We have been working towards a "tidy church" in recent times in anticipation of some renovation works (new toilets, better storage space, and reworking of the shared entrance area for hall and church) in which I've been called upon to adjudicate in the "Do we really need these hidden sets of tools/biscuit tins of screws and other unlabeled items deemed useful by the dearly beloved, but now (almost all) faithful departed gentlemen of the parish?" questions.
Fortunately, whilst I've unearthed some fabulous treasures in this process (tape measure in both feet and inches, links and chains) the vast majority of it has been very easy to be stern about and point out the massive amounts of rust...
Also fortunately, none of this has involved me having to sort out my music cupboards and filing cabinet. I may not manage to be as stern there, but I did a massive sort out in those some years ago, and the only reason they've filled up again fast is the old hymn books are stored in one cupboard in the hopes we could find a new home for them - we got new ones a couple of years ago.
I wish someone would appreciate that the church choir needs to have access to our robe cupboard and to coat pegs and space to robe, and not stuff the choir vestry full of extraneous junk, whether from the kiddies’s corner or dried floral arrangements, lost property…… the trouble is, it is nobody’s job to do the tidying, and there is nowhere else to put the junk.
When I was a chaplain and they were designing a new wing on the jail and they asked for my input thinking I would say program space, I replied storage. My program space was filled with stuff not of my chooseing because like the choir room there was nowhere else to put the junk.
Big excitement at my place yesterday was getting the tiles cleaned. Because there are always cats and kids moving about the place it's hard to pick just the right time to do the wet clean. Underfloor heating was on yesterday morning, both husband and daughter had gone to work and son not yet up. Cats had disappeared so I ran around and got the tiles looking a lot better than they had for quite a few weeks (too many). I do vacuum through, but there had been spills and other grot that needed removing. I must have a sad life, because it really made my day!
We are contemplating a major reorganisation, starting in January.
We have four bedrooms.
Bedroom 1 is my husband's bedroom / study.
Bedroom 2 is my bedroom / study.
Bedroom 3 was our daughter's room and is now the guest bedroom. She still has quite a lot of her stuff in it, but she clears a bit more every time she is here, and it is a nice room - redecorated and recarpeted five years ago, when we replaced her childhood single bed with a new double. There is a corner desk in it, but no computer and the desk matches the units which flank it, so it doesn't look too "desky." There's virtually no visible clutter.
Bedroom 4 is our son's room. He rents his house and doesn't want to move his stuff out from our house until he has a place of his own, which isn't likely to happen any time soon. The room is a mess. There are piles of "stuff" everywhere. It is cluttered and unpleasant. He has a desk in his room too, but it's one we got second hand. There is no way we could have a guest in his room, unless they were fully vaccinated and not easily scared.
Some years ago (!) a floorboard or something underneath the carpet gave way in my husband's room, but investigating it would have been time consuming, and my husband is extremely time-poor, so he just steps round the hole under the carpet.
The plan is that we will investigate and sort the hole in the floor in January. This will mean moving the furniture out, so that we can lift the carpet. If we are doing that it makes sense that we get the room redecorated and recarpeted after the hole is fixed. (He still has the carpet that was here when we moved in 21 years ago, and it wasn't a new carpet then). He can move into Bedroom 3 for the duration. The plan is to ruthlessly declutter as we move stuff out.
But now we've thought - wouldn't it be nice if it was just a bedroom? Wouldn't new furniture be nice too? This would be possible if we could get rid our son's desk, replace it with my husband's desk, and clear enough space for my husband to be able to start colonising our son's room. Obviously, it would mean that he couldn't use the desk when the Loon is home visiting, but that wouldn't be a problem.
And then the next thought. At the moment most of my clothes are in my husband's wardrobe. There's a built in wardrobe in my room, but when we moved in we took out the hanging rail and shelved it, so it's a walk-in bookcase. On a day-to-day basis I tend to have clothes draped over a chair, or hanging from an over-door hook on the back of my door. If we moved the books out, we could re-instate the hanging rail, and I would have my own wardrobe. But where to put the books? Once again, we contemplate the fact that the Loon's bedroom is entirely wasted space as far as we are concerned (though not, obviously, as far as he is concerned.)
My own project is just my bedroom, which like all the other rooms is overfull of furniture and clutter , even after a cull before we moved here of 75% of the contents of our previous, much larger, home.
