Showing posts with label fall cleaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall cleaning. Show all posts

Monday, October 10, 2022

One Hundred Things ~ Decluttering

Image Courtesy Angi
 

I came across the list of the one hundred things I purged from my house four years years ago and thought, "It may be It's time to do another wave of de-cluttering."

I started the One Hundred Things Challenge in late 2018 and did a bit of Marie Kondoing in 2019 and it all felt really good.

When making arrangements for Mom to come, I did a bit more purging. Not as much, but some, and now that she's gone, and we're getting the house re-oriented, I'm really feeling the desire to clean and clean out. Also fall and nice weather and open windows!

I'd been doing a bit here and there, and DD and I hauled off a car-ful of stuff a couple of weeks ago, and I'd taken most of Mom's clothes and some of her stuff a couple weeks after she'd passed.

But when I saw that list a week or so ago, I was hit with a more solid, strong desire to really get down and dirty and de-clutter and have a clean slate. So I got started. :0)

I think I might have mentioned this before, but maybe not--

Anyway, in a blog I'd read a while back about the Swedish Death Cleaning (I think), the person said that all the brick-a-brack you have that needs to be cleaned adds a weight to you.

That really resonated with me.

And you all know by now how much I already struggle with housekeeping. Getting rid of stuff, especially stuff that gathers dust, sounds really good.

I inadvertently started with the hall closet a couple of weeks ago. One of the hall closets surrounds our master bedroom shower stall on two sides. The result being--we have a closet with a very deep left side that I can't quite reach the back of. Like one of those under-bed storage containers will fit length-wise!

As a result stuff just gets shoved back there. The bed sheets were in a huge pile, but what's king size for my bed and double for the guest bed?

(Honestly, I know which is which based on color, but you get my point, right? :0) 

So here's the closet...


To the right, where the blue arrow is pointing, is a book shelf full of fall decorations and puzzles and other random things that I do need to go through; below the shelves you can see, where the green arrow is pointing, are two wrapping paper storage containers stacked on top of each other sitting on the floor in that recessed space.

Now, here's what came out of those two shelf spaces, along with probably eight bed pillows that were bagged and shoved at the back.

The only two things that weren't actually in the closet are the top two items, in the far corner of the bed--bedspreads for my bed. One was in the laundry and one is new and was in a box.
 
And then when I was working on dusting the shelves in my office last weekend, (not this past weekend, but the one before,) I got ruthless, and when all was said and done, I went from this:
 

To this:
 
And boy it felt good.

I'm not 100% done...the G.I Joes at the top will get listed on eBay and that garland will probably come down too. Two things are getting packed, some things were just moved, some were tossed, and several things are slated for Goodwill or eBay. The One Hundred Things "count," not including the G.I. Joes or the garland came to seventeen at that point.

A grand start, I'd say.

And now, every time I've open a drawer or a cabinet in the past week, I've been temped to sort through whatever's in there. But then I'd derail my entire day, and I need to have a better, more controlled approach.
 

Now this past weekend, I worked on the glass / mug cabinet, the bathroom towel cabinet, and the food storage container cabinet. That's by grouping: mugs vs. travel mugs vs. canning jars.

The result, even thought there are glasses and whatnot in the dishwasher that will fill that empty space on the bottom:
 

I've added ten more things to the list--so I'm up to twenty-seven now. Yee haw.
 
I do like my stuff, but I could definitely get used to having fewer things to clean...

How about you? Minimalist or maximalist? lol

Have a great week.
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Friday, October 3, 2014

Spring Cleaning...


I'm a little behind schedule, but with Sonshine heading off to basic training next week, it seemed a good time to do some household clean-up.

We finally got through the bulk of Sonshine's stuff from his room, getting everything he wants to keep into boxes. His room will become DH's home office so that he can work more easily from home in the evenings and on the weekends.

But along with Sonshine's room, I've been tackling a junk drawer here and a box in the garage there. We have a lot of stuff, and it's as good a time as any to weed through it all and get rid of the stuff we never use.

How about you?? Are you a pack rat or do you maintain sleek storage areas in your house??

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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Accomplished!

Whew, I'm tuckered out. But I feel so accomplished. :)

Yesterday, DD and I spent the afternoon doing yard work.

