The Great Decluttering Project of 2015 Continues

So my last blog was about organizing and clearing out a lot of junk in my home. I call it the Great Decluttering Project of 2015.

I started on it a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t accomplished all that much, particularly in the furnace room-slash-storage area. Oh, who am I kidding?  I haven’t even started on that room.

But I do think I am working up to it. Why? Because I have managed to clear out some other areas of my home.

Like, for instance, I organized and decluttered our entryway-slash-laundry room. And now the room is both functional and pretty, which makes me smile just looking at it. And, believe me, I look at it a lot. You wouldn’t think that a household with only two people living in it could produce as much dirty laundry as we do. But we do.

And I also cleared out the freezer. We haven’t even lived in this house three years yet, so how we have a frozen pot roast from 1983 is a mystery.

Well, okay, so not really. But some of the stuff I pulled out of that freezer did vaguely resemble something from the last century.

And on today’s agenda was the dreaded furnace room.

Sadly, I never made it.

Instead, I completely overhauled the master bathroom drawers, cabinets and closet.  Why? Well, near as I can tell, I was procrastinating. I figured it would take me only an hour or so to work on this area and then I would head downstairs.

I had, after all, organized this room about a year ago. An hour? Yeah, right.

Clearly, the expiration date on any organized area is one year. Because it took me several hours to get through all the cabinets, drawers and the closet.  Yikes.

I tossed things that evidently were on the bubble last year when I organized the area. Things that were jumbled up in the drawers were moved to bins in the closet and labeled.

It’s a wonder I didn’t find more than one colossal size container of certain items – like Q-tips. Thankfully, we only had one. But as it is, the mega-Costco-sized container will last us well into next year.

On the other hand, if there is an Apocalypse anytime soon, we will be the “go-to” people for toothpaste. We have enough to keep the teeth of a small third world country shiny clean and bright.  Sadly, we don’t have enough toothbrushes for said third world country. We have only one spare toothbrush. One. It doesn’t compute. Fourteen tubes of toothpaste and only one lonely little toothbrush?  And, hey, I’m all about sharing – but not my toothbrush.  So it looks like another trip to Costco is imminent.

Y’know. Because of that Apocalypse thing.

Oh, and the other thing I was happy about accomplishing was that I hung the two auto sketches that Vince and I had framed, which had been leaning against the wall in our front hallway for the past three months. And I even measured the walls so the pictures would be straight and even.  Didn’t rely on the Jane Eyeballing Method of Picture Hanging. Guess there’s hope for me yet, eh?!

There is one tendency I need to curb during this Great Decluttering Project of 2015, though. I have become a big fan of the label maker. Okay, I may as well admit it.  I am addicted. I have been labeling everything! 

Vince gave me a hard time about labeling the spot in the cabinet where his camera goes. His camera has been in the same place in the same cabinet since he got the camera for Christmas several years ago.  So why did I need to label it?

My perfectly reasonable response was, “Well, if it is supposed to go in that cabinet, why do you leave it on the counter?”

 

And just because I think I’m soooo funny, I hauled out the label maker one more time and put labels on the washer, the dryer and the back door. And waited for him to notice.

He finally looked at the back door as he was heading out the other day, and did notice that label.

And he laughed.

Mission accomplished.

And I swear to you – I’m gonna get to that furnace room. Soon. This year, anyway.

While I still have tape in my label maker.