As I only have a morning's worth of energy per day to expend on domestic tasks this will take a while and, as I couldn't bend for most of the last year, there is a backlog of cleaning that horrifies me. 'A while' might be rather considerable. But I have made a start.
Lat week I cleared out my chest of drawers - a carrier bag full of clothing and other items went to a local charity shop.
Today I tackled a couple of overstuffed bookshelves. Five large carrier bags of books were moved to the spare room. Their weight was a worry, but I seem to have survived!
They will stay there until about five years worth of grime and cobwebs have been cleaned from the bookshelves, and other pieces of furniture have been emptied, cleaned and relocated. Then the books will be cleaned of their layers of grime and cobwebs, sorted, culled and the remnant returned to a hopefully tidier and cleaner bedroom.
If and when all is accomplished I plan to treat myself to a nice new mattress!
Once again, we contemplate the fact that the Loon's bedroom is entirely wasted space as far as we are concerned (though not, obviously, as far as he is concerned.)
I get the sense that your husband and son might be similar kinds of people.
While I was a student, my room was very much the way you describe Loon's room. Piles of stuff, bits and pieces of part-completed projects, and I'm sure you'd have described it as a complete disaster area, or an unusable junk heap, or some similar description.
I knew exactly where everything was, and I knew how to move around my room to get to whatever I needed without disturbing anything. It was definitely a single-user room (and I was the user), but it worked. It's an approach that doesn't work when other people also use the space, though.
If our son was still living at home, his room would be his to do as he pleased. But he lives three hours away and is still probably years away from buying a house. And when / if he does buy a house, is he really going to want to use a room to store all his childhood / teenage "stuff"? He's been renting unfurnished properties since 2016, and could fill any house he is likely to be able to buy with the furniture etc in his current rental.
Our daughter's bedroom is still "her" bedroom, but it is a functioning guest bedroom. We'd like our son's bedroom to still be "his" bedroom, but we'd also like it to have another function, so that we could get some benefit from it.
I suspect "storing adult children's stuff" is a common bone of contention.
We definitely need to sort the hole in my husband's bedroom floor. It's ridiculous that he lived with it for so long. The other plans have just snowballed from there.
If our son was still living at home, his room would be his to do as he pleased. But he lives three hours away and is still probably years away from buying a house. And when / if he does buy a house, is he really going to want to use a room to store all his childhood / teenage "stuff"? He's been renting unfurnished properties since 2016, and could fill any house he is likely to be able to buy with the furniture etc in his current rental.
Our daughter's bedroom is still "her" bedroom, but it is a functioning guest bedroom. We'd like our son's bedroom to still be "his" bedroom, but we'd also like it to have another function, so that we could get some benefit from it.
I suspect "storing adult children's stuff" is a common bone of contention.
When my son eventually bought his own home we went to visit and filled the car with his stuff. We unloaded it all on to his doorstep before knocking on his door.
He said “what do you expect me to do with this lot?” I said “whatever you like, it’s yours.” 😂
Our son came home after six years away two weeks before we moved from a three/four bed house to a two-bedroom cottage. We managed OK for the the three years he was there, but then he moved out and left most of his stuff behind. Our solution was to pay for it to be in storage for a year. We then made him sort it out, and though there was still some boxes of stuff we could get it in the loft. It moved here with us and though son has sorted some of it we still have things like his microscope and sewing machine. At least its in the loft so we aren't tripping over it.
When we sold our large old house our sons hired a skip and came over to take on the task of carting years of hoarded 'stuff' down from the loft and throw in the skip.
As their abandoned belongings were up there they had, finally, to make a decision about it. Not only that, but long-forgotten childhood memorabilia was discovered, reclaimed and transferred to their marital homes.
This has reminded me to make a booking for the Council Recycling Centre on Friday. I aim to get rid of a sack of paint tins, rusted garden table, stack of plant pots, two boxes of old appliances and computer bits and a couple of bags of clothes.
Later this month we're having a ladder to the roofspace installed, as a preliminary to sorting out the boxes of books (Mr F's father's) plus a lot of other books in the walk-in cupboard in which the ladder will sit.
My children have never lived in this house, but when we moved in they turned up to ‘help’ and claimed a room each.My daughter even rearranged the furniture in ‘her’ room. Fourteen years later, they are each on their second owned homes and their rooms here are finally beginning to empty.
