Organizing your entire home is HARD.  Which room do you tackle first?  How do you tackle it? What needs to be organized?  What is ok the way it is? What stays, what goes, what gets put somewhere else??? As hard as it has been to have expectations not come to fruition there are silver linings to starting to pack your entire house and then UN-packing it instead.  When you can look at each item and truly ask yourself, “does this item have a place in my future home?” you can declutter in a whole new way.  “Is this item worth the space it will take up in the box? worth the cost of storage? worth the time to pack and unpack it?” When you not only have the ability to ask yourself these questions but really HAVE to ask them, the task actually becomes easier and there is a freedom to let things go.  During the process of packing the house I FINALLY got rid of papers I have had since college, since my first job, since my last job… I got rid of receipts for baby items (my kids are almost 10 and 12!).  I parted ways with cards from my baby showers and scrap book items that were never going to wind up in a scrap book.  I learned that I have an unhealthy attachment to things on paper.  The closet was easier, I don’t have an attachment to clothes the way I do to other things.  But each room has come with new insight to why clutter fills our home and a new freedom to allow those things to no longer be part of our space.

So…if your task was to PACK your home instead of simply organize it, would that change the way you approach your space?  Would you keep the same things?  Would you feel differently about donating items or actually throwing them out?  NOW, if your task was to UNPACK your home in a NEW space would you be more particular about what made it’s way back into the space??   I challenge you, if you are working on decluttering or organizing your home the way I am, to approach it from a packing and unpacking perspective and see if that helps you truly create the home you want to live in, rather than just reorganizing items that no longer serve you.  None of this is easy but I hope it helps!