Fortunately, since I tend not to delete old files, I sifted through them and found tons of organizing and decluttering articles & checklists!

The main house clutter is a result of all of the "put away" spaces being too full, so I thought it makes sense to begin working on the storage areas. beginning in the attic and create some empty space. I found a great series of articles from the Washington Post on clearing out and organizing attics! A professional organizer helped the writer do her attic over a series of 11 short articles.

I'm hoping the series gives me the courage to face my attic and do some very serious decluttering! I have trouble getting rid of anything "useful" and get bogged down in what to do with the stuff I don't want (yard sale/craigslist/ebay) dilemmas which have resulted in the build up to start with!

Hope you find the WP Series interesting!

Thanks!

Our house has all cathedral ceilings on the upper floors--our attick consists of a 3.5'x4' space that is about 2ft high at the highest point. Both the upstairs bathrooms only have 8' ceilings, though, and I'm about to cut into the space above (already prepped for it by moving electrical out of the way during the remodeling process!) to make a 4' deep x 8' wide storage space. I'm putting everything seasonal in there--Christmas and, eventually, a wreath for each season!

Other than that, our entire house storage, excluding the garage, consists of:

1 2.5x6' closet in the basement
1 3x3' closet, also in the basement
1 2x6' closet in the entry
1 3.5x4.5' pantry

That's it, other than the bedroom closets. The kids' are 4.5'x2' each, and so is the ONE master closet. The guest bedroom actually has the most storage--two closets of the same size! But I keep one entirely empty for guests and would like to empty out the lower part of the other, where the wrapping paper now is. As soon as I gut a bedframe that I can raise up enough to get under-bed boxes under in the guest room, those will go, too. We've already added two 3.5x2' wardrobes in the master bedroom and a 1x3.5' wardrobe in the hall for linens. With a couple of changes to the little scraps of attic space that we have, we'll be dandy!

I spent all day Thursday putting together a binder with organization plans and checklists. I even found the old Woman's Day Room of the Month Plan in a Household Hints folder from 2001! I actually divided my house up into 15 areas and I'm going to do 2 a month so I've got time off for Christmas, vacation and gardening.

The areas that are often too hot to work in are being done this month and next month like the attic and garage. But first, I'm starting with some Fly Lady Crisis Cleaning for a few hours today. Then, I go to the attic!

When I say I am 10 years behind, I am NOT exaggerating. I've got about 2 years worth of papers to sort through, 6 years worth of gardening and 10 years worth of decluttering. I do keep the visble areas of the house clean and somewhat presentable. But only I know what lurks below the surface and it's been haunting me for too long.

I realize that I've been so good at crisis management that I made it my lifestyle! It seemed I went from one crisis to another and spent the time in between recovering and waiting for the next crisis! By letting the house and garden go I created crises since I can never find things and alway went into panic mode if people were coming to my home. The REAL crises are over and it's time to stop this madness and get organized again!