Chaos Combined

Chaos Combined

Blogging Through The ABC’s– Letter C

Guys let’s be honest here.  My house is chaos.  Chaos combined with chaos.  

In our small house we have 11 people(and a baby due in June) plus three German Shepherds and two cats.  We have four bedrooms.  They’re small but all of them are bigger than my kitchen.  The kitchen that I’ve squeezed two refrigerators and soon two stoves into.  Only possible because there is no counter space.  We’re talking small house here.

Chaos combined upon chaos.  We have currently nine children.  The oldest turned 11 yesterday.  Soon we’ll have 10 children age 11 and under.  Four of those children have special needs.  Add to that the three dogs and two cats, oh and of course we can’t forget the two parents!  This 1100 sq ft house gets small fast.

Some of the ways I control our chaos is by having a schedule.  Chaos combined upon chaos can’t be fully contained by a schedule but it’s a great way to start.  I’ve found by implementing a daily routine the kids know what is expected of them when(even if they don’t do it) and things can run a little smoother.

A major thing that has helped to control our chaos is decluttering.  I’m not sure it that is actually a word, but it’s something I do weekly.  I ask myself a series of questions.  Is this something I need?  Do I use this?  Is this something I think is beautiful?  Is this something that I value?  Is this something that is helping our family?

That may seem like a weird list of questions, but it stems from some wise words I read once stating that you should only keep things that you felt were beautiful or that were useful.  It’s very true in our small home.  Clutter makes me feel horrible.  It can actually make me feel physically ill.  So it’s very important to me that our house does not have clutter.  Clutter adds to chaos.  

The actual quote that stems from is “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it:  Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”  This quote was made by William Morris(1834-1896) and is something that I have taken to heart.  Now there are things in my home that are not beautiful that are useful or that my kids have a special attachment to.  But my chaos is not chaos combined upon chaos due to those things.  They’re not worth upsetting our household over.

Chaos combined upon chaos to me is excess clothing and laundry. It’s my kids having so many clothes that they can’t decide what to wear.  To help control this chaos I have a minimalist approach to our clothing.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  All my children have plenty of clothes.  This is something that I often have to do though.  My kids have a set area for their clothes to fit in.  If their clothes are overflowing and spilling out it’s time to purge some clothing.  

I used to store tubs of clothes for the off season and I don’t do that anymore.  That has decreased my chaos because I don’t have stacks of tubs everywhere in my storage area!!  They were not beautiful and truly they were no longer useful. You see, I’m blessed to have people who care about us and give us their hand-me-downs.  My mother and I are both great seamstresses as well.  Of course, the chaos combined that is my life doesn’t exactly give me time to do much sewing, but my mom volunteers to do our mending.  She also works at a thrift store and can get us clothes if we need something specific.

So you see the chaos combined that is called clothing clutter was something that I could eliminate from my life.  It made me happier and decreased our clutter and our chaos.  It also helped my children to not become overwhelmed when they were choosing clothes for the day.

Another way that I have decreased the chaos in our life is to be a bit creative in our storing of things.  I buy things in bulk.  We’re blessed to have a friend who can get us buckets with locking lids.  I store our bulk goods in these and place them in our cellar.  That decreases the space they take up in our house but allows me to be a good steward of our money.

Another creative storage that I was able to do last year was to buy a pot rack.  The pot rack hangs over my dishwasher.  I can hang our pots and several baskets filled with teas and coffees and sippy cups, etc on the hooks from that pot rack.  I can also place pots and bowls on top of the pot rack.  That really helps because as I mentioned, I have almost no counter space which creates chaos on my available work space.  

I could go on with other ways on how I decrease the chaos combined upon chaos in our house, but I’ll save that for another post.  Make sure you take the time to pop over and read the other Blogging Through the ABC’s posts as well.  I’m really enjoying this series and hope you are too.  Hopefully I’m not just rambling!!