Cleaning and Organizing....
Cleaning and organizing are not what most people would call relaxing or what could make a person happy, but when you purge items or clean a room, a person has a sense of accomplishment and can feel happy when things are orderly and has a place to call home. When you reduce the amount of items in your house, it also makes it easier to clean and you have more time to relax and enjoy life instead of clean and move the stuff around in order to clean.
This is a very touchy subject with me as I know I need to purge and keep stuff down to a minimum, but I also don't like to throw things away when they can be used for a later purpose. For example, I have saved ribbon from various gifts over the years to be used for scrapbooking or using again for another gift. My son started Kindergarten and the teacher asked if parents had any ribbon they could donate for the class to use. I went through my stash and got rid of a lunch bag of ribbon. It is now being put to use and is no longer in my house. This makes me feel good that I didn't have to buy it and yet I was able to donate something for my child's class.
Finding a Home
So right now, I am trying to find homes for things I am not going to use. I have found many ideas on Youtube on how to find new homes for your unused items. I send my clothes to m SIL and she will either use them or consign them. There are no available consignment stores near me. Animal shelters will take old blankets, sheet, and towels for rescue animals. While there are many containers to help organize your house at the $ Tree or Walmart, I like to use containers that used to house food, that we have used up, like peanut containers, boxes, and coffee cans.
I have used coffee cans for school manipulatives for my kids as well as for storing egg noodles. I use plastic peanut containers for other baking goods like arrowroot flour which comes in a bag. With the boxes, I cut the boxes to fit the height of a drawer and I use it to organize pencils, stamps, or other smaller items instead of buying the containers at the store to do this.
Minimalizing
Tons of stuff makes it hard to find a place for things to go and it can prevent you from putting something away even if you have a place for it in the house. So when you are unable to put something away where it belongs due to not being able to reach the place where it goes, getting rid of things is key! Once the items are under control, it will be easier to put items you want where they belong and find items that you are wanting to use and use them.