Welcome back to The Clutter Chronicles! Today I will be talking about the areas in my home and the collections of “stuff” that I really need to work on simplifying.
As someone who has always been obsessive and also a bit of a collector, I feel like we have too much of everything, in every room of the house! However, I think breaking it down will make things easier for me for when I start really digging into things. Below are some categories of things we have too much of, and also each individual room or area in our home and the work that it needs. To clarify, we live in a raised ranch. Our upstairs contains our main living area: bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, etc. The downstairs isn’t used often and contains our laundry room, my library, an additional family room, and an additional bathroom.
Categories
CLOTHES
Plain and simple, we have way more than we need. The reason I hate doing laundry so much is because I often run out of room when putting it away. I need to purge our clothes again because it’s everywhere and it’s stressing me out!
BOOKS
I own thousands. They are my greatest weakness but also my greatest passion… quite a conundrum. This is 100% going to be the area I struggle with the most. I have quite a few favorite books that I don’t plan on getting rid of, but those aren’t my problem. The problem are the unread books, and they make up the majority of my collection. Once I read a book, I have NO problem donating it (except for all-time favorites, which I keep), but I have a hard time getting rid of a book before I’ve read it. I think of the possibilities and all these stories I could potentially read… and just nope, it gives me the willies thinking about getting rid of them.
KNICK KNACKS
This includes all kinds of random things like figurines, decorations, sentimental items, stuffed animals, blank cards, and more.
“OLD” THINGS
Oh lawd, I have way too many old things, many for sentimentality’s sake. I have old CDs, old purses, old movies, old cards we got from friends and family, etc. Most of this stuff has been sitting in our laundry room since we moved in 4.5 years ago! I’ll struggle a lot with this category too because I’m a nostalgic person and I struggle with letting things go.
Rooms and Areas in Our Home
KITCHEN
I give the kitchen a good clean out every few months, but I think I’m going to really strip it down to bare bones soon. My plan is to get rid of almost all the appliances we have that we haven’t used in over a year, then just buy new replacements for a couple of them. I also need to go through all the drawers and utensils and discard a good deal of that stuff. Our kitchen is small and not functional at all. I think this will really help.
SPARE ROOM
We don’t really have a basement, so our spare room became our dumping ground for excess stuff, and became filled to the point where it was hard to even walk in. The problem was that we’re turning that room into Caleb’s big boy room, and taking his nursery over for the baby. A few weeks ago, Jerry was struck by inspiration and cleared the room out. So much stuff went to the curb, we donated a dresser, we sold some things… it was awesome. I wanted to chronicle the clean out of the room on this series, but Jerry was ready to go and I had no time, so that’s okay. After the clean out though, we started moving in Caleb’s toys and now it’s a mess again… mostly because he plays in there. We’re still in progress on the room and he hasn’t “moved in” yet, so I need to find some more storage solutions so it’s not such a disaster and figure out a way to keep it at least a LITTLE bit cleaner. I know, I know, it’s almost pointless since he is a three year old boy, after all. We’ll see what we can do.
NURSERY
AKA Caleb’s current bedroom and soon to be the baby’s bedroom. We need to continue the process of moving all of Caleb’s items and clothes over into his new room, then we’re bringing the nursery back to basics so it’s ready and new for the baby. We need to move all of Caleb’s clothes and toys over, then we also need to take down his “Caleb” signs and move them over, as well. Once everything is moved out, we need to give it a thorough cleaning and shampoo the carpet and begin to organize everything for the baby.
OUR BEDROOM
Our room is small and cramped, probably because we have a king sized bed in there. It needs a good once over, especially in the clothes department. I need to go through all of our clothes again and eliminate the clutter on top of our dressers and headboard, and pick up the random stuff off the floor.
LIVING ROOM / DINING ROOM
Lumping these into one because they’re connected. These rooms aren’t bad, but they’re just cluttered with toys and other trinkets on shelves and whatnot. The living room gets messy on the daily due to Caleb dragging out his toys. I need to clear some excess books off my shelves, assess the “trinkets” and decor, and just clear out some things. Our photos are also stored in a cabinet in the living room and those need some major help: I won’t be getting RID of photos, but I still have probably 1,000 from Cal’s newborn days that need to be sorted and put into albums. After a couple of months of making prints that are STILL not put away, I wised up and switched to making Shutterfly Photo Books. PHEW! I still need to catch up on those initial prints though from his baby days.
LAUNDRY ROOM
The laundry room is another room we use for storage and it is filled to capacity. It has a lot of old boxes from when we moved, and just old crap in general. It is also filled with stuff that was left over from my great-grandparents when it was still their house! This needs a MAJOR overhaul. I’ve been working on sorting and organizing my Halloween village and other seasonal decor down there, but to really get it organized, I need to clean out the crap first. I will most likely be discarding a large majority of the stuff that’s down there. Once that happens, I can make it a functional space where I can NEATLY organize my village pieces and other seasonal decor.
GARAGE
Another dumping ground that’s filled with books and other assorted crap. It’s getting hard to walk through, my friends. I think a good majority of this stuff can be thrown out. We will see!
MY LIBRARY
My library is located in a spare room downstairs. It’s… hard to walk through. There are too many books and other items that Jerry just throws in there. Sigh. I need to start by going through the non-book items and decide what I will discard and what I will re-locate. Then I need to bring the library back to being a usable space. That will mean discarding some books and re-organizing the remainder. I may even pack some of the excess books back up in totes to store in the laundry room so they’re not all over the floor.
DOWNSTAIRS FAMILY ROOM
We don’t really use this room much at all, but it does need a good clean out. I have a lot of old video games and board games down there that need to be sorted through, and random toys and other junk on the floor. We also need to run the carpet cleaner (thanks, sneaky dogs!). Once it’s cleaned out, perhaps we can make it into a playroom area for the boys.
BATHROOMS
We have two full bathrooms, one on each floor. The bathrooms really don’t need much work because they’re pretty small, but I will go through the linen closet next to the main bathroom and make sure it’s still fairly organized since I did this a few months back.
COAT CLOSET
This closet stores my wax, candles, hand soap, coats, winter wear, light bulbs, broom, and all kinds of other junk. It needs a clean out and reorganization so that stuff doesn’t fall out and hit me whenever I open the doors.
So there we have it! The areas we will need to work on and tackle one at a time. Next time, I will be talking about some of my roadblocks with simplifying, and the motivation I have that’s pushing me to get going. After that, I will start tackling some of these categories one by one. Wish me luck!
