Friday, January 06, 2012

Clearing the Clutter Clears the Mind

Today is day 7 of decluttering our house.  I'm super excited about the progress of everything.  However, the rooms that aren't done are in disarray because I'm hyper focusing on only one room at a time.  If I spent my time worrying about the rooms the kids are bringing their toys into, I wouldn't get anything done.  So far I have decluttered the boys room, the girls room, my room, my closet, and the garage.  Today will be the kitchen.  My camera is being sent out for repair so please forgive all the low quality pictures.

After my 20 week ultrasound yesterday, when I got back home I got straight to work finishing my room project.  I finished around 11pm last night and collapsed into bed happily.  Literally, when I removed everything from the entire room I only put back what I wanted.  Whoaaaa, the results were amazing.  My vacuum decided to break so my mom lent me one so I can finish my projects.  My room now looks like it did when we first moved in.  

I was so frustrated because no matter how much I cleaned, it just felt sooo cluttered in my room. I never had anywhere to put my laundry.  Well, duh, it was because I had too much.  My closets were so crammed with shoes and clothing that there just was nowhere to put anything.  Between Charles and I we donated about 4 xlarge black bags of clothing.  That black long table you see in the picture is where I would have dumped all the excess clothing.  It's nice to see it cleared.

My closet was completely cleared out and between Charles and I we got rid of about 15 pairs of shoes.  I had already gone through my shoes before and gotten rid of another 20 pairs.  This time I really had to think about it to get rid of more. In reality, I only wear so many and have my favorite. Why am I holding on to the shoes that I might wear someday? 

My side of the closet was so crammed that I would have to shove just one more shirt and find a tiny miracle place to fit it.  Now, with my dresses on the left and shirts on the right, I have tons of space.  That doesn't mean I can go shopping.  :D  If I buy anything I want to take one item out. That way it doesn't slowly fill up.

My daily project that I didn't get to blog about the other day was the garage.  We cleared out all the clutter in the garage in one day. Thankfully, my husband helped me with this one.  The wall you see we had boxes and old computers lining all across it.  On the other side I had bags of kid clothes.  While my husband hauled all the heavy stuff to the garbage, I was going through the clothes and donating lots of it. Now, there are no boxes in the garage and the only thing we have is two shelves to hold auto stuff.  It's so cleared out that the kids have been riding their tricycles and scooters in there since it has so much space.  I would really like to get some carpet that I can roll out during the day and roll back up at night so we can pull our vehicles in.

So, that's been my busy life the past 6 days!  I just have to keep working till I'm completely done.  I still have the kitchen, living room, bathrooms (under counters), and backyard and then we'll be done.  That's when I'll jump for joy.  The experience has been so freeing.  Emptying out the entire room and only putting back what I want in it is hard work but actually makes it so simple to know what to let go of.

By the way, I still have a contest going on over HERE if you have a little girl.  :D

5 comments:

Karen said...

Love that empty garage! I'd love to do that with ours...but don't have somewhere else to put the stuff we store there (important stuff...not trash).

Tereza said...

wow!! I cant wait to MOVE so I have the motivation to get rid of everything! Unlike u I have no motivation to even start in this house due to not enough shelves and closets and stuff

Unknown said...

I really need to do that with my house. I did just a few art/book shelves and it really made a difference

Virginia Revoir said...

Well, I'm not moving but I acted as if we were by emptying all the rooms. I just did one room a day though so it wasn't overwhelming. Soooo worth it!

Karen, the only reason we can do that in the garage is because we have an attic to put Christmas storage and things like that. We did get rid of 90% of the stuff we were storing though so that felt really good. :) I have a friend that has to use her garage for storage and she put a utility shelf all along the top in her garage. She put all the boxes up there so it was off the ground. I loved her idea.

fruitfulvine said...

This is a constant struggle...and you have a great method! What is funny is that the children don't really seem to react negatively to the "loss" of the excess. Some people think their children need so much stuff. My kids usually are happiest making pretend with just about anything!