Messy Monsters

No, I'm not talking about my kids!

I'm talking about all those little spots that accumulate messes.  These little mess monsters sneak up and make themselves at home all over the place. You know where I am talking about, the table next to the door, end of the kitchen counter, on top of your desk or dresser, the passenger seat of your car.... admit it, you have places like this.

It is time to look at what is in these piles.  Mail? Keys? Your husbands baseball hat? Things that you have no idea what they are or where they came from? I have a screw in one of my piles and I can't help but think something is close to falling apart in my house? Coloring books, Crayons, TOYS! Oh my!  How does one family find so much stuff?

What do you do with all this stuff?  Heck, I don't know, that is usually the reason it is there. Just kidding.  But seriously, usually it is there because it doesn't have a place of its own, or the place it should be isn't that convenient compared to how much you use it.  So first we need to figure out why it gets put there.  Are the keys always on the table next to the door because you use them all the time, but putting them there can result in the 18 month old being able to grab them and run away with them making leaving the house into a hide a seek game?  But could it be that it is a convenient place for them?  Well then, why change it? Because I don't like playing hide and seek with my keys (ok, so I am also trying to clean and organize my house and make it beautiful), so a simple cute hook on the wall right next to, but out of reach of a 18 month old, is a quick solution that will likely be used.  Putting the keys in a nice drawer organizer on the other side of the room, not so convenient and not likely to work long term.  See what I'm trying to do here?  Clean up the mess, but still keep the items that always seem to end up in these messy spots convenient to where they are usually found in a convenient nice place.

Now pick something else in one of those piles and figure out why it is there and try and find it a place where you are more likely to keep it put away.  Don't try and clear all the piles at once, just take it one item at a time and when you are tired move on to something else and come back to it later.  In fact the longer you take at this, the more of a trend in the items you will see, and the easier it will be to figure out solutions to the problem items.  Like after finding several different tool related items on the end of my kitchen counter over a period of time, I figured out that I simply needed a drawer in my kitchen for that sort of stuff.  Now there are no more tools and screws on my counter, they are all placed in a small drawer by where they use to accumulate.