Friday, January 6, 2017

January Decluttering Project: Closet of Doom (Update #1)

Of one my goals for 2017 is to give our home a deep decluttering. We have way too much stuff and it needs to be gone. I am not sure how much longer we will be living in this house. We currently rent, but we might look into moving to another rental with more room and a yard, or we might look into buying. I am not sure. What I do know, is that we have way too much stuff and if/when we move, I don't want to move it! So decluttering it is. 

As I mentioned in my New Year's Goals post,  I want to take a room a month and really give it a good cleaning and decluttering. 

For January, I have chosen my nemesis-- the room/closet off of the bathroom. There is a small room off the bathroom that has become a catch-all storage room. It is a disaster. Here is the before:




This was taken from the bathroom doorway into the closet/room. It only shows half of the room, as I couldn't walk into the room. The other half is full of stuff as well. 

Yesterday, I had some free time in the afternoon, so I headed up to do battle with the room. I worked in there for an hour, and I don't feel like I really made a dent. I did collect several boxes and trash bags full of stuff to donate. I also collected a small bag of trash. 


It was a good start but there is still a lot of work to do in there. I am hoping to get in there this weekend to do another session, now that I can actually walk into the room :-) 

Today, Bill, Benjamin and I took the donations that I had collected to Goodwill. 



The back of my van was packed and I had to put 2 of the bags in the seat next to Benjamin. While we were in Goodwill, I only came out with 2 pairs of workout pants for me, a pair of jeans for Rebecca (all of which were needs) and a coloring book for Ben, which was a treat and only $0.50. I only spent $8.50, which was less than half of what one pair of workout pants that I was looking at at Walmart cost. So I think I did pretty well. As I keep reminding myself, it is time to get all of this stuff out of my house and not bring in near as much. 

So there you have it with update #1, hopefully I can keep up the momentum and return and share more results from the closet of doom next Friday.  

8 comments:

  1. I seem to remember a post about this very same closet about a year ago. I can see why it's your nemesis. lol. You did a great job tackling it though. You're off to a terrific start!

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    1. Yes there was! I have talked about it before. I get it cleaned and then it gets crammed full of stuff again. This time I am striving to keep it clean, organized, and not cluttered.

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  2. That looks like a great challenge project! Nice work with all of the decluttering & donating. We are in a similar situation with renting. My goal is that every time I'm home alone (super rarely, given schedules), I make it a challenge to find 50 items that can leave the house. 90% of this is typically recycling/trash (homework, school papers, etc), but I also try to find books no one is reading, clothes that are too small, etc& either donate or sell. Slow but steady!

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    1. Thanks. Slow and steady is for sure the way I have to go as we are always busy. Finding 50 items is a good challenge. For the first time in a long time, I am being very picky about what I am keeping. And it helps that for the first time in a really long time my Dear Hubby is on board with my mission to declutter. :-)

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  3. I think just about every house has a dumping spot. I need to be inspired by you to get busy as there is one area off of my laundry room where I keep all the Christmas stuff - i've got everything in bins but I need to get it onto shelves. Ugh.

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  4. Thankfully I was able to clean out where our Christmas bins are before we packed all our stuff away for the season. I am just taking it a little at a time and giving myself the month to get it done so I dont get overwhelmed.

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  5. What a great idea Rachel! Thanks for the inspiration!

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  6. Great idea to check Goodwill for workout clothes! Why pay more in a size that I don't intend to be for very long :-)!

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