Decluttering Decisions

I bought a book on decluttering this week. I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

(photo of decluttering book)

This is the one I bought. Yes, it’s a ‘Complete Idiot’s Guide’ because, clearly, this is the level that best sinks in for me :P It’s actually an interesting read. A bit thin on practical applications (the one review of it on Amazon basically canned it for that reason), but a good catalyst for further thought, which I have been doing much of today. One of the things it discusses setting up to clarify what needs to be done in each room is a Declutter Notebook. Don’t worry, this isn’t the same thing as the Home Management Binder, LOL. I just grabbed whatever leftover exercise book I clamped eyes on first, or you could make notes on scrap paper then transfer it to a Word document later. On one page I wrote the name of the room or area. On the facing page I wrote ‘Shopping List’. I’ve started making notes on what organizing and decluttering tasks need doing in each area and if I work out I need a particular product to get the job done, then I include that on the shopping list. It’s not a ‘must get everything on this list’ kind of deal, it’s more of a jumping off point. The first step (after I begin tackling the problems room by room) is to see if something else in the house will do the job. Then shopping around for the best deal on what’s left, if I simply must have it. Like extra pegs for the clothesline so I can line-dry more than two loads of washing at a time, or a new clothes rack so I can ‘line-dry’ inside during the coming wet, wintery months. Just little things.

As an example - my kitchen isn’t very big and bench space is limited. I have canisters, a mug tree, a knife block, usually the toaster, sometimes the food processor, the current loaf of bread and a few other things in permanent residence in a kind of haphazard collection up one end of my counter. Even if I straighten these things, they’re still visible, and it distracts me from the cleanliness elsewhere in the kitchen (did that make sense? Sometimes ‘barer’ is better). So I’m looking to invest in a counter-top bread bin to hide the brightly-coloured plastic bread bags, the rarely-used processor gets put in the cupboard, we’re thinking of installing a magnetic knife-strip up next to the stove on the other side of the kitchen so that we can ditch the wooden block thingamy, and the ugly old pottery utensils holder will be Goodwilled and its former residents included in the ‘kitchen tools drawer’ along with things like the pizza cutter and can opener. If I can match the colour of the bread bin to either the blondish wooden bench edging or any of the pastel colours up there (my coffee mugs on that tree thing are of the same style but each is a different pretty colour, and my canisters are similar), everything will look far more ‘collected’ and neat. In the meantime, there’s the decluttering, saving of pennies and waiting until the next incredible sale to buy whatever makes the grade. Being the heart of the home, the kitchen gets to experience the royal treatment first.

It’s it lucky?

I bought a couple of pretty lined baskets the other day from a discount store and I’ll be going back again to pick up a few more as I discovered (when I got home) that they are the perfect size for my linen closet, two to a shelf. I thought I was being rather clever by labelling each shelf like this…

(photo of label on linen cupboard shelf)

…and it worked really well for a while until the stacks got so high they toppled over onto each other and nobody could figure out which sheets were for the single beds without first unfolding twelve queen sheets (sigh). The baskets are much cuter and keep everything separated nicely. I even managed to find some that were reasonably priced ($10 ea, but they’re pretty big) and didn’t have that really strong ‘new cane basket’ smell. I’m not the only one who gets put off by my sheets smelling like dead trees, right?

I have loads and loads of other decluttering/organizing ideas which I hope won’t bore you to tears as I share them over the next few weeks, LOL. Stay tuned.