I spent a couple of hours rearranging our kitchen this past weekend & I'm pleased with the results. Though it's still a very cramped space, things are organized closer to where we actually use them, the to-donate box is overflowing, more items are stored out of sight & the cabinets are less packed.
Pruning stuff from my life really feels good & it gets easier the more I do it. I'm really starting to see that less is more. Ditching a couch in the living room has made more space & I like it better. Still really need more art on the walls though.
I think about my wardrobe a lot, but that's by no means the most cluttered part of my life. There are a number of seemingly unscaleable mountains elsewhere too. (Some not even metaphorical, urgh.) Here are some of the biggest clutter hurdles I'd like to get over this year:
Out filing cabinet is a disorganized mess, except for the things that I carefully filed away so long ago that I no longer need them. We need to sit down & spend a few hours putting our shredder to work.
My sewing room is so stuffed I can barely use it. Unfortunately, it's such a tiny room (about 7'x9') that I need a zero tolerance policy when it comes to clutter. This room reminds me of the 'Hoarders' episodes I've been watching online lately. I have been putting this one off for various reasons, not the least of which is how hard it will be to get rid of a lot of the fabrics & craft supplies I've accumulated over the past couple of decades. Selling, giving away or tossing all that stuff means admitting that I'll never do each of those projects that I bought the stuff for.
Creating a usable guest room out of Oliver's 'office'. Similarly to my sewing room, it's tiny & stacked floor to ceiling with stuff we rarely use. (It's also the home of the aforementioned filing cabinet.) It's slightly embarrassing to me that we have a four bedroom house but have essentially converted two of the rooms--plus the garage, but that's a whole other ball of wax--into storage closets. Part of our problem is the dearth of closets in the home: we have one in our bedroom, a tiny one in Sprout's room, plus a skinny little linen closet. That's it: none in the entryway, zero in the other two 'bedrooms', no pantry in the kitchen. But as I said, it's only part of the problem. The major contributing factor is our pack rat tendencies.
Lastly, I still have a lot more clothes than I use, definitely a lot more than I need. My to-donate bag is hanging on the back of my door & getting more & more full daily. I think this is key for doing a large-scale reduction of clothes: make it just as easy to bag it for donation as to throw it in the stuffed laundry baskets, to be dealt with in that fuzzy, unspecified future. I wish clearing out my sewing room & Oli's office could be done gradually & painlessly, but I think we're just going to have to set aside some large blocks of time to attack each one.
Have you got any decluttering projects planned for this year?
Pruning stuff from my life really feels good & it gets easier the more I do it. I'm really starting to see that less is more. Ditching a couch in the living room has made more space & I like it better. Still really need more art on the walls though.
I think about my wardrobe a lot, but that's by no means the most cluttered part of my life. There are a number of seemingly unscaleable mountains elsewhere too. (Some not even metaphorical, urgh.) Here are some of the biggest clutter hurdles I'd like to get over this year:
Out filing cabinet is a disorganized mess, except for the things that I carefully filed away so long ago that I no longer need them. We need to sit down & spend a few hours putting our shredder to work.
My sewing room is so stuffed I can barely use it. Unfortunately, it's such a tiny room (about 7'x9') that I need a zero tolerance policy when it comes to clutter. This room reminds me of the 'Hoarders' episodes I've been watching online lately. I have been putting this one off for various reasons, not the least of which is how hard it will be to get rid of a lot of the fabrics & craft supplies I've accumulated over the past couple of decades. Selling, giving away or tossing all that stuff means admitting that I'll never do each of those projects that I bought the stuff for.
Creating a usable guest room out of Oliver's 'office'. Similarly to my sewing room, it's tiny & stacked floor to ceiling with stuff we rarely use. (It's also the home of the aforementioned filing cabinet.) It's slightly embarrassing to me that we have a four bedroom house but have essentially converted two of the rooms--plus the garage, but that's a whole other ball of wax--into storage closets. Part of our problem is the dearth of closets in the home: we have one in our bedroom, a tiny one in Sprout's room, plus a skinny little linen closet. That's it: none in the entryway, zero in the other two 'bedrooms', no pantry in the kitchen. But as I said, it's only part of the problem. The major contributing factor is our pack rat tendencies.
Lastly, I still have a lot more clothes than I use, definitely a lot more than I need. My to-donate bag is hanging on the back of my door & getting more & more full daily. I think this is key for doing a large-scale reduction of clothes: make it just as easy to bag it for donation as to throw it in the stuffed laundry baskets, to be dealt with in that fuzzy, unspecified future. I wish clearing out my sewing room & Oli's office could be done gradually & painlessly, but I think we're just going to have to set aside some large blocks of time to attack each one.
Have you got any decluttering projects planned for this year?
Re: the craft stash - I'm actually a fan of the 'buy no more until I use the stash' strategy. If you just get rid of everything, then you've made room for new fabric. If you say 'no more fabric for me until I use what I have' then you get a fun challenge, and you don't need to buy anything for a while. Call it a de-stash and brag on appropriate forums...
ReplyDeleteI have tried to use up what I have, but I have SO MUCH--seriously, like two upright dressers full, plus a couple of boxes, some stacked on shelves & piled on top of the dressers. I'm thinking of having a yard sale in a couple of months, & trying to sell off the fabric for $1 a metre or something. Or maybe some kind of craft swap event at the house sooner than that.
Delete