Monday, January 16, 2012

Declutter in January

I am exhausted! Two weeks in to the Simplify Your Life Calendar www.mysimplerlife.com and I am just beat! Week one went well. If you are following along you may recall week one was all about the kitchen; organizing cans, spices, throwing out outdated items in the pantry and freezer, and cleaning off the tops of the shelves. I did fairly well with all this. I really dove right in. The tops of my cabinets had never been dusted since 2005. I had dusted my baskets that I display up there about twice in the past 5 years, but never the shelf itself. It totally needed it! I had in my spice shelf, spices that were at least 10 years old. I never used them, they just sat there…until last week. They are all gone now! It felt so good getting all these things done that I typically would never do! But it wasn’t easy in the least! I really had to motivate myself to get it done.


Week two was a little easier. Most of weeks two’s tasks did not apply to me. I don’t have a night stand with drawers or shelves in my room. So instead I opted to head into the office; one of my most hated places in my home. Up until today, we had a HUGE desk in this tiny little room. It always looked out of place, worse yet, it served mainly as a dumping ground for rubbish! Years and years of junk had accumulated in and around this massive monstrosity and no matter how many time I cleaned it off…a few weeks later it would look the same! I had contemplated getting rid of it before but the task itself was daunting! Did I mention this desk is massive?! But today, I walked in there and made up my mind. The desk had to go….today! A few hours and two full trash bags later, the desk was ready to be dismantled and taken to Goodwill. There was no turning back now! Luckily the guy at Goodwill took it. He seemed to really hesitate taking it.



Meanwhile, back at the house, my daughter is scrabbling to clean out the small desk that has been in her room for a year. A desk she never uses other than to store junk in, a desk that I slaved over to refinish, a desk that is nearly half the size of the one I just got rid of. After cleaning out years of dust from where the once oversized monstrosity once sat, I placed to smaller refinished one in its place. I was feeling better already! The desk is so small that there is no room on it for anyone to throw junk, papers, bills…nothing! And this is good. It will force everyone to throw out those things that once were left for weeks on the other desk. We now have room for a proper coat rack and bench…which I am pleading with my husband to build!

Hope you too, if you are following along, are finding some success in de-cluttering your home!

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