"Neat" house needs organizing

[lmintzer]

This might sound a little strange--my house actually looks pretty neat when you first walk in. Dining room is on the left--it's decorated for the appropriate season (right now we have blue and white candles, beaded snowflakes made by the kids, etc). Through the dining room is a small living room/reading room. It's a toy-free zone so it stays neat. The kitchen is large and is typically cleaned up except for a pile in the corner of the table, a pile of papers and art on top of a bin or drawers for the kids, maybe some mail on one counter. The family room, which you can't see when you first walk in, is a problem right now--there are a pile of birthday presents that have been sitting against the window for 2 months. Yep, that's right. Upstairs, the kids rooms are reasonable. Our bedroom has piles--bins of art that are waiting to be photographed, school bins that need to be added to before being put in the basement, shoes and boots in boxes that need to be put into my closet, but the closet needs stuff emptied OUT of it before they can fit. Which leads me to my problem: I put off putting away my piles, because each one leads to a major re-organization/donation/sorting project. Those projects are not only time-consuming, but they can be emotionally challenging, because I have to do the "keep or toss" debate, and I am really sentimental about my kids getting older.

Our house is fairly large, so in the 6 years we've been here, I've been able to get away with piling, sticking stuff in the storage room in the basement. But now it feels like we've reached "capacity," so to speak. It's time to go through all of the clothing drawers and take OUT the baby blankets and special items that are taking up precious space. It's time to go through the kids' closets and remove what they no longer play with so some other toys can make their way upstairs. It's time to go through my closet and get rid of 15 pairs of shoes and boots that are no longer worn. It's time to go through our bill drawer/filing cabinet again to make more room.

Does anyone else ever get overwhelmed about this stuff? I don't always get the "feel good" high from purging that everyone else seems to get. I guess I need to just pick one small project and not feel like I have to take it all on at once. I feel like I've been doing "surface management" for far too long, and it's time for a real "deep clean," to speak.

Is anyone in this boat? It seems like most people who post/talk about these issues are either a.) really neat, really organized, and purge all of the time or b.) aren't inherently good at organizing, have messier homes, and are here to try to make a change. I feel like I'm in the "c." camp: am typically organized, have a fairly neat house, but am just overwhelmed by the amount of stuff a family of four accumulates and have trouble starting to part with some of it.

[cono0507]

I think I'm somewhat similar.
The house looks uncluttered and neat but there are a few areas that still need work. I've actually made a lot of progress over the past 6 months or so with that.
What worked for me:
1. One room at a time. Even if it takes weeks of a few hours here, a few hours there. FOr me, I needed to tackle our home office, guest room and bonus/workout room closet, all of which seemed to become "pile" areas for stuff that needed to be dealt with.
2. Make a to-do list. For me, those little projects like filing the kids' school work or keepsakes wasn't a terribly hard job but out of sight, out of mind. So I keep a to do list of all those tasks I have yet to tackle so I remember and can do that when a bit of time presents itself.