Purging.

I am not the tidy mother.  I never was a tidy person.
Yet somehow - I was 95% organized!  Birthday parties, therapy meetings, groceries, picking/dropping kids off etc - got that on lock down!

But my home is a constant state of "I only invite my closest dearest friends over because I know they've accepted my mess and me as I am."

So that has limited me to two gals - my neighbour (who happens to be my birthday twin) and my "Bae" - as I refer to her in my NSFW videos on Facebook.

Lately, I've been visiting the boyfriend ("J")  who happens to live 4.5 hours away from me - because naturally any boyfriend I had locally simply didn't work out...and I noticed that despite me sitting on a bus for 4.5 hours (half of which consists of a nap) I realized that I love going there and hated coming back because my home is a mess.

It does not smell!  But it's cluttered beyond belief!
The only one that enjoys the mess is probably Peppi - my cat.  And that means everything is an adventure and it's a natural jungle gym inside for her.

My children have accepted and gotten used to my mess and have even bluntly pointed it out to me:

"Your house is always messy.  Daddy's home is only a little messy but Daddy always cleans."

And at first I was shocked my M-Girl said this to me so matter-of-factly.  But it's true.  And from a 4-year old - that's pathetic.

So I decided today that enough is enough.  I am done with living in a home that resembles Martha Stewart's nightmares.

I don't know how many times I have folded my laundry in piles - with the mindset to put it away and then something happened with the kids and poof.  My laundry ended up all over the floor again.
Or I would get a text from friends asking me to go meet them downtown for a coffee (aka McDonald's) or go for a walk and I jumped on the bus right away.  Not saying it's my friends faults - it's my decision obviously to not stay at home and save money too!

There's a saying that cleaning your home while children live there is like brushing your teeth and eating Oreos at the same time - pointless.
And it so very much is.

BUT!  My home needs it.  I really need to rent a table at the local second-hand store and just BIFF it all! (No idea who else says "biff" but I mean toss it all!)

I have friends that are all about the magic of minimalism life style - and seeing as I live in a country that is all about minimal living for nearly 9 years - I should be prone to doing this too!

So where do I start?

1. I am renting a table at the second-hand store and I doubt I'll get a table right away - so I'll have time to sort through everything in the mean time.
1. In Finland you rent a table from the store and pay a weekly fee and whatever prices you label your items is the amount of money deposited to your account (minus the fee).  So it's a great way to get rid of clothes, kid-related stuff and so on while making some money.
2. I am getting rid of it if I don't need that item.  It's not about "does it spark joy?" for me...it's more about:
1.  "Can I live without it?"
2. "Have I used this in the last 3 months?"
3. "Will I use it again EVER?"
4. "Does it have extreme sentimental value?" (most likely not)
5. "Can I sell this and make some pocket change to go toward things I genuinely need?" (Example: A Canadian passport renewal is my first goal!)

Bear in mind, I've thought (for all of 1 minute) of purchasing "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying : A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever" by Marie Kondo (affiliate) even as a Kindle edition but decided no.

I should be able to do this and because I want and need to do this - it's going to happen.

As it stands - I am taking my kids for crazy long walks to purposely avoid being at home in the clutterville we live in and also because it's good exercise and the V-Man doesn't poop in his diapers in public!

That and it's summer holidays and they're home with me for a whole week - so to reduce screen time and making more mess - we get out and walk, explore and hit up Pokémon Go to motivate them!

And I mean minimum 15km walks which may sound nutty but I want to get more fit, they need to get tired and I don't want to use the bus cards unless necessary (or the weather is absolutely terrible!).

I even made a silly little Instagram account called "MamaWalking" to show our walking distances via the Map My Walk app (love this!) and my kids love the "drawing" we make on the map from walking around!

So now that I know how I plan to do things - what's the next step?

When will I declutter?

1. When the kids are asleep.  It's not like I watch a lot of TV or movies when I am alone anyway.
2. When the kids are awake - I can do some things too.
3. When the kids are at their dad's - that's prime time!

What are the perks of decluttering my home?

I seriously had to think about this - as I look around from my little spot on the sofa...but here it goes!

1. More space. This is obvious.  I live in a single bedroom flat with 3 kids, a cat and a medium-sized dog (who is actually living with my boyfriend so I don't need to hound my friends to walk him and care for him while I'm out of town).
2. Clear the air.  No, my home doesn't stink.  But when there's so much clutter - it can be hard to focus.  Hard to think and hard to motivate myself to do anything honestly!  
3. I can work out at home. I don't have massive gym equipment folks.  Just stretchy bands, a yoga mat, a pair of barbells and some other things that are buried somewhere...  I could do a pretty intense workout if I had space.  I could even quit going to the gym and just work out from home easily.  I would save 20€/month in doing so.
4. I can have people over. I mean proper knitting nights (I know I am so exciting), friends, host my kids' birthday parties without shame and maybe have the boyfriend and his kiddo over. 
5. Less stress.  Less stress for me, the dog doesn't handle the mess well (he just loves me too much and I make sure he's too tired to care) and of course the kids aren't so stressed.
6. It's easier to keep clean once it IS clean.  This was a weird one for me to physically accept.  Being at a clean and tidy home biweekly has made me want to clean up after myself.  Partially because I am the guest (yep even as a girlfriend - I consider myself a guest) and I would think it's terribly rude to leave a mess for the host to clean up constantly! 
1. We got into a rhythm of cleaning together and doing things to make things flow better.  For example, I would cook and he would load the dishwasher.  In the morning after walking Loki - I would empty the dishwasher.  Just little things that made a difference and continuously kept the household tidy.
7. I am helping the environment by selling/donating items instead of tossing them in the trash right away.
8. I'll be happier to come home - and not just crawl into bed and sleep away the day to hide from it all.
9. I will no longer be embarrassed. Enough said.

So - the big question: Can I do it?

1. Absolutely yes.  I am very determined in this and am already eyeing my bookshelf to see what I can drop off to the second hand store.
2. Yes I have tried selling stuff on Facebook in second-hand groups! It's a lot of work and I haven't sold much.  I think it would make more sense to dump a few loads of stuff onto a table and have a larger audience see what I have to offer than to constantly try and plan meetings with different people while I have my kids with me.
1. I also live in a university town - so many potential buyers in the group I primarily sell in are students on a tight budget.

You know what else sparked this whole purging idea for me?
I've been job hunting for months now and had even considered moving in with J to cut down on some expenses and work full-time there and travel back and forth to see my kids.

But it was the terrifying thought of "OMG.  If we move in together - I'll need to get rid of A----Z!"
Then I realized something magnificent:

I have survived without using most of the things anyway. There may come a day that I'll have to move and if I had to move right now with all of this sh*t - I would be in so.  Much.  Trouble.
Why the F has it taken me this long to get to this point of frustration? Well, it's better late than never eh?

That's when I continued to scrub my feet, smiled at my idea, read my friend's motivating post on why she keeps decluttering (even after having moved to their new home finally) and figured: "It's a sign."

Not that I wouldn't want to move in with J but the distance is an issue for sure, especially where we both have kids!  

So with that said - I am off to register for a table and get a boogie on with this!
XOXO,
BIMU