Weekend De-Cluttering Progress

I made some great progress on the de-cluttering at home this weekend!

I pulled everything out of my closet in the bedroom. Everything. On to the bed it went and I looked at each piece of clothing with a very critical eye. My closet was packed. 9 linear feet of hanger space packed so tight that my shirts were always wrinkled from being squashed together all the time. I packed up 5 large black garbage bags of clothes that I have not worn in the last year or that I have no plans of wearing ever again. Let me say that number again.....5 large garbage bags!!! After the purge in the closet, I still have enough shirts to not have to laundry for at least a month. But these are my favorite shirts and I'm not one who believes that you only need 5 shirts in your closet. I brought the coats that I'm keeping up to my closet in the bedroom as well. I have no clothes in any closet other than my bedroom closet now. That's huge. I feel pretty good about that. My dresser is constantly being de-cluttered as underwear and socks get replaced and jeans and shorts last me for a very long time.

I also started on the spare bedroom/storage room in the basement. This room has always been a sore spot for me. It is the dumping ground for items we don't know what to do with. Clothes in bags that the kids have out grown, nick knacks that have been replaced and other general junk. I pulled all my books out, went through them and kept about 5% of them. I took the book case that they were in, put it in the family room and managed to eliminate 2 smaller book cases that had movies on them by moving the whole collection to this cabinet out in the open where it is seen and easy to get at. I have 2 more of these large book cases in the room that are getting a de-cluttering and a re-purposing as well. With the movies off one of them, I have room for all the school and craft supplies to go which will eliminate 3 paper boxes that float around the house all the time. I managed to condense a 4 drawer legal file cabinet down to a portable office file box! Talk about a lot of useless junk in that cabinet!

There is still a lot of work to go in this room but I will continue with it until it is complete before I move on to something else. My wife is convinced that I've lost my mind but she is going along with me as long as I don't get too carried away.

Speaking of my wife, she has decided to try to sell most of what I'm de-cluttering to recoup some money. What ever we make from this is going to be put away and go towards either our new deck or a trip to Mazatlan. Not sure which one yet. I'm really glad I was able to get through to her and show her that I'm just trying to simplify our lives and take some of the stress out of life. We also talked about not bringing anything new into the house that we don't need. She is on board with that.

Once spring gets here and the brain freezing cold snap we have been having this last few weeks stops, I am going to begin de-cluttering the garage and the shed in the yard. I have so many tools that I never use and I just don't need. They take up so much room and the garage is always a mess.

Here's to your de-cluttering success. I hope my example of de-cluttering my life will help to encourage you to do the same if you want. I feel really good about it and I'm hoping to have more with less in the future. It's a process but a worth while one.

Chris.