Start fresh! Declutter now through NYE?

[Pariah]

I seem to find this burst of "I need to start fresh!" energy that happens right about now. The Christmas rush is winding down for us (one last round with my boyfriend's family tonight), and the cleaning urge has hit. I have two trash bags and three boxes of stuff in my car on their way to the thrift store, and I have a list of things to organize ASAP, things that need replacing, etc. to work on.

Anyone else?

[philomom]

I'm doing that today. Our big party was Solstice last Sunday... so I've had the carpets cleaned, organized the hall closet, gone through clothes, gone through dishrags and cloth napkins to get out the stained ones. You know the drill. It feels great to start the new year all fresh and clean.

[boheime]

I'm in the thick of things. We also celebrate the Solstice, so decorations are packed up (not that we have a lot). I've gone through the coat closet, the two main bathrooms, dh's closet (he actually got rid of a lot), my closet, I started on the kids' closet but will wait until we get a dresser before finishing, etc. I'm going to head downstairs in a minute and work down there. We also rearranged the office so it is more funtional and less likely to have dh start piles of paperwork.

[Plaid Leopard]

I got a lot done over the past few days - lots of toys in a bag to be donated, other junk thrown away, lots of old papers and brochures and such in the recycling. I'm really in the mood to continue but we are leaving for the ILs tomorrow, where I will sit for two weeks wishing I could declutter THEIR house.

[MonkeyPrincess]

Oh, the day after Christmas until the day before New Years Eve is when I do my best decluttering and organizing!

In anticipation, I already de-Christmased everything except the tree...took the ornaments off, just have the lights to take down. Will do that after the kids go to bed. I am so happy because I pared all my holiday stuff down to just one bin.

Laundry rm, kitchen, living rm, dining rm, boys room and my purple closet has been gone through and organized already (although, I will likely go through everything again...just for fun! ) This week, my main areas of focus will be the clothes closets and my older two kids rooms.

Later in the week, dh and I will empty the garage. That is not normally my domain, so it will be a struggle to do it with my husband - we have different ideas about what should stay and what should go.

On a deeper decluttering level, I plan to go through all 75 bins we have in the attic of clothes I have been saving for baby quilts and hand braided rugs. My goal to turn them all into something wonderful is just a tad bit unrealistic, I've decided. So, I need to be just as ruthless with the clothes as I am with everything else in my house. I know I can do it, its just going to be tedious. I will still do the baby quilts, but will probably just do one rug - instead of trying to use ALL of the clothes and coming up with however many rugs that happened to be.

And looking ahead, I will do the same thing with all the kids art work and memorabilia I've been saving for the last 12 years.

[Danidama]

Originally Posted by MonkeyPrincess

Laundry rm, kitchen, living rm, dining rm, boys room and my purple closet has been gone through and organized already (although, I will likely go through everything again...just for fun! )

It's just so nice to know there are other people out there that really, really love to get rid of useless stuff and organize everything, like me. (And maybe rearrange furniture every week...? ) It IS fun! For me. And you. And lots of folks here... Anyway, no one understands like you guys, hee. I am wanting to take the Christmas tree down now, but methinks my dd and I will just take the ornaments off tonight and do the rest this weekend some time.

To make room for the tree, plus the (awesome!) wooden kitchen I finally got dd, we put lots of stuff in the big family closet, and it is a huge, gigantic MESS in there! I actually like seeing it, only because very soon I will take everything out into the living room and get down to business.

We don't have a lot of stuff, but we do have a small-ish apartment, and that closet is the only kind of storage there is to just Put Stuff, you know? And considering dd feeds her toys chicken drumsticks after midnight once every month or so, the toys stored in there multiply and become kind of totally scary. Like, what the heck do I do with really annoying, loud plastic toys (Wall-E robot and Wonder Pets school thing; thanks dada!) that my dd plays with sometimes, only because they're "stored" in that closet in bags and she sees them in there every so often, even though I really don't want them and dh would be po'd if I got rid of them? Run-on questions are my speshee-allity.

Anyway, my point is I wish I could donate them for kids who actually need toys, instead of them sitting around here when my daughter already has all the space that can be spared (within reason for me) for her great toys that get tons of play... Usually I'm the masta blasta of getting rid of stuff, but I'm stuck on a few things at the moment. Thanks for letting me babble on about it. I'm still looking forward to clearing out the closet. It ends up with a bunch of things piled into it a couple times a month, and I enjoy fixing it all back up again.

A question: How does one pare down dress-up stuff, when everything is pretty cool, and there is no storage for it whatsoever?? It is quite the conundrum for me. Our dress up trunk broke a bit over a month ago, and so the dress up things ended up in a big pile on the floor- that does not work!- and now everything is in bags in that closet. We need storage. Stealth donations storage too.

[frugalmama]

I'm in - We really need to declutter.


We're leaving our tree up until Epiphany though, since that is our tradition.

My goals are:

Sort clothing for what fits and what doesn't, and get the rest ready to yard sale
Declutter Toys
Declutter Books & move bookcases to better spots
Declutter the pantry - we have a lot of odds and ends in there taking up space.

[nascarbebe]

What a great idea. I can probably do our main floor:
- the bedroom in 30-45 min.
- living room 30-45
- kids' room, dinning room, bathroom are done
- linen closet, coat closet 20 min each
- kitchen...the longest.

the downstairs will be tackled in 2010. It's just a big room, 3/4 bathroom and the garage. I'm going to write this down so I can cross everything off as I get it done and be proud of myself when it's all done.

