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After discovering how few extra pairs of gloves and mittens we owned we made a trip to Savers this weekend to buy a few more. But they have a home and I know they will be easy to find if we need them!
If you are just joining us, here’s the deal:
I still had this mindset of decluttering being a big ol’ chore up until a few months ago when I read this fantastic post from Nony at A Slob Comes Clean. It was like a huge light went off in my brain! Decluttering is simply the act of getting rid of what doesn’t belong, isn’t needed, or belongs in the trash. It doesn’t mean buying a whole slew of new bins for your things to go in or coming up with some type of system that you hope will change your life – that’s organizing. It’s a whole different ball game. Right now, I’m in the game of decluttering. I just want things GONE.
When there’s less stuff, especially less of what has no purpose in your home anymore, organizing can often happen naturally. You won’t be cramming thirty towels into the closet because you only need ten and they fit nicely. You don’t need to dig through a tub of medicines to find what you need only to keep coming across bottles that are long since expired.
Here’s my challenge: Each week, take on ONE area of your home. I’ve already made the list for you so that part is done. Go to the area, throw away trash, put items that you no longer need but are still in good condition into a donation box, and put other items where they belong. Simple!
You can read more about the challenge on the week one post.
Week 47: Board Games & Puzzles
Why, oh why, oh why did I not take a before picture. You guys, this was probably one of the worst spots in our house. Yeah, it was BAD. Our games hide in a closet under our stairs. I think it’s intended as an extra coat closet, storage for things like paper towels, toilet paper, and the vacuum cleaner. Well, it’s our game closet along with storage for several other things.
The game shelf used to be in the very back of the closet – it was before we decluttered – but this meant that when the games would get taken out and not put away nicely they would end up all over the floor and we couldn’t get into the closet to put them away. Serious problem!
We pulled out everything and first put everything we didn’t want into a donation box. We used to love doing puzzles but without a place to leave them while we put them together it didn’t make sense to keep them any longer. And we found lots of games with missing pieces.
Plus garbage. Those strings of lights have been sitting in a bag in the closet because they only half work. Um, why are we keeping them? And the game boxes were not doing their job keeping the pieces contained anymore so we moved the pieces to plastic storage bags and tossed the boxes.
We also decided to move the shelf to the side wall so the games were easier to access. No more crawling to the very back of the closet to find a game to play!
Share a picture on social media with the hashtag #clutterbusterchallenge of what you found to declutter.
Come back next week for week 48 to tackle what could be the scariest area yet – kids toys! Clear out the broken toys and all those toys taking up space that don’t get played with before Christmas hits.