As far as the rest of the house goes, I have lost count of the number of recycling, charity shop or rubbish removals I have arranged. I still seem to have a moveable self-renewing heap of stuff to be sorted. Its latest incarnation is on the landing, having moved on from the study, where it materialised from the porch …
I went to boarding school aged 10, followed by university. I then stayed with my parents for 9 months post uni while I found a job. Three years after that my parents moved house. At that point I took what I thought was all my stuff, and crammed it into a single room. Despite this, 27 years later, my mother is *still* finding stuff that is apparently mine, some of which I have no recollection of whatsoever!
Now if I could just find my 1923 National Benzole petrol can... that I *would* like to find!
Yea, my mother was fond of claiming random crap was mine when we’d rented a moving truck after our wedding specifically to collect everything!
I understand that instead of cleaning out the house when she finally moved, she took what she wanted and sold the house contents included for a rather low price.
[quote="Lamb Chopped;c-677382"when she finally moved, she took what she wanted and sold the house contents included for a rather low price.[/quote]
That is roughly what we did with the vast quantity of stuff in outbuildings that was left after weeks of trips to recycling centre & charity shops, the skip the boys filled and a house clearance company .
Well, the purchasers were desperate to get in by a specific date, so were prepared to deal with everything we couldn't take.
That is unusual!
I am away at the moment but when I get home I need to tackle my study. I have already sorted the big cupboard and under-bed drawers in it. My next task is to complete my Self-Assessment form for HMRC, then I can file the paperwork that is covering all available surfaces. I am resolved to get it done before the end of August.
September must see the resumption of clearing Mr Puzzler’s study, a difficult task.
I have no tolerance for adult children leaving things in their parents’ home when they have a home of their own. Anything that was left with us when we last moved was thrown out.
Guilty here! Parents asked me to come and collect stuff from theirs 20 years after leaving home and I indicated that if I hadn't wanted it by now they should just toss it. They asked me to do this when we were in the midst of kid's cancer treatment, so I didn't feel to guilty about not being able to comply.
I wish they'd been around to see the mountain of stuff I had to bring home from theirs because after their house sold, sister did not have the capacity to take a lot of stuff and deal with it, so it was swings and merry go rounds at our place. I am sure they would have had a good old laugh! Just about all of it is gone now, but it took quite a while to deal with it all.
I only just sold my huge stuffed Sylvester toy and my little used toy sewing machine that was a Christmas gift about 52 years ago. Trying to get my act together as I get older!
For very complex reasons, I stored a few boxes of books and in my parents' attic for a few years, which would not have been either of our choices as nothing else was left after I left home at 21, but they did agree to it as it was only a few boxes and there was a specific time by which I would either collect or say "If you want rid of them, just do so."
I then went past the date I'd given as the limit and started asking when it would be convenient to come and collect. And for some years after the request was repeated at about 3 monthly intervals, and whilst I occasionally visited, it was never convenient for box extraction and collection.
Except, when it suddenly became utterly imperative for me to do so and I was summoned... fortunately, I had worked out the urgency of the situation and obliged. (The parent who issued the summons died the next day, though I'd been sent away with my boxes as soon as I'd collected them and then had to return for funeral sorting duties.)
All superfluous clothing removed from my bedroom, everything is neatly sorted and arranged, three drawers are now empty and I have fifteen spare coat hangers (and all coat hangers are matching!)
I am quite ashamed of how many sacks of clothes have gone to charity… including… er… some items I have never worn 😳
Spaces left to sort out:
Lounge (just one dodgy cupboard there)
Spare bedroom
Kitchen
Loft (which is completely YIKES!)
Shed (which is also YIKES!, but with SPIDERS too 😱)
Glove up. Drag everything out of the shed. Hopefully the sp*ders will see this as a signal to relocate. Bang about with a long-handled brush to clear cobwebs and encourage migration.
I'd be reluctant to use insecticides as (arachnophobe that I am) I realise they have their role in pest control.
Actually yes @Firenze, a far better idea because the there won't the awful chemical smell.
I quite like most spiders. If I find one in the house I escort it out, unless it's a redback in which case I squash it, (redbacks being nasty invaders that can be lethal.}
We don’t have any lethal spiders here in the UK and there are few that will bite people… but I do seem to have the bitey kind in my garden, as a recent nasty lump testified.
