A Messy Couch

I'm sure you think I completely forgot about the Messy House Pledge I took awhile ago. Admittedly, I have been putting it off. I vacuum, I sweep, we do the laundry and some friends came over, so the place is liveable, I mean why bother? This is why.
We have a love seat sofa right in front of the door when you walk in. We generally choose to sit on the other couch, so the love seat gets all of our stuff dumped on it as we walk in the door. Bags, jackets, I think I see a flip flop there, blankets, you name it. Once in a month one of us has to sit on it and we typically hang up the jackets, put away the dirty laundry and throw everything else on the floor for the duration of use.
Something I like to ask myself about my home is would I want a friend to see this right now? The answer is always no. Peter Walsh mentioned on Oprah's show that most de-cluttering takes only 10 minutes. Ha! 10 minutes, get real. Does he know what lurks on that couch? So I set to test his theory out.
I set the stopwatch on my cell phone, and I kid you not, the couch looked like this in 4 minutes! I was sure to put everything in its proper home and not just throw it in another room.
It was inspiring, to see that just 4 minutes can produce a cleaner living room. We've got one tough habit to break (not dump everything on the couch when we first come home) and I'd like to say that the love seat looks the same as pictured above, but this takes time people. At least I know that when I look at it I know it'll only take 4 minutes to clean off.