This past fortnight I have made it my mission to completely declutter the house. Since moving here 7 years ago things have just piled up and up while we re-decorated or just while we had a break from it all! A lot was and does need doing to the house. We are 3/4 of the way there and the next project is the master bedroom. However, I decided that enough was enough with all the hoarding that I tend to do. I can't bear to throw things out if there is nothing wrong with them. If I can find another use for something or think that I could use it again, then there it will stay in a cupboard somewhere, usually never being used. While in some ways this is good and has worked out well, like with my old baking trays, (one made over in this post), the majority of stuff is just junk!!
In this post I will show you some of the rooms I have cleared out, the end result is neater but not necessarily pretty! While I love seeing all the organisation posts on Pinterest, I didn't want to spend money on lots of baskets or boxes to put items in. The main thing was to make things neat, tidy and streamlined.
I started on the ground floor with the kitchen. What I wanted to do was to reduce the amount of products I had, clearing out old food stuffs, reducing the amount of containers etc.
I make pretty much all our meals from scratch, so the spice cupboard has become a very big part of my cooking routine. It wasn't a huge mess, but it was untidy enough that I sometimes could not see all that I had. As for hoarding, I found 2 of the spices had best before dates in the 1990's!
If you can just make it out, the best before date here is August 1997. While I don't think the spices were in too bad shape considering their age, if I haven't used it by now, I don't think I am going to! I threw out anything that was well past its date, cleaned the shelves and rearranged eveything so that I could see it more clearly.
The spices have been arranged in to broad types, spicy, aromatic and more sweet uses. The bottom shelf has been tidied up. See what I mean about not being pretty?
My baking supply cupboards were in a huge mess!
This cupboard in particular had become a bit of a dumping ground for any items I just needed to put away. With the weight of the items on the top shelf it has begun to bow. Eventually we are going to completely strip the kitchen and get brand new cabinets, so the aim here is to get by with it for now. Everything came out, some of the containers were thrown as there are only so many that you need. Seasonal items, ie Christmas salt and pepper shakers, were put in the baskets I have on top of the cabinets. They are used for additional storage and as they are so high they are better suited to storing items that I do not need on a regular basis. I turned the top shelf over and re organised the cabinet into a more user friendly space!
Neat, tidy and finally organised!
Below are my other baking cabinets. They did not look as neat when I had finished but trust me, they are 100% better!
All my tins! What a mess!
It was such a mess that I hadn't noticed that the back was dented and the top shelf was only being held up by the tins on the bottom!
I am not super happy with the outcome, however, I lowered the top shelf so I could put my huge tube of cookie cutters in here rather than taking up space in the cabinet about. As I have some odd shaped pans it is difficult to get to look neat at all!
This cupboard houses all my baking ingredients, icing bags, cupcake liners etc. Again this had just got out of hand and a bag of flour had split!
This is just the contents of the bottom right!
Ingredients were thrown out and items were put back in a more logical order. Again not super pretty but way more functional!
I house a stack of cook books, printed out recipes and ones pulled from magazines in the kitchen. I use these wooden file holders for most of them but as you can see, they are overflowing!
I got rid of a few cook books that I no longer use, gained a file for all the printed and magazine recipes and got rid of any thing else that shouldn't be there. I have decided to paint these in antique white to go with the rest of the accessories I have in the kitchen.
Once I had sorted and tidied all the cabinets, I moved onto the fridges. We have a fridge/freezer plus a small fridge built into the kitchen. I had seen on Pinterest someone using vinyl placemats as a way to keep fridge shelves clean and tidy. I purchase some from Amazon cheaply and then got to work on cleaning.
Main fridge, end of week before shopping came, perfect time to clean and clear out!
Urgh, grim!
Double grim! Wipes, paper towels and washing up liquid all deployed!
Clean and sparkly!
Placemats on, items put away with left overs in tubs rather than using up my cereal bowls!
Smaller fridge quite frankly was worse. See at the bottom there it has a crisper? We don't use that. This fridge is for thing we use everyday, butter, milk, juice etc, as it's right in the kitchen, whereas our other fridge is in the utility room. Under there was just so gross! I was too ashamed to take a picture of it but I can assure you, it got a damn good clean!
This is as much as I can show you!
It took far longer to clean but it was so worth it! Plus there was just too much in there, loads had to go!
I didn't bother taking pictures of the hall or living room as really there wasn't much to see! The same goes for most of the bedrooms, I didn't think it would be fair to completely bore you all!
The most offending area of the ground floor was the understairs cupboard. When we moved here, it was a useful place to store items until such time as we had finished the work we needed to do. Sadly, it all stayed in there, along with anything I could find that didn't have a home! It took us most of one Saturday to gut, sort, throw and re organise!
The other area that needed serious sorting was my wardrobes! The master bedroom is going to be gutted and re done later this year so by sorting through now will save us a lot of hassle when that time comes.
So this is my main wardrobe (hangs head in shame). What a state! I love clothes, even more I love clothes that are a bargain so my wardrobe is bursting along with the many draws and other wardrobes that I possess! I do have a regular cull of my clothes but sometimes I am too soft and hang onto something just because it still fits and is in good condition. Looking at this, I knew I had to get ruthless (well sort of!).
The main problem was the amount of plastic bags I have accumulated and put at the back of the wardrobe, wasting valuable space. Also this top shelf is just too high for me and having any clothes up here is difficult and results in mess! I sorted through all of those bags and re folded my jeans. The same was done at the bottom of the wardrobe where my sweaters were getting in a mess and long maxi dresses were hanging down getting in the way.
After clearing out the bottom, I took everything out of the wardrobe and went through it all. I got rid of some items and then re sorted what I had left. My maxi dresses are too long for me to use the bottom of the wardrobe so I moved them to another which I had completely cleared out. That left the bottom free for sweaters and jeans. My clothes were originally sorted into colours but that wasn't working with summer items mixed up with winter items.
Now I have sorted it into 2 sides, summer and winter, then into type and then colour. I think this will work better for me when I am looking for something to wear!
Finally I put my jeans at the back except for my daily use pairs, then sorted the sweaters into colours, blacks and neutrals. Of course I went through these and took some out that I no longer wanted which freed up some space. The top of the wardrobe has now been used for my many pairs of shoes which were cramped in the bottom of another wardrobe! Most of the pairs I have put up there are occasional use, so getting up there now and then to get a pair of shoes is a lot easier than searching for a pair of jeans!
I now have a huge bundle of items to donate, some to sell, and a whole heap of rubbish to take to the local dump!
I urge you to do this if you have time, it's been a very freeing experience, letting go of clutter, realising what matters and what doesn't.
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