I am tempted to add a boiler suit and balaclava to the gloves for spider clearing for that reason 🤣
Two Saturdays of clearing the garage and Mr Lamb hasn’t caught on yet. If we can prevent him mowing the lawn for 48 hours, he’ll get quite a surprise. (And then i can tell him to start giving away multiples like lawnmowers.)
"But @Lamb Chopped - this mower is best on wet grass, while that one does long grass neatly and the one over there just needs a replacement doohickey" says Rev Lamb.
A number of years ago, I had a storage shed crammed full of stuff. Then a tree fell on it. Since we had not used the stuff for years, we made several trips to the landfill. Mother nature will help you if you let it.
Does anyone do the Marie Kondo method, or a variant thereof?
I did that for my house and it was transformative. But at one point that involved literally taking two weeks off to get it done.
Yes, I’m going to have to do it in a way that works for me.
I've got as far as watching her folding things on YouTube and having a go myself. It makes for a very pleasing look when you open drawers and cupboards to find things so neat, but I've run out of steam with it for now.
Our house definitely needs some decluttering but I've learnt to be more careful about it, having had a major declutter some years ago and still regretting some of the things I got rid of.
We Marie Kondo'd our bathroom and shower room, which didn't take too long, a few years ago. The improvement has been permanent.
(Prior to that we had been tidying the bathroom by moving stuff upstairs into the shower room cupboard, then later tidying the shower room by moving stuff downstairs into the bathroom cupboard... Taking everything out of both, and doing one big sort-out worked perfectly.)
We meant to continue on from there, but nothing else lent itself so well to being Kondo'd quickly and efficiently.
The big take home for me, is being tidy requires everything having a place it’s meant to be.
That's one aspect of the problem - having more stuff than places eg more books than shelves. But we also have too many places - particularly walk-in cupboards - which encourages to store stuff.
Having decided not to bring another thing into my house, my neighbor was replacing her patio chairs and offered up her old ones to anyone who wanted them. They were in far better shape then the two I have to I took them, but I will take my old ones to the dump. They are of no use to anyone.
That sounds great @Graven Image and in my mind a perfect example of how things would be ideally, in that only 'dead' things go to landfill and we get other things being re-used through passing them on or recycling them. I had an excess bookshelf which a friend happily took and I was glad that it helped both of us!
When I was watching Marie Kondo on TV I noted how her ordering of things seemed to work best with containers of suitable sizes to store things. I now use a container to store face washers rolled up on their ends - having them in a pile in the cupboard meant they became messy and the pile too high tipped over, but her method keeps them tight and tidy. Her method wasn't just reducing the number of possessions, though that was the first step, it was also having a workable storage system. If I am in the Swedish shop's repurposing section, I am always on the look out for handy storage containers that I can either label, or are see through, that I can find the stuff I want when I want it.
I have my messy kitchen bottom draw awaiting me and as it has some things that are only used at Christmas, I always procrastinate. I think though, I will have to do something soon as I know there is stuff there that I can offload to charity shop, particularly things I've had for a few years and never used.
I now have my next target date- 21 October, with the decorator booked to do the sitting room.
I need to start preparations on 2 September, a little bit each day, first decluttering the garage to make room for temporary storage, then sorting and rehoming small items there or somewhere upstairs. Then gradually pack up books. There are five small bookcases in the room, with books partly arranged according to shelf size, so I need to keep them in order as much as possible. ( My son wants me to not put them back!) I must also make a final decision about the hi fi stuff, and CDs and vinyl. Probably get rid. My son will come on 19/20th to move the big stuff.
Whilst the room is empty I will get it recarpeted or even Karndean, which needs the room to be totally empty, for screeding, drying out, laying the LVT, not walking on it. As the room is the way into the kitchen this is going to be mightily inconvenient. I shall have to go out of the front door, in through the garage and the extension. re- siting the furniture and items needing cabling. It all needs thinking through carefully and is going to keep me awake at night I guess. But this is all long overdue.
Since I stopped sorting over the summer the house has remained fairly tidy. Once I start this process the house will not be tidy again until November.
Wow, Puzzler that is a lot to get done! I'd not heard of Karndean, is that a specific brand name?
