No More Closed Doors!

I know it is a little late for "resolutions" and I will not call this that because most resolutions are not kept. Not that I am 100% positive I will keep this one, but it can't hurt to start out strong right? Good.

So we have this nasty little habit of allowing rooms to get messy. I am sure we are not alone in this. The tendency is to shut the door, which is fine if you have last minute company coming over or something like that. But what I find myself doing is shutting the door to hide the mess from myself. To trick myself into believing that our house is clean and tidy all of the time. The problem is that I keep shutting the door, and never really get at the problem. I mean I do okay with our main living areas, but some rooms just go untouched. The biggest one is the office upstairs. If you walk down our hall on any given day, this is what you will see:

Right there to the right. Here:

Cutting out natural light. I know this picture below doesn't really show it but the hallway is brighter with that door open.

I want to stop shutting doors. I want to stop wasting space in our home. That should be a functional usable room and I need to stop ignoring the clutter. Eventually I would like to get our closets to a point too where if the doors one day just disappeared, I would still be happy with them. That may take a little longer, especially the coat closet! Starting with decluttering the office will be first. And then my office downstairs. And then the workshop. Oh my word that one will be huge. I think I just need to take it one room at a time!

Do any of you find yourself closing doors to hide messes? Do you catch yourself thinking that you do an imperfect but okay job with your house only to come face to face with a mess when you go in to get the checkbook to pay bills or to grab a pen? I HATE it! It is something I need to change :)