I have been so busy Conquering the Clutter, I haven’t had time to blog about it. Last week I cleaned out my school cubbies, so the next step was the school bins. These bins hold books, papers, and other resources for homeschooling that we are not currently using. Every once in a while I decide to clean out the bins, but usually I have three or four bins and I never get them all done. This time I was determined to finish the job. I started with two large Rubbermaid totes and a cardboard box.
As I started to clean out, I found papers from 2002, lots of them. And these weren’t papers I should have saved. Math worksheets, coloring pages with two scribbles, things of that nature. I finally sorted through all of our homeschool stuff and it felt great! I ended up with one large garbage bag full of trash and one empty bin.
One thing I couldn’t bring myself to throw away were all my planning books. They remind me of our first years homeschooling, when things were easy, and I was younger :).
After I finish with our school books I moved on to the playroom. This room has never been officially organized, and is always a wreck, I guess that is why it is a playroom?
Before
After
As I am uploading these pictures, I realize we still have way to much stuff! I have a van full of toys/ clothes to drop at to Goodwill this week, but I am realizing I can get rid of much more. It is just so hard to decided when you have a lot of kids and they play with almost all of the toys!
I have started several other clutter projects this weekend and I am hoping to finish them up in the next few days. I will update this post as I finish projects. I also hope to finish the garage soon since we have been working on it since June.
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GrnMtnGirl says
I posted on my blog today step-by-step about how I went about organizing our documentation folder. It was getting so overfilled that I truly thought we might need to go buy a second one ($20-$30 easily!) but after spending a few hours, sorting through the papers as I was trained to do at an investment company years ago, I shredded enough paper to fit everything we still need to keep.
I encourage anyone grappling with a pile of paperwork to really sit down and sort through the mess with an organizer and a shredder and be prepared for great results. It’s a good feeling to let go of unnecessary clutter and allow room for new things to come into one’s life!
happyathome says
I need to start this after the summer garden time, so much time spent outside I am avoiding the whole cluttered inside, unless it is a rainy day!
Chrissy says
Good work mama! Keep it up!
Tami@ourhouse says
Great job- I wonder about the amount of toys in our house as well. If the kids still play with them, and they are already bought and paid for, and they have a place
to live, why get rid of the toys? I guess if it seems like they are overtaking your life, but if they do have a home and are used, I wonder if the ‘clutter’ is just a part of having young kids. I do get so tempted sometimes to just go through and throw away anything I’ve seen left around more than a couple of times, and I do that once in a while, but usually it just means I need to do a good clean up with the kids.
Thanks for the photos!
Breanne Vasquez says
Oh wow – you are doing great! I cleaned out my closet crazy closet yesterday. My daughter loves to play in it (mess it up) BC all the wrapping paper, cards and trinkets. It was good bc yesterday she just laid there and watched so I actually got it done. I even organized all my cards by category!!
Katie says
Instead of completely getting rid of more toys that the kids play with (because you want less “stuff” around) you could get a few bins and rotate some of the toys to the garage/attic/basement for a couple of months and rotate them back in this fall while you rotate others out. It’s a little bit of work, but the kids end up even more entertained, there’s lots less “stuff” and you don’t panic when they ask you where that ONE special toy went that you never thought they’d miss. (and you know it’s at Good Will!)
Nancy says
It looks great organized. It seems like my son doesn’t miss something I’ve gotten rid of for months, then he starts whining about it being gone.