Nothing as major as your plans, but I did make a start on our laundry cupboards at the weekend. Bottom shelf has been wiped and things either tossed away, put in a box for rehoming, or replaced in suitable containers, closed ones labelled, or open containers that are holding them for tidiness sake, but are able to be grabbed quickly when doing the relevant job.
I think I've identified in the bottom of the cupboard, some bags of rags which can be binned. We just don't use them for cleanups preferring microfibre cloths, or paper towels.
Yes Karndean is a brand name for Luxury Vinyl Tiles with a huge variety of finishes. Amtico is another brand. In my newly decorated extension they look like stone tiles. In my hall they look like wood parquet flooring - much admired. Very hardwearing and easy to clean. I think I should put up with the extra trouble and get it done rather than carpet. Being a through walkway it is hard to keep a carpet clean. @Boogie I did go away whilst the kitchen, extension and bathroom were being done in April. I don’t think I can afford another trip this year but I might see if I can sleep at my daughter’s house for a few nights and plan lots of days out.
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Fortunately, whilst I've unearthed some fabulous treasures in this process (tape measure in both feet and inches, links and chains) the vast majority of it has been very easy to be stern about and point out the massive amounts of rust...
Also fortunately, none of this has involved me having to sort out my music cupboards and filing cabinet. I may not manage to be as stern there, but I did a massive sort out in those some years ago, and the only reason they've filled up again fast is the old hymn books are stored in one cupboard in the hopes we could find a new home for them - we got new ones a couple of years ago.
We have four bedrooms.
Bedroom 1 is my husband's bedroom / study.
Bedroom 2 is my bedroom / study.
Bedroom 3 was our daughter's room and is now the guest bedroom. She still has quite a lot of her stuff in it, but she clears a bit more every time she is here, and it is a nice room - redecorated and recarpeted five years ago, when we replaced her childhood single bed with a new double. There is a corner desk in it, but no computer and the desk matches the units which flank it, so it doesn't look too "desky." There's virtually no visible clutter.
Bedroom 4 is our son's room. He rents his house and doesn't want to move his stuff out from our house until he has a place of his own, which isn't likely to happen any time soon. The room is a mess. There are piles of "stuff" everywhere. It is cluttered and unpleasant. He has a desk in his room too, but it's one we got second hand. There is no way we could have a guest in his room, unless they were fully vaccinated and not easily scared.
Some years ago (!) a floorboard or something underneath the carpet gave way in my husband's room, but investigating it would have been time consuming, and my husband is extremely time-poor, so he just steps round the hole under the carpet.
The plan is that we will investigate and sort the hole in the floor in January. This will mean moving the furniture out, so that we can lift the carpet. If we are doing that it makes sense that we get the room redecorated and recarpeted after the hole is fixed. (He still has the carpet that was here when we moved in 21 years ago, and it wasn't a new carpet then). He can move into Bedroom 3 for the duration. The plan is to ruthlessly declutter as we move stuff out.
But now we've thought - wouldn't it be nice if it was just a bedroom? Wouldn't new furniture be nice too? This would be possible if we could get rid our son's desk, replace it with my husband's desk, and clear enough space for my husband to be able to start colonising our son's room. Obviously, it would mean that he couldn't use the desk when the Loon is home visiting, but that wouldn't be a problem.
And then the next thought. At the moment most of my clothes are in my husband's wardrobe. There's a built in wardrobe in my room, but when we moved in we took out the hanging rail and shelved it, so it's a walk-in bookcase. On a day-to-day basis I tend to have clothes draped over a chair, or hanging from an over-door hook on the back of my door. If we moved the books out, we could re-instate the hanging rail, and I would have my own wardrobe. But where to put the books? Once again, we contemplate the fact that the Loon's bedroom is entirely wasted space as far as we are concerned (though not, obviously, as far as he is concerned.)
My own project is just my bedroom, which like all the other rooms is overfull of furniture and clutter , even after a cull before we moved here of 75% of the contents of our previous, much larger, home.
As I only have a morning's worth of energy per day to expend on domestic tasks this will take a while and, as I couldn't bend for most of the last year, there is a backlog of cleaning that horrifies me. 'A while' might be rather considerable. But I have made a start.
Lat week I cleared out my chest of drawers - a carrier bag full of clothing and other items went to a local charity shop.
