Sunday, January 31, 2010

Declutter Challenge ~ Spare Room

My friend Molly over at The Snyder 5 has been hard at work decluttering her house. And today, she invited others to join in the fun!

The problem? I already decluttered our spare bedrom yesterday, but I didn't take any "before" pictures. I simply hadn't planned on blogging about it!

I thought about recluttering the room to get photos, but decided that doing so would be a little crazy. Then I thought of another way to illustrate the utter mess that was our spare bedroom. So without further ado, I give you...

...an ILLUSTRATION of the utter mess that was our spare bedroom! (Hmmm. This might have been crazier.)

The Backstory: Our spare bedroom is our home's "what the heck should we do with this stuff that doesn't belong in the basement" dumping ground. (Every house has one, right?) The mess got totally out of hand when workers installed a hood vent in our kitchen. You see, the exhaust pipe had to run through our upstairs linen closet, forcing us to remove its contents until we recut the shelves to accommodate the pipe.

Where did all of the linen closet stuff go? Into our spare bedroom, of course!

For the past several weeks, the room has been full of extra shampoos, cleaning products, towels, toiletpaper and lots of other random stuff.

The Complicating Factor: Making matters worse, we still haven't refinished and reinstalled the door to this room. So the clutter is in full view (and full reach) of anyone who comes upstairs. When we had my nephew overnight last week, we actually blocked off the room with the loveseat. Lovely, eh?


The Resolution: On Saturday, Kyle cut all of the shelves to fit around the exhaust pipe. Then I got to work sorting through the mess, throwing away junk and restocking the shelves. It didn't take long before we could see the floor again!


All of our linen closet stuff is now back where it belongs — in our linen closet! I plan to find a more attractive way of organizing this stuff, but "put away" is good enough for now. (Hmmm. That towel shelf is looking pretty empty. Time to wash/fold laundry, perhaps?)


Yay, the disenfecting products are up high and out of reach! (Please note that Kyle made expertly rounded cuts to accommodate the pipe.)


I still have a bit more work to do in this room. I need to sort through a couple of laundry baskets, and Kyle needs to sort through a box of random junk. (Don't you just love boxes of random junk?)

Overall, this was a huge decluttering success. I feel so much better when I reach the top of the stairs now!

Final Notes: I won't be weighing my tossed/donated clutter like Molly does. We don't have a scale! But we'll definitely be ridding our home of clutter, not just reorganizing the clutter. Hope you join us!

3 comments:

MollyinMinn said...

Super impressed. And am still laughing about the couch blocking the door. The image of you and Kyle moving it to block the door is the best part!

Nate and Jamie Sommer :) said...

i have also been decluttering in our house as well!!! It is such a good feeling to get rid of and organize all the "stuff"!!! Although I think that the nesting faze is more to blame for this then anything!!! (Whatever it takes:))

Angie said...

Jamie, you should share your efforts on your blog and link up on The Snyder 5 site! It's fun to see what others are doing!

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