What Moving Taught Me about How Much It’s Possible to Get Done with Toddlers

We have been doing so much work to get our house ready to put on the market. I remember telling my husband before we even had three kids that we were never moving because we had too much stuff. If you know anything about me, you know that I don’t want piles of stuff. In fact, I want the opposite. We can go into how we managed to accrue all that stuff another time.

The point is, we have three children 5 and under. We just keep getting more and more stuff. We let the deep cleaning slide. Our days are full and when the kids go to sleep, we just want some time to unwind.

For the last few weeks, with the help of my family, we have been busting our butts. Getting rid of the stuff, boxing up and storing what we want but don’t immediately need and cleaning.

I cannot believe how much we’ve accomplished!

This big room in our basement used to look like a Goodwill donation center. Just piles of stuff everywhere. I can’t believe we got it to this state.

And here’s the thing – the house looks the way I always wanted it to look. (Well, ok, I would have liked this particular room set up a little better, but you know what I mean.)

It’s sort of sad or ironic, but I think that’s the way it often goes. When you have the right type of motivation or when you have a specific end goal that’s not “decluttering”, you invest time and energy that you otherwise wouldn’t. Basically, when you want to sell your house you finally get it looking the way you always wanted it to. You tackle those repairs that have been on the to-do list forever. You finally take the time to spackle the walls and paint. You clean those things you may have noticed but never took the time to address.

I mean yes, that’s what we all want to do but it takes hours of hard work, sacrifice and being on the same page with your husband and it seems impossible to do when you have little ones running around.

It’s not impossible, but it is hard.

Seriously. We’ve been staying up late, swapping turns taking the kids out of the house, working when we have time without the kids. It’s been tough.