Today I tackled a couple of overstuffed bookshelves. Five large carrier bags of books were moved to the spare room. Their weight was a worry, but I seem to have survived!
They will stay there until about five years worth of grime and cobwebs have been cleaned from the bookshelves, and other pieces of furniture have been emptied, cleaned and relocated. Then the books will be cleaned of their layers of grime and cobwebs, sorted, culled and the remnant returned to a hopefully tidier and cleaner bedroom.
If and when all is accomplished I plan to treat myself to a nice new mattress!
I get the sense that your husband and son might be similar kinds of people.
While I was a student, my room was very much the way you describe Loon's room. Piles of stuff, bits and pieces of part-completed projects, and I'm sure you'd have described it as a complete disaster area, or an unusable junk heap, or some similar description.
I knew exactly where everything was, and I knew how to move around my room to get to whatever I needed without disturbing anything. It was definitely a single-user room (and I was the user), but it worked. It's an approach that doesn't work when other people also use the space, though.
Our daughter's bedroom is still "her" bedroom, but it is a functioning guest bedroom. We'd like our son's bedroom to still be "his" bedroom, but we'd also like it to have another function, so that we could get some benefit from it.
I suspect "storing adult children's stuff" is a common bone of contention.
We definitely need to sort the hole in my husband's bedroom floor. It's ridiculous that he lived with it for so long. The other plans have just snowballed from there.
Charity bag off to the charity shop today. (It’s a charity for hedgehogs and the shop is called Prickles 🦔 💕)
When my son eventually bought his own home we went to visit and filled the car with his stuff. We unloaded it all on to his doorstep before knocking on his door.
He said “what do you expect me to do with this lot?” I said “whatever you like, it’s yours.” 😂
As their abandoned belongings were up there they had, finally, to make a decision about it. Not only that, but long-forgotten childhood memorabilia was discovered, reclaimed and transferred to their marital homes.
Later this month we're having a ladder to the roofspace installed, as a preliminary to sorting out the boxes of books (Mr F's father's) plus a lot of other books in the walk-in cupboard in which the ladder will sit.
As far as the rest of the house goes, I have lost count of the number of recycling, charity shop or rubbish removals I have arranged. I still seem to have a moveable self-renewing heap of stuff to be sorted. Its latest incarnation is on the landing, having moved on from the study, where it materialised from the porch …
Now if I could just find my 1923 National Benzole petrol can... that I *would* like to find!
I understand that instead of cleaning out the house when she finally moved, she took what she wanted and sold the house contents included for a rather low price.
That is roughly what we did with the vast quantity of stuff in outbuildings that was left after weeks of trips to recycling centre & charity shops, the skip the boys filled and a house clearance company .
Well, the purchasers were desperate to get in by a specific date, so were prepared to deal with everything we couldn't take.
I am away at the moment but when I get home I need to tackle my study. I have already sorted the big cupboard and under-bed drawers in it. My next task is to complete my Self-Assessment form for HMRC, then I can file the paperwork that is covering all available surfaces. I am resolved to get it done before the end of August.
September must see the resumption of clearing Mr Puzzler’s study, a difficult task.
I have no tolerance for adult children leaving things in their parents’ home when they have a home of their own. Anything that was left with us when we last moved was thrown out.
I wish they'd been around to see the mountain of stuff I had to bring home from theirs because after their house sold, sister did not have the capacity to take a lot of stuff and deal with it, so it was swings and merry go rounds at our place. I am sure they would have had a good old laugh! Just about all of it is gone now, but it took quite a while to deal with it all.
I only just sold my huge stuffed Sylvester toy and my little used toy sewing machine that was a Christmas gift about 52 years ago. Trying to get my act together as I get older!
I then went past the date I'd given as the limit and started asking when it would be convenient to come and collect. And for some years after the request was repeated at about 3 monthly intervals, and whilst I occasionally visited, it was never convenient for box extraction and collection.
Except, when it suddenly became utterly imperative for me to do so and I was summoned... fortunately, I had worked out the urgency of the situation and obliged. (The parent who issued the summons died the next day, though I'd been sent away with my boxes as soon as I'd collected them and then had to return for funeral sorting duties.)
Complicated things, families...
All superfluous clothing removed from my bedroom, everything is neatly sorted and arranged, three drawers are now empty and I have fifteen spare coat hangers (and all coat hangers are matching!)
