New Home!-out of excuses

[MisaGoat]

We bought a house and moved in two weeks ago. We are mostly unpacked.

It is time to get real with the decluttering. We are here permanently! or at least compared to moving annually. We have a one car garage and a full basement. The house was built in 1930 so the garage isn't actually suitable for putting a car in and the basement is unfinished.

This means all the stuff I have been hanging onto and stashing in my parent's garage and my in-laws garage is coming home.

A lot of things I have been holding onto because maybe it didn't work in our current apartment but it might work in the next house.

I want this house to be organized and have things in it we use. I can put stuff in the basement instead of piling it in the corner of the bedroom.

The rooms:
1st floor: living room, dining room, kitchen and half bath.
2nd floor: our bedroom, my son's bedroom and a full bath. Both bedrooms have closets and a linen closet in the bathroom. There is a hall closet but it also has access to the attic.
Basement: Washer and dryer, water heater, boiler and then an area for my husband's drums, guitars amps and such.

The nice thing is that the first floor is clear of toys, they are in my son's room which is actually the larger bedroom, so it is half bedroom half playroom and has a futon for guests. Also there are no longer drums in the bedroom!

Any input for setting up a new house and establishing a place for things that will be organized and minimize the build up of clutter?

[sunshineafterrain]

Congratulations on your new house!

The first thing I thought of when you said you would be getting things out of storage- try not to bring anything into the house unless you *know* you will use it/love it and it has a place where it can go

Maybe use your garage as a staging area, then it will be easy to have a sale or donate what you won't be using

Good luck!

[justmeandmybrood]

Congratulations on the new home - how exciting!! I love the suggestion from sunshineafterrain - using the garage as the staging area. When we bought our home we did something similar and it was great - we never brought the tons of clutter in, so it became a nice precedent. (Of course our current rental home is not the same story, lol!) Yay for your new, uncluttered home!

[LaughingHyena]

We've did the same, anything that we were unsure about or was in storage at the previous house went into the garage. We've only brought in stuff we use and now the weather is better we are getting round to sorting out the remaining stuff in the garage.

As for establishing systems in the new house, we've found it best to take our time and see what we naturally do. Then talk about where we want things to go, it's not always where we expected.

For example, post. The obvious place that this got put was on a windowsill by the so. I really don't want it to go there so I put a vase of dried flowers there. Having something nice stopped it becoming a clutter gathering surface. We've put a filling cabinet in the dinning room so I can sort post directly there or on the notice board/recycling in the kitchen. Without thinking about this we would have put the filling cabinet in the office upstairs but I suspect I would have ended up with a pile of stuff permanently waiting to get taken up.

[MisaGoat]

I think the garage idea sounds like a good start. I can put all the stuff out there and then as I go through it I can put it in the basement in an organized manner.

Some of it is stuff my FIL decided to unload on us that he's had forever. Like my SIL's Sweet Valley High books. He does not throw anything out. In the past he gave us a used camp toilet that his ex-wife used when pregnant with my husband. I think most of the stuff that we gave to our parents to hang onto was baby stuff. Some of it I went through before we stored it and I know what those organized, labeled bins hold. I just want the rest of our stuff to be weeded through, organized and labeled.

When we moved in we started just putting everything in the rooms it had been in our apartment but then realized that winter coats can go in the basement since we won't need them until next year, bike helmets can go in the garage with the bikes, etc. So I am trying to keep stuff out of the main living area that doesn't need to be there.

Our computer is also in the dining room and the filing cabinet is in the bedroom, we should probably move the filing cabinet next to the computer in the dining room so I can file papers as they come in the mail and are paid online. The only thing we write a check for is preschool tuition.

What are the key areas you have in your homes that keep clutter at bay? I know the landing strip idea. We have a shelf behind the couch in the living room by the front door that we can hang hooks over and use the shelves for our bags, etc.

I am so excited to have our own house that I keep overwhelming my husband with projects I want to do because I can. I try to remind him of the timeline for my projects, the next 5-10 years, not right now. We did start building a kitchen island for more storage in the kitchen, but we knew we would need more storage in the kitchen when we first looked at the house. The kitchen is fairly large but one side is open to the dining room, the other side has a door to the basement and a door to the half bath, another wall has two large windows and a door to the back and then final wall has two large windows and is the only wall we can put upper cabinets on, over and next to the stove. So given the generous floor space and limited wall space we opted for a island and keeping the open shelves over the stove.

[Katie T]

Originally Posted by sunshineafterrain

Congratulations on your new house!

The first thing I thought of when you said you would be getting things out of storage- try not to bring anything into the house unless you *know* you will use it/love it and it has a place where it can go

Maybe use your garage as a staging area, then it will be easy to have a sale or donate what you won't be using

Good luck!

I think this is a great idea!