming a dumping ground.
And for the things that aren’t scheduled, something more urgent usually wins out.
The dog gets sick, you spend months on a volunteer event or you’re just so tired at the end of the day that you have no interest in tidying a cupboard or throwing away expired makeup.
And so over time the things in your home pile up.
You inherit precious belongings from loved ones who’ve passed away.
And your body protests when you try to pull an all-night cleaning session. Panic cleaning may have worked when you were 22 but at 62, it will knock you out for an entire week.
People don’t address the problem until an emergency forces them to (maybe a broken hot water heater, a pest infestation or the urgent need to host house guests) OR until someone passes away and the family is left to pick up the pieces while deep in the midst of grief.
After 20 years of these patterns, you’ve got a REALLY big mess and no clue how to tackle it.
And even if you could tackle it, clear out the clutter and go back to enjoying your home again….
… you have no idea how to maintain it. Because even in later years, life hasn’t slowed down and wasn’t that the problem in the first place?
