This post has been a long time coming – I’ve had it in my drafts folder for weeks. There is just so much involved in this one and it’s taken me so long to write!
In February this year I went through every room in our house and put together a plan to declutter and reorganise the whole house. I then allocated a room a month and got to it.
Seeing as we are now half way through the year I thought I’d give you an update of where we’re at.
What I’ve Done.
February – The Computer Room
✓ De-clutter cupboard
✓ De-clutter top of drawers
✓ De-clutter jewellery box
✓ Organise book shelves
✓ Sort Lily’s clothes
✓ Better storage for Lily’s toys
So as usual I started off really well and completed this whole zone. The Computer Room (or Study, or Strange Little Halfway Room) had been bugging me for a quite awhile and there was a few things that needed to be decluttered which would make a big difference to the overall feeling of the room. Having all of the surfaces cleared and orderly can make the room feel so much cleaner, no matter what’s on the ground.
I started by decluttering my jewellery box and ended up giving most of my jewellery to my sister – it felt good to be so ruthless on what was staying and what was going. I then reorganised the bookshelves but I think we need more! We’re running out of room.
I went through Lily’s clothes and put the clothes that were out of season in to storage in case we have another baby. I’m going to need to do it again in a month or so to get ready for the (hopefully) warmer weather.
We didn’t get around to decluttering the cupboard or the top of the drawers that month but we did them the next month when we were reorganising a lot of our storage. As you can see in the above photo there is still some work to do with the stuff in the bookshelf – just some general organising and decluttering.
We haven’t really changed the storage of Lily’s toys, except for putting all of the toys into one shopping basket, which keeps them out of the way.
Overall, this room looks much better than what it did at the beginning of the year.
March – The Spare Room
✓ Filing
♥ De-clutter bookshelf
✓ De-clutter Lily’s toys
✓ De-clutter end of bed
You’ll see this room a lot as I just can’t seem to get it organised. As soon as I’m pretty happy with it something happens and it’s a mess again! In March we finally managed to get it fairly organised; we cleared out the end of the bed and rearranged the storage in the rest of the house (under the stairs and in the cupboard in the computer room). I reorganised Lily’s toys and rotated them to make sure she could play with all of them. I also bought new boxes to keep them in. This has worked out well although some toys are still falling to the bottom and not being played with.
April – The Lounge Room
♥ Organise DVDs = sell ones we don’t watch
✓ Organise PS3, Wii etc = work out what to do with ones we don’t use, organise cords and remotes
✓ De-clutter top of TV cabinet
✓ Look at getting a smaller TV unit
♥ Organise a place to keep camera
♥ Find a place for all of the things that have just been moved around the house
♥ Work out a solution for the DVDs and CDs
♥ Put up wedding photo behind couch
♥ Buy new lamp
♥ Clean stairs
✓ Reorganise hook storage in entry way
♥ Decide what to do with DVD player
♥ Sell old entertainment unit
♥ Organise another power board
We actually unintentionally started this zone a week or two easily. Mr Monkey decided he was finally ready to get rid of our old, large entertainment unit and buy a new smaller one. We also decided to move the furniture around so that the entertainment unit is under the stairs and the couch against the other wall. This has made the biggest difference to this room; it seems much, much bigger, is much easier to keep tidy and we have less places to stuff the clutter. Even with our old bigger TV the room felt so much more open.
In doing this we re-organised the game stations and all of the cords and of course decluttered the TV cabinet.
However, all of the stuff that was in that room had to go somewhere. We hadn’t really thought of that when we went ahead and got the cabinet so everything ended up in the spare room. There were DVDs everywhere and the knick knacks from on top of the TV cabinet have filled up the bookcase in the spare room. So, still a lot of work to do in that room!
May – The Kitchen
✓ De-clutter top of fridge
✓ De-clutter microwave cupboard
✓ De-clutter end of bench
✓ De-clutter under sink
♥ De-clutter pots and pans cupboard
✓ De-clutter top of microwave cupboard
♥ Clean oven
♥ Buy basket to hang dishwashing utensils above the sink
♥ Buy brackets to hang mop and brooms
♥ Set up herb pots
I kept thinking that the kitchen didn’t need much work until I really looked at it. Then the list started piling up. The plastic containers on top of the fridge had become a mess again!, the “microwave cupboard” was horribly decluttered and unorganised, I couldn’t even remember the last time I had cleared out under the sink, the pots and pans were a mess and had been annoying me and the oven desperately needed to be cleaned.
So, I didn’t get everything done in this zone but I was fairly happy with what I did. I cleared out under the sink but still need Mr Monkey to go through all of his alcohol bottles. We attacked the microwave cupboard and the way it is organised now has been much more effective and easy to keep clean and tidy.
I still need to organise the pots and pans cupboard but I am at a loss as to how to do that at the moment. I haven’t cleaned the oven yet (I know!) but we did buy a basket which keeps the dishwashing liquid and sponges all together on the bench. We also set up new herb pots which are hanging in there but I’m not sure how much longer they will actually last.
June – The Spare Room
✓ Put DVD/CDs in boxes until…
♥ Buy new DVD/ CD cabinet
♥ Declutter bookshelf
♥ Figure out a storage system for Mr Monkey’s paperwork
✓ Sell or store old entertainment cabinet
♥ Do another cull of Lily’s toys
Yup, we were in the Spare Room again! I think this is when everything started going a bit downhill with all of my cleaning and decluttering. I don’t even have any photos of the decluttering from this month!
I did manage to get all of the DVDs and CDs put in to boxes as well as Mr Monkey’s paperwork. It is not an ideal solution for either – we can’t afford to buy a new cabinet for the DVDs and I still need Mr Monkey to find a better solution for organising his paperwork.
The old entertainment cabinet has gone in to storage at my parents’ house but we need to decide soon if we want to try and sell it on Ebay.
So, still a LOT of work to do in this zone!
July – The Bathroom & Laundry
Laundry
✓ Re-organise towel cupboard
✓ Sort and replace towels
♥ Clean behind washing machine
♥ De-clutter broom cupboard
♥ Clean window
♥ Sort supplies – new bucket?
Bathroom
♥ De-clutter toys
♥ Clean shower curtain
♥ Better storage for Lily’s toys?
♥ Move Mikka’s food??
♥ Declutter drawers
To tell you the truth I really didn’t get much done in this zone at all. I struggled through last month – so incredibly tired and completely lacking the energy to feel motivated to get anything done. I did manage to reorganise the towel cupboard, as you can see above, but that was all. We’ll be revisiting this zone very soon!
I still haven’t set a zone for August (if you haven’t noticed) so I think I may skip a month. I’m planning to work on the Spare Room again in September because it’s driving me crazy!!
