declutter my house

We got the rest of the stuff out from under the bed. Not a lot was decluttered, but we did find a home for all of it. So it counts.
Then we nailed the bedroom. Not too much declutter, but a lot of trash out and stuff was taken to charity.

I’m going to have to wait until my body is done losing whatever weight it’s going to lose before I replace my clothes again. I thought it was done, but apparently not.

The Kid was over this weekend, so we took the opportunity to clean out my husband’s closet and give the Kid some of the clothes that no longer fit the husband. He left with 4 bags full. Then we tackled the room he sleeps in. It’s been one we’ve been avoiding for a while, it was so awful and cluttery. The closet was a huge mess and stuff was just piled everywhere. We cleaned out the closet, have donated 4 boxes of stuff, got other things ready to drop off at a sell point for Ebay, threw out another box worth and reassigned about 1/3 of the closet mess to go into the garage. Closet is nowhere near as full as it was and the room is much easier to walk through. It’s much more visually peaceful as well. We still need to clean out under the bed, but that’s nothing compared to the closet. It feels good to have this done.

I need to go through my clothes and see what still fits. I’m losing weight again, unaccountably.

is what I did tonight after work. It had crept up on us and gotten very sneakily cluttered again, until I looked at it and realized half the table was unusable. So I fixed that and we will re-enforce the house rule of NOTHING on that table as soon as it’s done being used, no matter why.
Then I swept the kitchen floor, scrubbed the cat dishes and spot cleaned a bunch of random spots on the linoleum.
Then I attacked the coffee table and tossed out a couple of trees worth of stupid ads, credit card offers, junk mail and newspapers. That one has some still to go, but I can see the surface of it now, which is a far cry from the shape it was in before.
We made Stayabed Stew before I got this motivated, and the smell of it has been permeating the house nicely. It takes 3 hours at minimum to make, but is very worth it.

I tackled the refrigerator magnets and all the stuff that was being held up by them as well this morning. I got rid of about 1/3 of the paper stuff. Then I counted the magnets and donated half of them, save for one extra, the rationale being that I can’t reclutter the fridge if I have no way to hang it on there, right?
It looks way neater and less busy now.
Then I had to sit down because I got my last 2 wisdom teeth out last Wednesday and I’m still easily exhausted from it.

Husband is on a roll. Not only did he get rid of one huge bag of papers and burn them all(too sensitive to recycle,and the shredder is broken) but he did the other huge one today. Now we only have a small one left.
While he was doing that, I cleaned off the top of the fridge, which has been sort of a bizarre catchall for a lot of stuff. There were dead batteries that need to be taken to the dump, medicines that are expired, 3 different fridge magnet poetry boxes, flowerpots without flowers (or even viable plants), various papers and minutiae. This was all sorted, tossed, bagged, put away and some is still in decision limbo. Not sure the amusement factor for magnetic poetry (shakespearean version, erotic version, starter kit, oh, and one that is proverbs cut in half) is still strong enough to overcome the clutter factor. Maybe these will be put away against the day that I have a chest freezer and more room to “write” on.
Then I scrubbed and wiped off the fridge top, did the same for the cabinets, cleaned off the stovetop and the teakettle, reorganized the shelves under the microwave and made a home for the cat foods there. Then I rinsed out the recycling stuff waiting, got the papers in order and took out all of that plus 2 bags of garbage and the cat litter. Heavy load.
The fridge top now is home to a colorful bowl that has cat toys, grooming tools and medicines for them. It has a plant in water on the left of it,and labels to write the date on when new condiments are opened and stick on the containers to the right.
MUCH better.

Okay, so it’s not exactly the house-but husband is currently burning old sensitive papers that have been waiting quite some time for immolation. We had a huge windstorm last night that knocked over a lot of stuff that had just been sitting around on the porch, and it seems to have motivated him to work on this.

..or to be donated, anyway. Actually, mostly organized. We split up comforters, sheets, blankets and pillowcases for our room and the guest room and a couple for the living room for movie nights. It’s less sloppy and more manageable now and it turns out we need to replace one set of sheets. Other than that, we have less than I thought we did, so we don’t need to jettison much.

For our room:
2 sets of summer sheets, one set of spring/fall(knit)and 2 sets of winter flannel(one to be replaced).
2 winter comforters, 2 for spring and fall, one summer quilt.
1 wool blanket for when it’s really cold.
1 mattress cover
1 set of family embroidered pillowcases from when my mom was a baby, for her trousseau, by my great-grandmothers’ hand

for the guest room:
1 set of all weather sheets
2 summer quilts, one very heavy winter quilt, one spring/fall comforter
1 wool blanket for when it’s really cold
1 mattress cover
1 set of family embroidered pillowcases from my mother in law, made after we were married, by her hand

living room:
1 great grandma blanket to go over the rocking chair from grandfather
1 acrylic fuzzy blanket to cuddle up in for movie nights
1 small down throw for couch reading

Much better.

http://unclutterer.com/archives/2007/09/hoarding_danger_in_massachuset.php

bitten. I got 2 more bags of random stuff needing filing into the file cabinet and into its proper folders. Only one left and I’ll be all caught up on the backlog from school.