Look at the upcoming year: 365 days. 12 months. 52 weeks. You could do ANYTHING in that time, couldn’t you? Lose some weight, start a garden, save for something special. Do you think someone could renovate a house in year? Do you reckon someone could declutter an entire house in a year?
Your Year Of Decluttering – January
So let’s break it down into 12 months. You can break it down even more too, if you like. But we can start with each month working on a different room, or category of stuff. You can choose to do one or all of them. What ever works for you.
Let’s look at…
February.
The Kitchen. If you read January’s post, you may have tackled your plastic and serving ware already. Doesn’t it feel good? Isn’t it SO much easier to find what you want, now you don’t have to dig through orphaned bottom bits and random lids with no little rubber gasket or only one clippy bit?
The Pantry.
This is deceptively easy. Are you nuts Liz!? I hear you say? Have you seen the vast, terrifying job that this pantry is?!! I know it looks horrifying. What makes it easy is there are set steps you can follow:
- Work from the top down. One shelf at a time take everything out and toss the expired stuff. Do the whole pantry in one day or one shelf a day.
- Now you have more room! If you keep other things in the pantry (or other cupboards), have a think about their usefulness. You may no longer need or want some of the gadgets that seemed like SUCH a great idea when you bought them.
- Put things back in the best place for YOU. You might be baking up a storm every day and have to stand on your tip toes to get ingredients down from the top shelf. Maybe move your baking products to a more convenient spot? Group the same stuff together in the same spot.
If you’re super keen you can get matching sets of jars and containers and decant everything into them. If you’re happy to spend time maintaining your pantry this looks super organised and cute. If you don’t have the time or patience, your pantry is STILL going to look better and be easier to use because you decluttered it and reorganised it.
The Junk Drawer.
There’s nothing wrong with having a junk drawer! Depending on what you have in your “Junk Drawer” it can be pretty straight forward to declutter and organise this little treasure box.
Paper stuff: recycle old takeaway menus, keep receipts elsewhere and recycle all those random brochures you haven’t looked at in forever. Bills, letters, things you must do sometime scribbled on bits of paper? Maybe start a file or two, even a shoe box clearly labeled. This will up free up space in the drawer and make it so much easer to see what’s there.
Hardware, electrical things & tools: It makes sense to have a couple of little useful things on hand, if you find yourself hunting for them on a weekly or daily basis. But most tools belong in the garage, shed, utility room or hall cupboard. Mainly because the “Junk Drawer” is premium storage, and usually pretty small.
Batteries and other things that might be useful: A battery tester. Get one. Paperclips, rubber bands, sticky tape, erasers, stamps… have a think about whether they’d be better somewhere else. Would you like a stationery drawer or shelf somewhere else?
When you have less actual junk to go back in the drawer, you can then decide what YOU want to keep in this premium kitchen storage space.
The Mug / Glass / Water Bottle Collection.
How many do you need? Really?
Let’s say each person in your house needs 1 keep cup, 1 water bottle, and 2 mugs (depending on how frequently the dishes are done.) Or maybe they need 2 plastic sippy cups, 2 water bottles and 4 baby bottles.
Maybe you really do have 15 people descend on your house on a regular basis, but do they all need their own keep cup? Would half that mug collection do? Every mug might have a memory attached to it. It’s worth trying this: Pick up each mug and think about the memory you attach to it. Is there even a tiny shadow of a bad memory or feeling? Or is the memory one of many, and you have other mugs with a similar memory?
I bet you have some favourites. Exactly the right size, feels right in your hand or looks really cute. They might match your favourite set or just be really robust (or delicate) and useful. If you’re looking at the rest, and they just don’t cut it next to your favs, why are you keeping them?
They’re still good? Excellent! Perfect for donating, nice and clean, no chips, no scratches. How generous are you!?
Liz The Tidy Lady.
P.S. I’m committed to sharing my decluttering, organising skills and tools with the world, in the hope that it can help others. If this blog resonates with you, please consider forwarding it to anyone who may benefit from it. If this was forwarded to you, subscribe below.
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