{give yourself} Fifteen minutes.

Sometimes in my head I play out how I would write a post, really think it through, and then forget to ever write it! That’s exactly what happened with the following! 

Weeks (maybe months) ago Roni wrote a great post about feeling overwhelmed about a daunting task and intern it never gets done; case in point, cleaning that big junk room. She talked about giving yourself a 15 minute time limit and work on what you can in those 15 minutes then walk away; it’s a short enough amount of time to not feel swallowed by the task. Feeling inspired I set out to work on the one place in my house that is never clean…my bedroom. It should be my sanctuary, my retreat but instead it’s my oh-crap-people-are-coming-over-throw-everything-in-here room. Seeing that I don’t have octopus arms I knew I couldn’t clean the entire wreck in this time limit so I focused on the closet.

Oh how I wish so bad this was a staged picture but nope, that’s my little ol’ disaster of a closet. I’m a terrible wife and make Davy keep his clothes in the office because there is NO WAY this thing is big enough for two people. The shirt cubicles store about half of what I’ve put in there…the other half has dove off onto the floor; the shoe drawers always remain open with mismatches shoes strung about. The floor is literally covered with clothes because a. I have no counter space to throw them and b. a laundry basket can’t fit in the closet!

And here is what it looks like 15 minutes later! I picked up all the fallen clothes and refolded them into their proper cubby. I rearranged the bags on the floor so my drawers could actually be pulled all the way out. I placed shoes with their match and neatly stacked in the right place. I picked up all the junk that has accumulated on the floor and put it away. It felt so nice to see what things could look like after 15 minutes of refocusing my attention. And after those 15 minutes were up I immediately hung up all the clean shirts off the floor so the closet was complete.

And get this…I felt so motivated I went on to clean the entire room! The disaster center was transformed into a bedroom complete with clean floors, clean dresser tops, and a made bed!

I DARE you to try this task! It was great motivation to snap a before and after picture of the space. I bet your biggest challenge is going to be stopping after 15 minutes!