Where Do I Begin With This Hot Mess?

Do I have your attention? :) If you're like me, you have a huge post-holiday mess at your house: Christmas presents, dirty dishes, decorations, piles of stuff that just got dumped on the floor or the table instead of being put away because there was celebrating to do! I love the phrase "hot mess," and it is sooo appropriate for my computer room right now! So where do we start in cleaning up this hot mess?

Now, to some of you, this may seem like a silly question. You may even have a tidy house that didn't suffer from the Holiday Hurricane. You are what is called BO: Born Organized. You are so lucky! But a lot of us are messies: we have no clue where to begin. Sure, if it's a sinkful of dirty dishes, or a pile of dirty clothes, we know what to do. But what about this giant wreck that has magically appeared over the month of December?

Here is the simple plan I use when I'm overwhelmed with a huge mess. You can use it, too.
1. Grab a trash bag and get rid of all the trash you can find.
2. Now pick up all the dirty dishes and take them to the kitchen. Don't get sidetracked with doing them now. Just get them into the room where they belong.
3. Next, take care of clothes, blankets, and other textiles. Toss dirty clothes in the hamper and put the clean clothes away. If your clean clothes don't have a home, just pile them neatly out of the way. (We will begin to deal with clutter in another day or two.) Fold up your snuggies and put the toss pillows back where they belong.

There! I'm sure it's much better already! Now all that's left is stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. We all have way too much stuff. Our job is to figure out what stuff we need and what stuff we can get rid of. We will look more into decluttering tomorrow. But first let's deal with things that already have a home.

My organizing mantra may be an old cliche, but it endures because it is soooo practical: A place for everything, and everything in its place. If all of your things have a home, it is easy to clean up your house by simply returning each item to its home. It is the things that don't have a home that are the source of distress for a lot of us!

The fourth and final step we'll look at today is returning things to their home. We'll deal with homeless things tomorrow. :) If you have a lot of stuff out of place (like I do), then it may take awhile to do this. Even taking things into the rooms they belong in is a big help.

I have spent the last few days doing these four steps, and the results are amazing! Sure, I need to vacuum and dust. And there is still a pile of Christmas presents to find homes for. But I feel like I can breathe in my office again!

Follow these steps, and your hot mess will be reduced to a smoldering ember. :)