I am quite ashamed of how many sacks of clothes have gone to charity… including… er… some items I have never worn 😳
Spaces left to sort out:
Lounge (just one dodgy cupboard there)
Spare bedroom
Kitchen
Loft (which is completely YIKES!)
Shed (which is also YIKES!, but with SPIDERS too 😱)
Yay! 👏
I'd be reluctant to use insecticides as (arachnophobe that I am) I realise they have their role in pest control.
I quite like most spiders. If I find one in the house I escort it out, unless it's a redback in which case I squash it, (redbacks being nasty invaders that can be lethal.}
We don’t have any lethal spiders here in the UK and there are few that will bite people… but I do seem to have the bitey kind in my garden, as a recent nasty lump testified.
I am tempted to add a boiler suit and balaclava to the gloves for spider clearing for that reason 🤣
A bear is coming to help with the apartment tomorrow, bless him.
I did that for my house and it was transformative. But at one point that involved literally taking two weeks off to get it done.
Yes, I’m going to have to do it in a way that works for me.
I've got as far as watching her folding things on YouTube and having a go myself. It makes for a very pleasing look when you open drawers and cupboards to find things so neat, but I've run out of steam with it for now.
Our house definitely needs some decluttering but I've learnt to be more careful about it, having had a major declutter some years ago and still regretting some of the things I got rid of.
(Prior to that we had been tidying the bathroom by moving stuff upstairs into the shower room cupboard, then later tidying the shower room by moving stuff downstairs into the bathroom cupboard... Taking everything out of both, and doing one big sort-out worked perfectly.)
We meant to continue on from there, but nothing else lent itself so well to being Kondo'd quickly and efficiently.
That's one aspect of the problem - having more stuff than places eg more books than shelves. But we also have too many places - particularly walk-in cupboards - which encourages to store stuff.
When I was watching Marie Kondo on TV I noted how her ordering of things seemed to work best with containers of suitable sizes to store things. I now use a container to store face washers rolled up on their ends - having them in a pile in the cupboard meant they became messy and the pile too high tipped over, but her method keeps them tight and tidy. Her method wasn't just reducing the number of possessions, though that was the first step, it was also having a workable storage system. If I am in the Swedish shop's repurposing section, I am always on the look out for handy storage containers that I can either label, or are see through, that I can find the stuff I want when I want it.
I have my messy kitchen bottom draw awaiting me and as it has some things that are only used at Christmas, I always procrastinate. I think though, I will have to do something soon as I know there is stuff there that I can offload to charity shop, particularly things I've had for a few years and never used.
I need to start preparations on 2 September, a little bit each day, first decluttering the garage to make room for temporary storage, then sorting and rehoming small items there or somewhere upstairs. Then gradually pack up books. There are five small bookcases in the room, with books partly arranged according to shelf size, so I need to keep them in order as much as possible. ( My son wants me to not put them back!) I must also make a final decision about the hi fi stuff, and CDs and vinyl. Probably get rid. My son will come on 19/20th to move the big stuff.
Whilst the room is empty I will get it recarpeted or even Karndean, which needs the room to be totally empty, for screeding, drying out, laying the LVT, not walking on it. As the room is the way into the kitchen this is going to be mightily inconvenient. I shall have to go out of the front door, in through the garage and the extension. re- siting the furniture and items needing cabling. It all needs thinking through carefully and is going to keep me awake at night I guess. But this is all long overdue.
Since I stopped sorting over the summer the house has remained fairly tidy. Once I start this process the house will not be tidy again until November.
Nothing as major as your plans, but I did make a start on our laundry cupboards at the weekend. Bottom shelf has been wiped and things either tossed away, put in a box for rehoming, or replaced in suitable containers, closed ones labelled, or open containers that are holding them for tidiness sake, but are able to be grabbed quickly when doing the relevant job.
I think I've identified in the bottom of the cupboard, some bags of rags which can be binned. We just don't use them for cleanups preferring microfibre cloths, or paper towels.
I recommend moving out while the work is done. That's what we did. 🙂
Yes. My Mum used to say
"A place for everything and everything in its place."
I'm working on it!
@Boogie I did go away whilst the kitchen, extension and bathroom were being done in April. I don’t think I can afford another trip this year but I might see if I can sleep at my daughter’s house for a few nights and plan lots of days out.