Tuesday, January 03, 2012

How to Declutter a Room FAST

I've felt like I've disappeared off of computer land these last few days because of being so incredibly busy.  Last Saturday I decided it was time to stop playing around with the idea and do some real decluttering.  I'm tired of doing it little bit by little bit.  So I made a pact to do one room a day until it's done.  Yeah, I know that's a huge one to make but I just don't want to mess around with it anymore.

On Saturday I took my sister's advice and emptied out the boys room completely, as if we were moving.  I had the kids help me and we just unloaded everything into the living room.  HOLY COW they had a lot of stuff. I never, ever would have guessed they had that much stuff till it literally filled our entire living and dining room.  I also took apart the boys bunk bed since it was never that sturdy.  I threw out the full mattress and put a queen in their temporarily till we can get 2 sets of single mattress bunk beds.

We threw out all old toys and kept the best of costumes they had.  My sister said you empty out the room completely and then only put back what you want.  That advice absolutely worked for me because you start to see how you have to make some really careful decisions to keep it looking nice.  We cleared out that black shelf they had and saved the bottom half for all of Caleb's toys.  Actually, what you see in the picture is what he has now.  We put the books on the top this time so Caleb can't just pull them all out.  We also threw out all old blankets and just kept the new ones they got for Christmas.  Their room is soooooo easy to keep clean now.

This project took me about 8 hours on Saturday and then 4 hours in between church service the next day to finish up.  We were so proud and the boys were really, really happy.  After church on Sunday night I went to the hospital to visit a friend.  After being there for about an hour I decided to just spend the night there and hang out with her through the next morning.  I finally left around 10:30am on Monday morning because I knew that I needed to start another project that day.  It was garage day and we were gonna spend all day cleaning it out and getting rid of a lot.  I have had a lot of favors asked of me in the last 2 weeks but I've had to just be really choosy about them in order to keep certain commitments I've made to get my house back in order.  For the most part I've just ignored my phone because it's rang off the hook.  Sometimes you just gotta do whatever it takes to get the job done and not be distracted.  However, seeing my friend in the hospital was a necessity and I don't regret that of course.  :)

It has truly been an exhausting past two weeks but I am really excited about some changes we've made in our family for the year 2012!  That's another post for a different day.  Happy New Year!!!!

2 comments:

Kerrie McLoughlin said...

brilliant! i have been doing this also and it brings such peace! as i was doing it i started writing a book about green decluttering, taking pictures of the messiness in my house, counting all the tons of too-much clothing the kids have just b/c someone gave stuff to us, etc. we'll see if i ever finish it :-)

Tereza said...

Virginia...I love you...thats all I got to say:):):)