Thursday, January 14, 2010

Clean it up and move it out

I am an organization person. I make lists for my lists. The neater .... the better. One of the first apps I got for my iphone was a grocery list and to do list. I have a goal that would be amazing, though somewhat obsessive, if I could do it. I want to have every drawer, closet and cabinet in the whole house free of clutter and only keeping things that I actually use. If someone was to walk into my house I would want to feel confident that they could open any drawer and not cringe that they would randomly choose "the shove drawer". Sounds easy in theory, but as humans we hang on to a lot of crap!

I hope to get rid of my "shove drawer." You know what that is .... it's the drawer that you have unconsciously designated to have all the crap on your counter top or floor shoved into it when someone stops by on short notice so the area appears clean. The shove drawer .... we've all got one. Ok well I have one and will be rid of it before this post is over!

Before I tackle the shove drawer I decided that I would start with the upstairs closets. I keep my beading supplies in my yoga room closet and my sewing supplies in the guest room closet and I shove all the random stuff in the armoir. It's a big mess, I can't find anything I need when I need it and it drives me insane to have all this clutter in every room of the house. I gave myself until March to do it, but I was able to pretty much get it done in 2 nights after Devon went to sleep.

Before ....


After ....

I know this picture doesn't look THAT different, but I organized all my gift wrapping stuff and found a place for my beading lap board.

Before ....



After ....

Empty (except for the stereo). Just the way an empty bedroom closet should look.

I even got that AWESOME painting hung on the wall that my sister, Elizabeth, painted for me last year for xmas.


Before ....


After ....

The left side is all my beading stuff and the right side is all my sewing stuff. It all fits nicely in one cabinet instead of 3 closets. Needless to say I threw out about 4 garbage bags of crap that was either unusable, actual garbage or outdated copies of Yoga Journal from 2005. Each of the black trays is labeled and contains and entire tray of the same color beads. Makes it easy to find what I'm looking for.

So go through you house and choose a place to start that needs a little attention and let the de-cluttering begin! If you do one cabinet a day or one area a week your ENTIRE house can be organized in about a month. That is unless you live in the real world (and have a toddler following you around un-doing what you just did) by the time your month is over you probably have to start again ;) At least you know it will only take a few minutes to straighten it up and not a whole day.

P.S. The "shove drawer" is no more.

4 comments:

Crystal Pistol said...

you seriously need to come to my house and do that! every drawer is a "shove drawer". and every closet has crap falling from the sky. i just can't keep up. there are too many of them and only ONE of me!

Kate said...

way to go lady, you make us all look bad because your before pictures have NOTHING in them

Kim said...

Way to go!! I am working on these projects myself.

yo nance said...

Well, it's certainly NOT "like mother, like daughter." It's more like...like daughter, like what mother would like to be. And what daughter would like mother to be...like.