[jtbuko]

Me too! DH, DS and I spent the last two hours de-cluttering the kitchen. They will be bored with it all by tomorrow so you all can be my de-cluttering friends then!

[boheime]

We are doing really well today! I was expressing some disappointment to dh that our donate pile wasn't as big as I would like, and that I wish we could get rid of more (pregnancy hormones at play here). He pointed out that we are constantly decluttering, so of course there isn't going to be a ton to donate. He then proceeded to make his point by going around to everything in the living room and ask if we were keeping it or not - that didn't take long, since pretty much the only stuff in there is furniture and a few things on the walls.

[loitering]

I'm in As much as I was enjoying the holidays, I caught myself a few times today wishing I could go home and start my holiday clean-up!

[~Journey~]

I started.

The tree ist out. The decorations are packed up. I put 4 decorations in a bag to donate and will go through a small box (shoe box size) for more decorations that I didn't even put up this year. I know there is stuff in there that can go because it will never be put up again.

My house is my house again. That makes me happy.

The sun is shining, it's got 70 F in the sun and I just went outside to clean the back porch a little.

I'm glad the holiday madness is over. Even though I don't participate in the madness it drives me nuts to have it all around me.

[Gray's Mommy]

I am doing this also, but the main push is that I am due in late Jan. & want my house back under control. I'm sure it will be out of control at least during the initial postpartum period & want to be able to get it back without those PP hormones

I joined the 5 a day challenge, but am essentially doing a room a day for the rest of my vacation time (go back to work on the 5th of Jan.).

[MonkeyPrincess]

Okay, my kitchen is done - cabinets organized (that was easy, bc I just purged every little thing we don't use when the minimalistic kitchen thread was going ), counters completely clear, floor vacuumed (yes, carpet in the kitchen - which quite possibly, is the most grossest thing ever ).

The dining room is done - which again, is super easy because literally the only thing in there is the table and chairs...nothing else would fit!

Living room is done (except for that pesky Christmas tree! the rest of my family is just not ready for it to come down, even though everything is off but the lights - I am just pretending its not there). Moved the couch back to its proper spot, rearranged the bookshelf with the baby's toys and got rid of a stupid floor lamp.

Little boys room is clean and clear - dh is hanging curtains today, or so he says. I am so proud of myself because I purged and organized their toys so everything fits in the toy box and on a toy bin/shelf thing. No extra baskets on the floor or anything!

Hallway has the holiday bin, wrapping caddy and my husbands hunting bin, ready to go in the attic as soon as he gets to it.

Otherwise, I am ready to tackle the massive clothes closet mess I need to manage. We are having company for lunch, then going to a friends for dinner tonight. Tomorrow I have an appt in the am, one after lunch and visiting my sister in the evening...so I don't think I will get much done with the closets - but I will be working on it in between.

Hope everyone posts their updates! I love the encouragement it provides.

[Pariah]

Originally Posted by MonkeyPrincess

I am so happy because I pared all my holiday stuff down to just one bin.

I did this over the summer, and I am SO glad I did. I only have a lot of decor for Christmas and Halloween, and I have two for Christmas and one for Halloween now. I got rid of SO much stuff, I had several boxes of Christmas stuff that I knew I'd never use so I picked the nicer items and some sentimental items and got rid of the rest. It really reduced a lot of "stuff" that I've been carrying around.

Next on my list is my DS's clothes...he's outgrown a lot of things lately so I need to go through his clothes again.

[catscharm74]

I'm in!!! We are mostly in maintenance mode but over the past month, it seems like the house exploded and haven't been paying attention. Monday is the start of my deep cleaning adventures. We are leaving on a trip in the beginning of January for a week, so I want to come home to PEACE...

Today, I did put the few Christmas gifts in their rightful rooms and tried to catch up on laundry so I won't be behind while trying to pack.

I do have a large pile of donate...was going to save it for a yard sale but I believe in karma...so off it goes this week.

Mostly, it is my goal to get the carpet in the living room and our master steam cleaned and wipe down all surfaces and put everything in it's place. I need to re-organize the master closet, as that is where Santa had all the presents and wrapping stuff hidden...and hubby got in there and well...it's a disaster.

I also want to re-arrange a few things..kinda tired of looking at the same set up of pictures and what nots...I think I am going to remove what little decorative items I have and just leave out pictures until Spring and see how I like that.

So..off I go!!!

[daytripper75]

I want to do my bedroom and I want to start tonight! It will be so nice to start the new year with a minimalist wardrobe and a beautiful room!

[boheime]

I went through the baby closet today! This holds all of my normlaly organized boxes of outgrown clothes that are being kept for younger siblings. I've been having the kids run stuff down, so it has gotten messy. I sorted, got rid of some stuff, reorganized the rest, moved out the baby stuff we will need, set up a drawer full of newborn clothes, etc. It's a bit early, but I figure that while I have the energy, I need to go ahead and organize this house to fit 6 people this Spring.

I also shredded dh's huge stack of "to be shredded." Then I finished organizing the office/library and cleaned up the family room.

We tackled the kids' closet last night and reorganized. We went ahead and moved their clothes out and will pick up a dresser. Then we separated the bookcases in there to have clearly defined spaces for their stuff (ds1 tends to take over dd's space).

[Savoir Faire]

UGG! We are out of state at my inlaws until January 5...so I won't be able to start out the new year fresh.

But...our lease is up in March and we shall be moving (again) this time to something more permanent...so I'm definitely excited about a declutter for that.

[philomom]

I got hubby to go through his t-shirt drawer.. the one that's too full. He was able to get rid of 10 shirts for the Goodwill and three more for the rag bag. Yay!