Organising / Decluttering Thread

I did the craft cupboard today- think huge double cupboard with everything from science kits to play dough. I’m exhausted!

 

Jealous! I need a cupboard for all our craft stuff good work getting through it all!

It’s one of the reasons we bought this house. The under the stairs toy storage, huge pantry and enormous linen press are the others!

[mention]Rosie28[/mention] that sounds heavenly!

@Rosie28 that sounds heavenly!

I just need a knitting room. I keep threatening to sell the cubby and get a she shed....

We just renovated our kitchen so the rest of the house has been neglected for months!

I'm thinking of setting DD a challenge of reading all our little kids books and then passing them on.

My kid has too many toys!!! Im wondering if I should give some away... but then I feel bad. She already has enough in the cupboard to be bday presents.

Gosh, how did this happen...

I can tell you how to do it - move states and only take what you can fit in the cars and trailers... do it in a limited time frame, so you have to be brutal!!

The amount of rubbish/junk I have gotten rid of is disgusting, I don’t even know how we had that much stuff in the house!

Lol. Moving is a great way to get organised.

I waited till the kid went to sleep. Cleared a bag of toys and and armful of soft toys. Put half the remaining toys in a basket and will rotate them. Feeling much more in control.

[mention]Vitsyra[/mention] have you ever been to a toy library? I’m not sure where you are, but if you are in Melbourne (I’m not) they have amazing toy libraries, go check one out. Anyway, what they often do is put a bunch of toys together in a box for you to borrow, like a toy cash register with some toy groceries, or three baby toys together, or a box of dinosaur figures, things like that. If you put toys together like that, in its own box, it becomes really easy to rotate toys.

Also if you join a toy library I find you rarely need to buy toys, and if you do it tends to be toys that you have already road tested and know your child loves them. I figured out that DD had no interest in a balance bike, but loved the scooter. This saved us from purchasing something she wouldn’t have used, we got her a great quality scooter instead and DS is now using it. I also find that family give us fewer toys as they know we get all our toys from the toy library.

We're getting the inside of our house painted this week, and hopefully most of the floors replaced soon after, so are taking the opportunity to clear as much as we can to reduce what has to be moved back again.

I'm super proud of DD7, after years of deciding every scrap of paper and toy and stick were precious, she did an amazing job choosing what to keep. She cleared old toys that she doesn't play with any more, costumes that don't fit or are uncomfortable, and a massive pile of her old artwork that she no longer loves.

Now I have to get off my butt, she's putting my efforts to shame!

So you’ve all inspired me to go through my kitchen pot cupboards, appliances, baking stuff etc .

I have done that thing I do where I move things for efficiency and Dh claims to not be able to find anything. Only getting rid of a few things so far though.

And I cannot brave the utensil drawers today. But they get done semi regularly anyway. And the plastics are fine.

I need a massive decluttering in my house - so much so that my mum commented on the 3 boxes of crap in my lounge room. Starting small with the bathroom

I did a lot of decluttering during Corona. We were all stuck at home and I found if I went in the kitchen and started banging around, the kids figured I was doing housework and left me alone, in case they got roped in.

I decluttered the plastics cupboard, the pots and pans cupboard, utensils and mugs and glasses. I also reorganised my freezer. I had a bad habit of saving things like ice cream containers, to reuse for leftovers. I went and bought a whole pile of Decor match ups when they were half price at Coles and ditched all the makeshift plastic. I did give a pile to my mum, as she makes a lot of soup in winter and passes containers to DD and DS.

I have to get to my pantry soon. I think I must have been shopping with my eyes closed for a few weeks and have somehow ended up with three bottles of mustard and about a dozen jars of pasta sauce. Who the hell needs that much pasta sauce?? That's the things I can see easily. I'm sure there are more stupid amounts of things!

Without going into too much of her stuff, the one thing I liked about Marie Kondo was her method of decluttering, e.g. if you have a bookcase instead of removing the books you don't wish to keep, you put all the books on the floor and only put back the books you want to keep. Its surprising how much more your willing to get rid of that way.

Does anyone else find that sometimes you keep things youd otherwise get rid of, if it wasnt such a pita to find a new home for them?

After being annoyed by people on Freecycle in the past, I’ve had really good experiences this time.

What I am doing is forgiving myself for chucking out what I don’t need and no one else will want.

That is really hard.

The unfortunate thing is I’ve got a blender on the bench when it was in the cupboard before. I need to keep it and the stab blender thing because I often do one dairy smoothie and one soy and I’d prefer not to risk the cleaning stage in between. I do think maybe this will help ds learn to make his own smoothies, so that’s good for independence.