Decluttering Operations Order Part 2

He has always been messy!

Welcome to Part 2 of my decluttering operations order. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. Below is what I’ve written up for my son’s bedroom. In the Army, we would not only deliver this as a briefing but an operation could involve rehearsals and a demonstration using what’s called a sand-table or terrain model kit.

I need to execute this soon because his room is a disaster and seems to just be getting worse. To be fair, he did try to clean it up a little recently and we were able to see more of the floor than we’ve seen in a while.

I’m asking for feedback before I do this so feel free to make comments below or send me an email if you have a suggestion for something I missed.

Situation: Your bedroom is a complete shambles. It’s impossible to walk from the door to the other side of the room without stepping on something. The floor is covered in Legos, sheet music, Nerf darts and lots of dust. There are clothes on the floor and the desk because there’s no room in the closet. The closet is full because there are clothes that no longer fit and/or you don’t like to wear.

Mission: Together we (who) will clean up and remove excess items from (what) your bedroom (where) so that the floor is clear making it easy to clean and it will be a place where you can practice your music without distraction while being safe from tripping on objects (why).

Execution: This operation will be executed in several phases:
1. Anything on the floor that can be quickly and easily put away to make some room so that we can walk across the floor without breaking our neck, will be put away.
2. With the floor clear, we will go through all of you clothes starting with your drawers then moving on to your closet. Anything that does not fit or will not be worn will be removed into three piles: torn/stained clothing to become rags, clothes to donate, clothes to be packed up for your younger brother to wear later.
3. We will inspect all of your toys to decide which ones really should be in your room. Similar to the clothes, they will go into piles: items to stay in your room, items to donate/sell, items to be passed along to younger siblings.
4. You have a lot of knick-knacks that take up a lot of space. Similar to the toys, we need to get rid of some. Those that are kept, need to have a true permanent home. This is when we will look at installing more shelves.
5. Likewise, we need to remove some of the personal stuff like trophies, awards, and six-year-old art projects. Marie Kondo recommends tackling sentimental items in her widely acclaimed book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up“.

Service & Support: To keep this simple, we’ll just list the items that we’ll have on hand:
1. A couple of garbage bags for things being thrown away
2. Boxes for sorting clothes and toys to donate/save
3. Vacuum cleaner
4. Dust rags
5. Magic Sliders come in handy for moving furniture around easily.
6. Since one wall is pegboard, we’ll have some more pegboard hooks handy to hang some things on.
7. We’ll also have some snacks so we don’t have to take a break to recharge. Never declutter on an empty stomach!

Command & Signal: As always, mom is in charge of everything. She will have the final say on pretty much everything, especially the disposition of all clothes. I will be the one helping with the room to keep things on track.

Safety: Believe it or not, safety is one of the prime reasons to clean up this room. There are multiple reasons for that. First, my son has allergies. With a messy room things get dusty and it’s very difficult to clean. Second, even without being in a rush, it can be a life-risking undertaking to walk through the room. Never mind what could happen if there was an emergency and you had to run out of the room. You could easily trip on something and knock yourself out on the desk.

So that’s pretty much it. I’ll try it out and then report back on how it goes. I’ll also refine it based on any feedback received and post the updated version. Thanks for reading.

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