First we made two trips to the dump; first trip was to haul all the trash from the office/warehouse that I'd bagged; second trip was a bit more we couldn't get the first trip from the office and then the small pallets, the broken awning frame, some scrap wood and the cardboard box that the new shed came in from the back yard.

After that, we ate lunch and caught our breath. Then we were off to home to tackle the front and side yards.

I worked on the holly and got it trimmed back somewhat. I did, however, come to the conclusion that it'll be much easier to A) clear out all the dead leaves underneath it, and B) shape it and keep it shaped nicely, if I get a chain saw and cut the individual bushes back to their main trunks and start from scratch. Some of the off-shoots were too thick for the hedge trimmer to cut, so it looks a bit misshapen. On the other hand, it looks 100% better and the holly no longer tries to poke you when you walk up the ramp. :)

DD did all the edging of the curbs and driveway and all the mowing. I bagged all the hedge trimmings and monkey grass and magnolia leaves--we have nine bags of leaves, trimmings, and grass! And that was just the front and side yards.

We still have a few tasks to do in the front, but it looks soooooo much better. I have my lists and have crossed off some tasks and added a couple more.

Today will be recuperation day. Neither DD or I are used to so much physical exertion in a single afternoon.

Can't wait to continue...!
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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Progress!

I did some cleaning! Not at home yet, at least not the things I mentioned yesterday. (But I did start the lists!)

Part of our office space includes warehouse space. We keep our boat and pop-up trailer in there, as well as our beloved Dodge Durango that no longer runs. :(

But in addition to those large items we have A LOT of crap. It's the catch-all place. If we don't know what to do with it, it goes out in the warehouse.

I'm tired of the mess and chaos there too. So I decided that every hour or so, I'd get up off my butt and work on something in the warehouse.

I filled one whole contractor bag (the super large/strong trash bags) with trash, another with foam--the stiff kind that comes in around computers and stuff. I have two stacks of cardboard--small boxes and large boxes. And a pile of miscellaneous trash like an old mop, used fluorescent light bulbs, and boxes of Sheetrock mud from when my father-in-law taped/bedded/mudded the wall. We'd had a large window looking into the warehouse--we took out the window and replaced it with wall.

Now, there's stuff set out all over the floor so that DH can see what we've got and make a determination as to what to do with it. Our boxes and boxes of archived paperwork are stacked neatly, though they need another go-through. Any and all tools are being collected and set in a big pile so they can be put back into the correct cases or cleaned or both. Boxes and spools of cable are all in one spot.

There's still a ways to go, but I'm feeling good about it. I'll keep going until I've run out of steam or it's done.

And I've started my lists for my yards: front, back, and sides. The overall project seems much more manageable now that it's been broken down into smaller, easier to accomplish tasks. Now I just need energy, time, and the right tools.
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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

spring er...Fall Cleaning

I'm feeling anxious to clean. One of the reasons I hate remodeling/home improvement projects so much is that the house is never really returned to the state it was in before the project started.

Case in point--we had a new roof installed at the end of June/beginning of July. There is still a pile of tree limbs in my yard from where the roofers trimmed the tree over one side of the house. There are still two small pallets leaning against the house, one from the shingles and one from the new shed. The large cardboard box that held the shed pieces is still lying next to the trash bins. The new shed DH wanted rather than the money is still empty. There was a ramp into the old shed and decorative rocks thrown behind it. The rocks and the concrete pieces are in a huge pile outside my back door.

Case in point--we had some work done inside the house at the beginning of August: flooring throughout the house and new door and window casings in many rooms. The large saw used to trim the casing is still in the (sorta) finished garage and there's sawdust everywhere. (We use the garage for storage, not cars.) All sorts of things that were moved into the garage while the house was in chaos are still in there. There are three boxes of flooring in my bedroom, stacked at the end of my bed. There are no vent covers over the two large rectangular opening in the hallway for airflow into the A/C unit--hubby wanted custom-made wood ones.

At first the weather here was unbearably hot, so the yard remained trashed. Then school started (marching band/football games) and it was still hot. Now it's October and while it's cooler, we are navel-deep in marching contests and those things will wear you out.

BUT I want my yard back and I want my house back and I want my garage back.

Where to start, where to start?

Maybe I need to make a list, breaking these projects down into small, easy-to-accomplish tasks.
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