21 Days of Decluttering & Organising

Pooky bears,

As you know, at the start of this year I began to do 21 day challenges of new habits & experiments I wanted to try out. It’s been life-changing & one of the best projects I’ve ever done.

Here’s the overview list of all the challenges I’ve already done this year:

  1. 21 days without social media (now permanent!)
  2. 21 days of a deeper digital declutter
  3. 21 days of blogging
  4. 21 days of meditating
  5. 21 days of raising readers
  6. 21 days of no spending

Today I’m starting with a new 21 day challenge… 21 days of decluttering & organising. HOORAY!

We’ve moved a LOT in the last decade or so. This is our 8th house since 2010 (woops!) and they’ve spanned the height of Australia from Cairns to Tasmania. The houses have been hugely different sizes – from a one bedroom cottage to a seven bedroom mansion. We’ve bought a lot of furniture and STUFF for the different houses, and now we’re settled in this home and have been for two years, it’s definitely time to sort through and organise our stuff for THIS space.

We’ve already donated a lot of furniture to charity, but it’s time to do a deeper clean, declutter & organise of all the cupboards.

To keep me from being overwhelmed, my only goal each day is to do a little bit. Even just 5 minutes is great!

Checklist of areas for me to Declutter & Organise

Kitchen

  1. Kitchen drawers
  2. Medicine cabinet 
  3. Lunchbox drawer & drawers above
  4. Misc kitchen cabinet
  5. Pot cupboard
  6. Cupboard under oven
  7. Top cupboards
  8. Pantry

Rest of house

  1. Spare bedroom cupboard
  2. Girl’s bathroom cabinet
  3. Ensuite bathroom cabinet
  4. Hallway bookcase
  5. Beth’s room
  6. Beth’s cupboard
  7. Starry’s room
  8. Chris’ office
  9. Chris’ archive
  10. Entry console
  11. Games cupboard
  12. Art cupboard
  13. Linen cupboard
  14. Declutter my art archive
  15. Shed
  16. Move all spare art into Beth’s cupboard

Decoration

  1. Plants for living room. Maybe in a pot stand?

Resources to keep me motivated & inspired

Plus of course, I just finished reading & taking notes on:

First decluttering mission complete!

I’ve been wanting to do the kitchen drawers for a while because they annoy the shit out of me.

It also felt overwhelming so I thought I’d start just with 5 minutes of removing extra items we don’t use to donate to charity. And of course once I started, I wanted to finish. It took me about 50 minutes to remove everything out of the four drawers, clean them out and reorganise them.

I kept 3 bags beside me:

  • rubbish
  • charity
  • recycling.

I used a couple of plastic trays & a bamboo cutlery tray from Big W to organise.

I also moved all the wooden spoons & spatulas out of the drawers and into a large utensil cup near the stove. This is something that Martha recommended in her book, and so far I reckon it’s a tops idea!

Once it was done, I gave a tour of the new organisation to both my kids & my husband. They are the ones who put away dishes all the time, so I’m relying on them to put things back where they go.

Righto, I’m feeling motivated & inspired!

Sunday 3 October

Got up, had breakfast, thought I’d tackle the medicine cabinet straight away.

It was so cumbersome it didn’t fit in one cupboard, and spilled over into two more. I pulled everything out into this pile, sat down and started working through.

I went through and:

  • threw out expired medications
  • threw out old boxes
  • donated some unused mobility supports to charity
  • cleaned out old containers
  • regrouped medications into containers for specific ailments (i.e. kids panadol & allergies, cold & flu, vitamins etc)
  • labelled with my trusty label maker that I’ve had for yeaaaaaars

 

Here’s what it looked like back in the cupboard – it fit in one cupboard!

I also lowered the shelf inside the cupboard so everything would fit. NOICE!

Feeling rather chuffed with self… I’m making some serious momentum!

I feel like I’ve been THINKING about decluttering for so long… it was taking MORE ENERGY to think about decluttering than to actually DO IT.

Feels so great to be in the swing of it!

Later that day…

It’s a quiet Sunday, so I thought I’d do another mission… I cleaned, decluttered & organised our kids’ bathroom cabinets. Our kitchen lucky bamboo has grown to enormous proportions, so I took some cuttings and repotted them, and put them in their bathroom as well. Looks so much better with plants in there.

Am I turning into a cottage core hipster?

Love,

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