As mentioned on my 2015 Bucket List, a major goal for this year is to organize our home.
We have a great house. It's small cozy, coming in just under 1300 square feet tucked into a really sweet little neighborhood right near a cul-de-sac. During the 2 year hell-that-was house hunting, we primarily looked at houses between 1600 square feet and 2000 square feet. As those 2 years passed, we began to realize more and more that we did not want a large house at this juncture. We simply do not have the time or the money to upkeep a large home. While our family is growing, we don't intend to have more than 2 children. So when this cute little house made it's way onto the market, we were very quick to close the deal, especially because houses go quickly in our neighborhood.
So while we have a good size house for us in the sense that the upkeep isn't outrageous and and our mortgage is at a comfortable number for us, our biggest challenge with this size home is that we have So. Much. Stuff. I really never would have guessed how much junk we truly own. It's taking over our life; we simply cannot keep up with it. I'm ashamed to admit that we actually find ourselves de-cluttering the night before our cleaning lady comes so she can find the surfaces to clean. Pretty bad right? In all fairness, things just seem to pile up when we're trying to focus on getting a little bit of quality time with our gal after work. By the time she goes down we are so tired that we eat and go to bed. It's a vicious cycle.
As you've probably gathered, something needs to change. I don't want my daughter growing up around all of that clutter. So it's time to start purging our home of all the extra stuff. This is overwhelming. I find my anxiety levels immediately beginning to rise each time I ask myself," where do we even begin?" After digging around a bit, I came across this post over at The Inspired Room called A Bag a Day Keeps the Clutter Away. It's like God knew I needed some inspiration and led me straight to this post. Melissa basically developed a monthly schedule to de-clutter your home, one bag at a time. Suddenly, the prospect of purging didn't seem so scary.
We've decided to start following that schedule, though it will likely more of "a couple bags every few days." This month we are tackling our bedroom. Here is a list of what we're hoping to accomplish in January in our bedroom:
- Donate clothes that we no longer wear
- Reorganize all of our drawers
- Reorganize our night stands
- Update our closet built-ins to create more effective storage
- Create jewelry and accessory storage
In addition to purging our home of a lot of extra stuff (donating or throwing away, depending on what we're getting rid of), once we have gotten rid of the extra items that we don't need, the plan is to assess the items that are left over, and based on what we're working with, create homes for each of these so that everything has a place.
I'm actually totally embarrassed to even post these photos. Be aware that these were taken in the midst of going through many of the clothing and items in our room. We have our rough days but we also have days that aren't this bad. In the interest of being open and honest, I'm sucking it up and posting this. If not anything else, it might make posting newly organized photos that much sweeter.
More to come later this month...
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