Family room, pre-purge
We’ve lived in our house for ten years. When you live in one place for this long, stuff accumulates and fills in all the nooks and crannies. Drawers, closets, freezers, desks, shelves — all become resting spots for both the things you need and the things you simply don’t know what to do with. For this reason, my resolution for 2013 is to go through one room per month to purge the house of excess stuff and clutter. I’ve created a Clutter Busting in 2013 schedule to organize this effort.
First up, the family room off the kitchen. I chose this first because it’s a chronic clutter zone in the house. This is where my small desk and a desk for the kids both constantly become surrounded by toys, papers, and other miscellaneous items. The other reason for starting here is that now that the kids are bigger, we’re going to have a larger desk installed this month, so it’s the perfect time to get this area in order. Above, you can see one before shot.
Family room, pre-purge
Here’s another. We didn’t tidy up the area before taking the picture because, well, this is pretty much what the area looks like 90% of the time anyway. We’ll follow up with an “after” shot once the new desk is stalled and we’ve purged a whole lot of crap.
If you’d like join along, follow the Clutter Busting in 2013 calendar and share your updates along with mine. Here’s to less stuff in 2013!
Sandy
The 10 Year Challenge 
Love this idea and I am taking this same approach to my home. One room per month (or until it is finished). I will be cleaning, sorting, organizing and purging. My goal is to get each room company ready (and keep it that way) without spending a dime…..
Great resolution, Sandy–good luck!! I’m in the mood to purge too. We’ve been here 3.5 years, and there are closets that still have the original moving boxes in them! We haven’t collected much new stuff that needs sorting, but it’s definitely one of my goals to get rid of all the stuff we brought with us that hasn’t been used since we moved in. I can feel the space opening up already… 🙂
I love doing this. Usually that is our February project… I do one room (or type of room – such as closets) a weekend and do a “clean sweep” in that we remove everything and either give away, sell, or dispose of items no longer desired and put things back where they truly belong. Before they go back in though, we clean, repair, and if needed paint. If I stick to the schedule the house is in tip top shape going into the busy spring/summer season where I have no desire to be inside the house that much.
Derek worked on this in fits and spurts this summer, mostly in the garage. We seriously had to rent a dumpster to deal with the garage. I always feels so much better after getting rid of extra stuff. Having too much clutter stresses me out, probably because I had/have folks in my family with hoarding tendencies and it pushes my buttons. At least I know I don’t have the hoarding gene!
Hi! Just followed a link here from another blog (dungheap.wordpress.com) when someone responded after i mentioned planting a Shiro Plum tree today. This is my third Shiro Plum, the second was planted last year and the first is around five years old and produced maybe a dozen fruit last year.
May I ask how many years it took your tree before it could produce 200# in a season?
Now, as to the topic at-hand, cleaning out the clutter, we have a garage sale every year in May. “Pass it forward;’ isn’t that the trem used these days?
-Mammoth in Kitsap County