Decluttering

A while back (like...in August...wow...farther back than I thought) I mentioned doing a Tackle it Tuesday segment on my blog. I had just found out I was pregnant four days prior, so I wonder if that was on my mind when I considered writing it/doing it. Our home had become just way too cluttered for my taste (and I would think for anyone's taste) and knowing that a new little one would arrive, it really got the wheels in my head turning.

It's funny how a house that was big at first becomes small after a while! When we bought this house, it seemed just perfect. It was back in 2005, when we were just a family of three, the proud parents of a one-year-old. Now, fast forward to 2012, and we are about to become a family of six. Having a three bedroom, 1600 square foot house just isn't the same when six people have to live in it, so big changes have to be made.

I just really wish I remembered to take before and after pictures. Bummer.

So far our accomplishments over the last couple months have been:

• "Boy room" closet completely cleaned out and organized. I went through tubs and organized them better, I am ready to donate clothes that my "last boy" has outgrown as soon as I know FOR SURE this baby is a girl (not that I don't trust modern technology, but ultrasounds have been wrong before). Once those tubs are out, that will give us even more room in the boy closet.
• "Girl room" closet also cleaned out and organized. The crib was in there, so that freed up a lot of space when we took it out, but there was also other things that cluttered up the space, and that was taken care of!
• Hall/coat closet is cleaned and organized. This doesn't affect the kids or the baby coming, but it was just annoying, so I'm glad it's done! We also kept games on the top rack, and we organized and put aside some games that we never played in our donate pile.
• Toy room converted to girl room. This was huge, it even included painting the room. We now have Sarah's bed set up in there (along with the crib), and when we get the last piece of future in there (a dresser doubled as a changing table) it will be complete. Well...sort of...it needs decorations on the walls! (This is the only room/space where before and after pictures exist. You can see more here. Wow. Almost embarrassing.)
  

A big thank you to my husband for helping me with this. A lot of it was done completely by him, and there is no way I could have done it on my own.

There are still a few projects left to be completely clutter free, and those are:

• Our bedroom closet. Holy cow. It's so bad. I need a better way to organize in there!
• Our bathroom closet. Just lots of things I need to throw out.
• Some of our kitchen cabinets. Most of them are functional, but some of them are catch all cabinets, and I can't stand it.
• Boy room needs to be painted. This is not an organization issue, just something I told Caleb we would do, and I want to do that for him!

I think we can accomplish the first three on the "to do" list next weekend. It might even be possible to accomplish all four! It would be great to be done before baby. It's really an exciting feeling to be so close to having our home just as I hoped it would be, it's that peaceful feeling I wrote about a few weeks ago. Most of our success of decluttering has been due to our ability to let things go. We have given away SO MUCH STUFF. Stuff. And I guess that's one good reason to live in a small house, I just have no room for stuff.


Are there any declutter projects on your to do list?