My quest to declutter and organize is ongoing. I have an idea of when I feel like I’ll “get there” – meaning I’ll have routines in place, every item I own has a spot, and I don’t have crap littering my floors. I’m hopeful that will, one day, happen. Until then, I keep working on trying to figure out what my routines need to be, going through my stuff, throwing things out, and organizing as best I can.

Today I would like to show you just how much one hour of tidying up can make a huge difference.

After I did my exercise this morning, I couldn’t shower right away because I had a load of laundry in the dryer. Instead of watching an episode of “The Office” or playing a game on my phone (Seeker’s Notes and Merge Dragons are my vices), I decided to use half an hour to work in my room.

This is what I started with:

Last week I wasn’t able to work in my room at all. Over the past six months I’ve started learning that scheduling in time to clean is super important. Since I didn’t have anything going on today before work, I decided that picking up and organizing would be the best use of my time. I’m sick and tired of trying to navigate my way around the floor, especially at night when I come home from work. I want to know that I have a straight shot to my bed – no stepping on things and no needing to move items off my bed to sleep.

Once my first thirty minutes were up, my clothes were try and I was able to shower. I felt so good and motivated, though, that I decided to work for an extra thirty minutes. My room wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be and I had the time, anyway. So back into my room I plunged.

This was the final result:

Look at that! Isn’t it amazing? Just one hour of tidying up, shredding things, filing papers, put items in their proper places, putting away my clean clothes, and making my bed led to that! I was so determined to move everything away from the center of my floor and to clean that little nook at the foot of my bed. I was able to vacuum for the first time in months today!

I’m really proud of my progress and, to be honest, I’m a little stunned at how nice everything looks. This is honestly the best my room has looked since moving my bedroom furniture in six months ago.

Don’t get me wrong – I still have a long way to go. I have a little cubby full of papers that I need to go through, but I have a plan that I’ll talk about later on. There are boxes under my bed that I need to go through, as well. Those will take a little bit of time because there are items in some of those boxes that I’d like to keep, but I’m not completely sure how best to store them.

That’s one thing I’ve learned about cleaning and organizing: if there are some boxes that contain memorabilia that you’re not sure how to store in a more efficient way, that’s okay! Leave the boxes for now, but do your part in researching ideas on how to store them. One huge project for me is going to be organizing all of my mission items. I have about two boxes I need to go through, but I’m saving those for a later date after I’ve been able to look at different containers and figure out what exactly I want to do.

My challenge for you is to pick one part of your home and go at it for at least 30 minutes! Don’t get discouraged. Set a time and just have at it until it goes off. I you’re feeling extremely motivated, go for another 30 minutes! The difference you’ll see will be worth it. Show me your before and after pictures in the comments!