Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Decluttering, Shall We?

I open up my storage closets and what do I find?
 Yup, a big giant mess.  In BOTH of my upstairs storage closets.  Couldn't even walk into them, forget about finding anything.  For a couple of months now I had just been tossing things in there when I didn't know what else to do with them and sure enough, pretty soon they were both one big giant disaster.
One day, not that long ago, we realized Kaitlyn had hit a growth spurt and needed to go out shopping for new jeans.  She and I took a Saturday morning and had a blast - basically doing a second round of back to school shopping for the year.  If only the growth spurt could have waited for the summer season when we would have needed to re-outfit her anyway.  But it didn't, so shopping we went.  Then we came home and sorted through all her clothes and bagged up everything that was too small.  The very next day I was talking with a neighbor about how quickly our kids are growing and realized that both of her daughters are in the size the my Kate just grew out of - perfect!  So I went to the closet and pulled out not only the bags we had just set aside, but I started finding clothes I had previously been tossing in there here and there as they were outgrown.
Pretty soon I was pulling out everything in not only that closet but the second storage closet as well (they flank each side of the guest room and all are accessed through the playroom) and pretty soon the playroom looked like this.
 Yup.  The kids came home to find a complete disaster area.  In among homework, dinner, and the rest of the evening routine I found the time to sort through everything.
That same storage closet now looks like this:
 Look!  You can see the floor!
And the wall on the other side of the closet:
 Yes, that would be half of my wreath collection.  Originally I had purchased some of those wreath holder boxes, but my wreaths were too fluffy or too oddly shaped to fit in them.  So they all hang on the wall.
Here are the rest:
in storage closet #2
which also now has some clear floor space - yay!  Sure, it's not worthy of the Pottery Barn catalog or anything, but it's a lot better than it was.  In the process I also "discovered" a lot of things that I had forgotten I had, like an entire stack of photos I had blown up but never put up on the wall.  (Now you know what prompted me to get started on Tyler's Monogram Wall again, along with the photos in my bedroom and other things I have yet to post)  It was a bit like Christmas all over again ;)  It also got the motivation going to not only tackle some of the projects that have been waiting for attention for a very long time, but to see what else I needed to sort through to make my life easier.  And it was perfect timing when just a few days later a friend sent me the link to the 40 Bags in 40 Days challenge.

Of course I jumped right on board.  Within about 10 minutes the next morning (while waiting at the bus stop, no less) I had a list of more than 40 locations that could use a little TLC.  A lot of them are tech-related (like cleaning out my email inboxes and organizing/backing up photos) and most should take less than 30 minutes to tackle, which should make it easy to fit into the day.  Yesterday was day 7 for me (I counted the storage closet sort as the first two tasks lol.  It makes me feel like I got off to a good start) and so far so good.

Anyone else doing the 40 Bags in 40 Days Challenge?  Or want to join me now that you've heard about it? ;)

3 comments:

  1. I'm doing 40 bags in 40 days! Woo hoo! I'm going to get rid of some serious stuff!

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  2. This is a really funny post! I really like your writing style… Or maybe I just can relate to you because I have such a disaster's house right now… And when you clean up it always gets worse before gets better doesn't it? I should check out this

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  3. Thank You for this light hearted, peep at the process. Your honest photos of the problem areas. I will have to post before's and afters too. Well done with your hot spots. I am a gatherer of things a stacker of 'good stuff' You have inspired me. I think I am ready to just DO IT!

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