Nony here! I’m excited to share another reader decluttering project from Liza! If you’re decluttering something this summer (big or small), take some pics and send them in!
When I saw Nony’s post about possibly being a guest columnist and sharing a decluttering project, I felt as if a higher power was speaking to me. It was saying “This is your chance to get that room clean and share your progress with someone who might actually care! Even if you don’t get chosen, at least the room will be clean!” I looked at the clock, saw I had 70 minutes until the kids got home from school (and my daughter wakes up from her nap) and decided I would do as much as I could in that time. Even if I didn’t finish it, I’d at least make a dent in the project. So off I went with my iPad to take some before pictures. But before you see them, there are some things you need to know…
Last summer, we began a large addition project to our house that lasted from June until October. We thought it was going to take 6 – 8 weeks. (I can still hear that voice in my head laughing at the absurdity of this thought!) We added a beautiful, large space to our lower level that we call the play room. With 3 boys (11, 9, 7) and one girl (2), we let them have free reign in this space. Boy, was that a poor parenting decision! The room was cleanable (when we did it, which wasn’t often) but then a pipe broke in the boy’s bedroom and we moved all their “stuff” into the playroom until we could fix the pipe problem. With their room cleaned up, we ended up with a beautiful new bedroom for our younger boys!
From this………………………………………………………… to this!
What was left was this:
Lots of junk
Now, I’ve been reading Nony’s blog for several weeks and have already been inspired to just declutter. The organizing followed naturally from the decluttering and I’ve found I’m pretty good at the organizing once I get rid of all the junk! I’ve read, listened to, researched, and even met with a professional organizer to get my house under control. Little tid bits stuck with me here and there, but nothing for very long and certainly nothing that made me feel back in control of my house. I credit Nony with helping me see that my focus needed to change from trying to organize this house to just starting to declutter little by little. Watching her baby steps inspired me to tackle my bathroom closet, then purging the kids dressers (I have 3 large boxes of clothing that they NEVER wear!) and then some smaller projects like the coffee cup cabinet and three trays from the remodel that I didn’t even know what was in them. (Needless to say, I found several things we’ve been looking for and couldn’t imagine where they had gone!)
So I did this first (pretty sure I got these ideas from Speed Cleaning):
I grabbed the pink tote (which was in this room) and designated it for my daughters stuff. The brown box was for all the other stuff that needed to go somewhere else in the house and the white (pathetic) garbage can was for garbage. By keeping these three things close by as I worked, it made it easier to quickly make a decision on things and move on. I started at one corner and worked my way around the room, moving these with me as needed.
Getting the stuff off this desk allowed me to see the dirt, dust and the corpse of a fly. Yuck! This space didn’t take nearly as much time as I thought it would (Slob brain, right Nony?). So I moved to the next corner where the computer desk is located.
After clearing out the junk, I realized that a deep vacuuming was going to be necessary. As I vacuumed later, I could hear the Dust Bunnies screaming “She found us!!!! Look ouutttttt!” It was loud. There were a lot of them. Again, this didn’t take very long and the voices in my head were sparring between “Why don’t you do this more often?” and “Good job tackling this!”
Next was the patio door area. The kids generally plug in an uncharged device in this corner and play, so this area had food bits, wrappers, bowls… I thought I had made a rule of “No food in the playroom”???
As you can see, we have lawn chairs in our house. We can’t afford furniture for this space right now (large addition = no extra money for a while) and I didn’t want to put some ugly old hand-me-down couch in this room, so we decided we’d just go without. The kids need room to run/jump/wrestle, right?
Wrong.
At some point someone decided they actually wanted to sit in this room (not on the floor) and suddenly, we have 3 lawn chairs in this space. (One is conveniently used for a basketball hoop!)
This space was a quick clean up and I moved onto the last corner where the TV and video games are stored.
As I attacked the TV and games on top of the entertainment center, my Slob Vision kicked in again. For some reason, I decluttered the top of this TV stand, but not this shelf. It wasn’t until I grabbed the vacuum and had gone completely around the room before it dawned I me that I completely skipped this area (as well as the tray on our chalkboard)!
I decided I could quickly do the tray, but that my children were quite capable of tackling the gaming shelves and that I would save that for them.
When I finished, I was left with this:
By then the kids were home from school and I had about 10 minutes left of vacuuming to do. I asked each of the boys to grab any 10 things out of the brown box and put them away. Like really put them away… not just throw on the floor of their room. This went over really well and I ended up with a handful of things that just needed to be thrown away.
I also had moved this:
Lots of baseball cards that have great cases that most of them are NOT in. My 9 yo is slightly obsessed with writing lists of things (mostly sports related). I let him know he had until the next evening to sort out the cards and go through all these notebooks (to decide what could be tossed and what could be kept).
Something nudged me to check the drawers of that desk I cleared off first (because with my super slob vision, I managed to not check any of the drawers – they were all shut so that must mean there was nothing in them!). And this is what I found:
Clean, stacked underwear that my 9 yo clearly doesn’t want to wear anymore (he’s become a boxer guy). So he stashed them where any normal person would, in a desk drawer! These went into one of my clothing boxes to save as my 7 yo doesn’t mind hand-me-down undies and so far, he’s still willing to wear these.
What did I end up with?
The first space (and I left that notebook and pen out because 9 yo was patiently waiting to come play in the room and this notebook holds his current NCAA made up bracket).
My computer area, sans dust bunnies all decluttered and cleaned. I realized I need to get a mouse pad because that crinkled piece of paper looks terrible and doesn’t really work very well. I also need to get a cup for pens/pencils. I’m sure I have something somewhere in this house that will work. When I find it, I will use it there!
The TV / gaming space. I reminded them that the white thing is a garbage and they are welcome to put anything that might resemble garbage into that white thing, called a garbage, for garbage. They don’t really find my sense of humor very funny.
You can see the gaming shelf is still a mess. My 11 and 7 yo are tackling this project together while my 9 yo takes care of the cards and notebooks.
As I surveyed the beauty (and peacefulness) of this cleaned up space, I realized leaving a room to be solely ruled by 3 young boys was a very foolish decision. So I took that cleaned off chalkboard and left them a note (inspired by the book How to Talk So Kids will Listen):
No more voices in my head… just peace and calmness that comes from knowing you did a good thing, not just for this room, but for you and your family. Thank you Nony for the inspiration!
Thank you soooo much for the post, Liza! I love the transformation!
Michele says
Susie, you done a beautiful job! Thanks for sharing and I hope your family enjoys their new space.
Luisa in Dallas says
Wow! You got an impressive amount of de-cluttering done in that short amount of time. And, I laughed about the screaming dust bunnies. You (and Nony) are dead right about the de-cluttering needing to be done BEFORE the organizing. Like you, I like the organizing part so I need to be reminded of this (over and over). Thanks so much for sharing.
Sandra L. says
The underpants! Omygosh, the stacked underpants! Thanks for making me smile!