This week has been a tough week in my household. You always see blogs about people decluttering and I swear it just looks so easy and so exciting and so perfect, but let's just get back to the reality of it all shall we? It's not all perfect, fun or easy! I decided to start decluttering my house with the whole intention of throwing out what I didn't want, donating things to goodwill and maybe selling some bits and pieces from my four walls of madness. I am half way through and let's just say it has been one crazy rollercoaster ride.
First off I decided to start in my lounge room which wasn't such a big ordeal as I had only just sorted through it a few months ago when we got our new television. The worst part about my lounge room though is that we don't have a lot of storage space for books and anyone who knows me knows that my books are my life and I do not just throw them away willy nilly! No way in hell!!!
I managed to declutter SOME books but not many and my only problem now is that this book lover doesn't own a proper bookcase so most of my books are now leaning against each other on a wall but overall my lounge room looks WAY better. Finding a home for my books has caused tension between me and my husband as he believes that:
1. I don't need so many books when we live in a digital world and I own a Kindle and
2. that we can't really afford to buy new bookcases when we have better things to be worrying about and
3. The bookcase I could afford and wanted wouldn't fit in the space we have.
I must admit that points 2 and 3 are very reasonable arguments but being a woman who is very much in love with her book collection and has a weird obsession with paperbacks at the time of the discussions I just couldn't let it go.......hence the tension. The first point?? you may ask........well that's a whole other story and I just can't go there because it makes me mad.......But let's just say that the books will always stay kindle or no kindle and that's the end of that! (and I believe my Husband knows this) If I had millions of dollars I would have a room like this:
And if I was better at being organised it would look like this:
Now back to my crazy week and reality:
After the Lounge room had been moderately decluttered and looked nicer I ended up getting distracted for a few hours on Pinterest and found even more things to browse through on decluttering and home organisation and I read that the best thing you can do when decluttering is to start in the kitchen as it is the 'drop zone' for the whole family when they get home. This made perfect sense to me so of course I headed out and managed to find a whole bunch of tubs to use to make my kitchen adventure easier.
The kitchen was a bit harder than the loungeroom as there was lots of foods to check out and of course lots of utensils and drawers to reorganise but in the end I got there. Thank you to Coles for having these AWESOME tubs on sale and to my newsagency who had these cool sticky labels which kept me from buying an electronic labeller.......money I really shouldn't be spending! especially when tensions are running high over here. These guys cost me $12 a set and there was 6 assorted tubs in a set. This is one of the parts of decluttering this week that I was extremely happy with and was worth the money and the labels cost me just $3 for a set of 40.
I got rid of all the packets in my kitchen so that now my cupboard just consists of tubs! SO much easier to manage and I can see everything so clearly (I almost cried at this point with excitement).
So my first day of organisation had lots of ups and downs and lots of work but the following days were where everything started getting tough.
Everything I had put into boxes for donations or friends or selling was now in my hall way and I realised that I had to cook dinner, get my food shopping, go to work the next day and get over a horrible sickness. I also realised that I still had 6 rooms to go. Ugh! The boxes stayed in the hallway for a few days and littered the dining room and everyone in the house started to feel the stress of walking around things, tripping and trying to work around the mess. I was so stressed at being sick and was feeling depressed at the state of my house that instead of packing everything up in the car and getting it out the house before moving on, I decided on day 4 to start on my bedroom............
Huge Mistake
The house filled up with items from the bedroom. My Husband started feeling stressed out at me trying to 'fix' everything in the house and organise and I was getting stressed trying to find places for things to go and also from saying goodbye to so many of my 'things'. So of course when i'm stressed out and frustrated I go shopping as there is nothing like some retail therapy to cheer you up.
I ended up purchasing a new mini bookshelf for my bedroom to hold my PEZ collection (yep you heard correctly) and also to hold my Johnny Depp DVD collection.......can't have them on the flor now can we. The bookcase was from Target and cost me $39.......yep more money spent.....although this time i'm not entirely sure it was worth it. Yes it did get stuff off of the floor which makes my room look much better but it isn't the most ideal piece of furniture and it's probably not going to be long term. The bookcase was also a terrible pain in the ass to put together for someone who never builds anything and can't follow instructions.SO after cheering myself up I just got cranky again.
After all of that I finally decided on day 5 to start clearing the stuff out of my house. I loaded up a box full of things to give away to my Best Friend and her daughter. They ended up getting my old clothes and also childrens books, old blankies and other bits and bobs. I took about 3 boxes and 4 bags of items to the Salvation Army as donations and I managed to sell a box of 98 DVDs online cheap to somebody whom we discovered upon delivery were purchased to entertain a sick gentleman who is bedridden and enjoys watching films :D This made me feel just a little bit more cheerful.
Now I am currently working on finishing my Husband's side of the bedroom and then I will have 4 and a half more rooms to go. My mission is to stay focused and work one room at a time. There is still a lot of work to be done but I think with persistance, hard work and communication with the whole family I will get it all done and it will hopefully look amazing at the end.
Wish me luck
Liane xx
P.s next blog will contain some before and afters....something I forgot to do for the first few rooms!
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