Clutter

Last time Cass was out of town (a couple of weeks ago), I started a big project. I decided to make a list of the areas of our house that need to be decluttered and start tackling the list little by little. We've moved around a good bit and that's kept the clutter down, but since we've been in this particular house for 4+ years it's gotten pretty junky. For a while, I kept it pretty neat around here, but in the last year to 18 months, I haven't been so careful.

The first place I tackled was a linen closet located upstairs. This house, while beautiful, is woefully lacking in storage space. There are a few places that get piled with stuff because they're usually not visible - the upstairs linen closet, the laundry room, the closet in our bedroom. It's really easy to stick stuff in these places and close the door so nobody can see it. Sooo, I pulled everything out of the linen closet, sorted through it, and put back about 1/4 of it. The rest went into 4 garbage bags and out on the street. Ahhhhhh. There must have been 100 framed photographs in there. I took all the photos out of the frames, and tossed the frames. Curtains from 2 and 3 houses ago. Where does all this stuff come from?

Also on my list - the laundry room, the master bedroom closet, the garage (whose garage DOESN'T need to be cleaned??), the girls rooms (need a purging of the toys), the pantry, the coat closet, and the bathroom cabinets. I've also got to have the carpets upstairs cleaned and the tile floors in the kitchen cleaned and sealed.

This week, with Cass out of town again, I'm back at it. On Sunday, I threw out 10 (yes 10!!) bags of clothing and shoes from my side of the master bedroom closet. I swear, there was stuff in there that I wore back in high school. WHY was I hanging on to stuff like that? And the shoes, my God, the shoes! Lingerie that my MIL had given me on my wedding day (don't ask). I finished in there and turned my attention to the laundry room. I got 6 garbage bags of stuff out of there, and started installing a sink - the plumbing has been there, sticking out of the wall since we moved in, but we never got around to purchasing a sink to go there. My laundry room is tiny, but now you can get in there and breathe a little bit while doing laundry or whatever else you need to do in there.

That's where I am right now. I'm only about halfway through my List, and I feel a pretty big sense of accomplishment. Cass needs to book a trip every week!