Hall Closet of Doom Clean-Out

BEFORE PHOTOS

















It was time for a major closet clean-out. An overhaul. A crap intervention, if you will. I was having trouble reaching the laundry chute. You know there's a problem when you are leaning into your closet space because there is NO floor, and using a long stick to poke mis-aimed stray socks down the chute.



This is the main storage closet upstairs, just outside of the bedrooms and across from the bathroom. Every time I went to get a towel and saw the mess, it made me twitch. But the thought of pulling everything out and spreading it around my tidy bedroom made me want to take a nap.

It most recently became a way-station for the holiday chaos of unwrapped presents and tissue paper and miscellaneous things pulled from my flea market boxes that were potentially presents. There were a bunch of empty toilet paper rolls awaitng their destiny as home-made Christmas crackers. There were souvenirs from our recent trip to Greece and Egypt waiting to be distributed.



But here it was the end of January, and the mess was no longer so Christmas-y. The underlying clutter of old school binders, fraying towels, unused bed linen, Halloween decorations, gift bags, board-games, and old D&D manuals remained.

I could close the door and go have my nap...or I could do something about it..

Once I got started, I realized the bedroom closet had many of the things that belonged in this closet and if I could somehow clean out the hall closet space, it could start a chain reaction and make space in my bedroom closet too.

First I pulled everything off the top shelves and wiped them down. I spread all the mess out in my bedroom (a cringe-worthy action as I have a really tidy bedroom, er, aside from the inside of the closet). But it was easier to with empty shelves.

I got Jeff to come and decide whether he wanted any of his school binders or books. An enormous stack of paper was relegated to the recycling bin, and the remaining books moved into the library.

The board games were organized and put in a small pile.

AFTER PHOTO


The gift boxes and gift bags were corralled onto one shelf.

Unworthy towels were placed in the trunk of our car to be delivered to the SPCA.

I had been keeping one sad-looking sheet because I JUST bought it, but it pilled up in its first wash. That got chucked. An old pillow followed suit.


A lot of items were relegated to the garage sale pile in the basement, which made room for some of the duvets and blankets to be brought out from the bedroom closet.

Sea-grass baskets that used to hold, um, stuff now hold extra towels, table-cloths, and pillow-cases.

There was now room for all three of our suitcases!

But best of all, we can SEE the laundry chute. :)

Okay to Cheat a Little

I've told a few friends about my "Ten Thousand Things Decluttered" project, and one of the questions that they ask is "Do you count every single thing?"

Well, I said, I'm not sure if I should. I mean, every single thing ? Is it too silly to do that? Example: so far, I've been counting a pair of earrings as a single item decluttered, even though I could argue that it is actually two physical objects...

No, said my friends (laughing a little), count everything .

"A bead is a thing, a button is a thing!", said Claudia. "If you want to really count to ten thousand, you should do that."

In a phone call yesterday, Tai said, "Hey, see if you have any poker chips to get rid of...you could count those!"

Heh, that was a bit spooky. I looked over at the box of poker chips on the countertop that was coincidentally sitting there just waiting to be tossed.

On the wise advice of my friends I am going to cheat a little today, which will boost my count by exactly 417.

Why not? I might as well have some fun with this process.

Hmmm, so let's see...that will make 2579 items decluttered.

Wouldn't Want to Buy My Junk Back (Thank Goodness)

After I dropped off a load of my clutter at the Goodwill the other day, I took a quick look around the store. I wasn't shopping; I was looking for my old junk.

I was wondering if I'd feel any pangs when I saw it on the store shelves. Well, I did NOT.

What I thought as I spotted a knick-knack of mine here and there was: $2.99? I wouldn't want to buy that back for that! Forty-nine cents? Nope, they can keep it forever for all I care!

I'm rather relieved.

1731 things junked.

Getting to be a Familiar Face

So it seems I'm falling into a routine: every day on my way to pick up Jeff from work, I swing by the Goodwill and drop off a couple of boxes. And if I have a bag of books to donate to the library sale, I drop by the library too. I wonder if I'm starting to look familiar to the staff.

1110 things gone.

The Magical Curbside

I have discovered that if you want to make something magically disappear, simply put it out at the end of your driveway. It will be gone.

After my recent garage sale (before I started this full-out declutter project) I put out several ugly lamps and they were gone almost before I'd made it back into the house.

This horse disappeared after a few hours: somehow I knew this papier-mache horse/camel wouldn't need to be brought back inside again.

I think my friend in the Society for Creative anachronism made it for a party---a camel race? I'm not sure. I took it off her hands last year when she moved because I thought it might be fun to have as part of a Halloween costume, but somehow I don't think that would have ever happened.

Approaching One Thousand Things Decluttered

So these things pictured are now banished from my home, and that brings my recent total to Nine Hundred and Seventy-Five things de-cluttered from my home (well, from the basement and garage anyway).

I shared my project's goal with my husband who I think is regarding my blog documentation with some amusement. He is skeptical that I'll actually reach ten thousand items. Not because he doesn't think I'm not doing a good job getting rid of things--he just figured I can't possibly have that much stuff.

But I bet there is.