Clutter-free home is welcoming, enjoyable

What is it about traveling that brings out the frowns and sad looks on people's faces? You hardly ever see smiles and happy faces in an airport. After spending the last six days on the road and in the air it is good to get home.

That's because there is no place like home — unless your home is cluttered and filled with CHAOS! Years ago I would do any thing that I could to get away from home. Now I know that I was running from my home because it was so cluttered that I could not stand to be there. Everywhere I looked I was reminded of my own incompetence and laziness. I hated being there, so every chance I got I ran to escape it. As a result it got worse.

Then Robert and I married. I had a houseful of clutter and so did he and then we went to estate auctions and bought more. Clutter, clutter everywhere and not a place to sit! It was awful. I was always making great plans to remodel and get rid of the green shag carpet and yucky kitchen cabinets.

We would go to dinner and draw out these elaborate plans only to push them aside because I felt that since I could not keep the house clean as it was. I knew it would be impossible with a bigger house.

Robert was always supportive and didn't even expect me to cook, clean or even do laundry. His comment was that his arm wasn't broke and if it bothered him he would do it himself. Well, this made me feel even worse. Here was this wonderful man that deserved to be spoiled and I couldn't even keep clean underwear in his drawers.

That is when I started to figure out what was going on with me and why I always had trouble with keeping house.

As I have told you many times, it all started with that shiny sink. I had to build one habit at a time. Keeping the sink shining was my first and most important habit. This is why your first assignment is to shine your sink. From that shining sink, clean swept through our home like a white knight on a horse. It was not instantaneous, but after four months we were really beginning to see a difference in the way our home looked and best of all, how it felt.

I like to think of it as giving birth to a new me, because that is exactly what I did! As I was dealing with taking care of me and slowly getting rid of the clutter, our house became a home. Not a museum but a real home that you could enjoy being in. I was no longer trying to hide our dirty little secret. I had gotten rid of them. The clutter was gone and our home was a welcoming haven for us.

There is no place like home! There is no place like home! When you can feel this way about where you live then you know that you are FLYing!