I’m rather behind posting some decluttering “projects” I’ve done over the past month. The weather has been beautiful, and we’ve had lots of randomness going on each Saturday. But a few weeks ago, I decided to do Two Things.
I knew I couldn’t get EVERYthing done that I should/desperately-needed-to do, but I could do two things.
Two small things.
Choosing two small areas to tackle gave me the mental freedom to start without worrying about all I could be doing.
I followed my own Visibility Rule and started in my Master Bathroom.
(Not that the Master Bathroom is visible to anyone but our immediate family.)
I cleared my bathroom counter. My bathroom counter hadn’t experienced the benefits of my most basic of basic tasks in a while.
That was my goal. Declutter the counter. The counter that had been piled upon for who-knows-how-long.
Perhaps the pile started when I multi-tasked and threw on some make-up as I counted change from the Daisy Dues bucket before I ran to the store to get a snack for our Brownie meeting. (Brownies. Which means we haven’t changed the bucket label since we were Daisies.)
Once there’s one Piece of Randomness, other Pieces of Randomness join in the fun.
Since I needed a Donate-able Donate Box, I chose to make one out of the box full of Kleenex that I had been tripping over for more than a week.
I purged the trash first:
Right. Clothing tags I’d used as lipstick blotters, packaging that should have been thrown away in the trashcan 2.5 feet from the counter, and that sticky-but-not-stuck-down drawer liner that just wads up in the corner of drawers.
And lids from mousse. I could say I have a lot of hair (which I do), but there’s really no excuse.
Next, I tossed the Obvious Donations into the Donate Box.
Hair product that hadn’t been opened in the time it took to go through five cans of mousse? Obvious.
A scarf that always felt a little odd so I never wore it? OBVIOUS once I noticed on the tag that it was made out of RABBIT HAIR!!!! For real. How do they even get the rabbit hair? Do they shave them? Or sweep up their cages???
And once the obvious donations were out of the way, it was time to take things where they go (right now!).
The razor went to the cabinet a few feet away where I would look for a razor . . .
Hotel shampoo (and more hotel shampoo) went to the guest bathroom where we keep that stuff. The DS charger went to the room of the kid who bought a new charger because he couldn’t find this one. Pens and pencils went to the kitchen drawer where we search (unsuccessfully) for pens and pencils.
We never, ever search for them in my bathroom drawer.
And yet, every time I clean out my bathroom drawer, we find oh-so-many.
Whatever.
About 20 minutes later, it looked like this:
Much better. Don’t you think?
That I let it get this bad again? Boo! Hiss!!!
That it only took 20 minutes to clear it and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my mostly-still-clear bathroom counter for almost a month? Yay!
I’ll share the second of my Two Things later this week.
(And seriously, I’d love to know the deal with the rabbit hair. It’s not “fur” but woven hair. As someone who is allergic to almost everything, it kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies.)
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--Nony
I just don’t even understand HOW my bathroom cabinet gets to looking like that! No one uses it but me.
Ooh! I love how a quick intentional clean up makes such a big difference! I’m currently doing my linen closet.
They brush the long haired rabbits to get the hair, they’re bred especially for their hair, usually Angora rabbits, it’s usually spun into a yarn though and then knit. I’ve been enjoying a clean bathroom counter for about a week here, I followed your steps and did easy stuff first, it didn’t take that long, and I found all my missing earrings!
Thanks for explaining!! And yay for finding your earrings!!!
I know what BethanyH said about rabbit hair is true, but it still kinda grosses me out to think about wearing rabbit hair. Eww!
Angora, aka rabbit hair, is actually a fur and collected without harming the rabbit. They actually enjoy it. It’s considered a hypoallergenic natural fiber. It’s also a luxury fiber.
Of course it’s washed before it goes into the final product.
Here’s a video of a handspinner (not me, though I spin, too) making yarn from her Angora bunny. https://youtu.be/excgl-LnZJk
I knew one of my creative and brilliant readers could explain!!! I just believe the tag should have said “Angora” rather than “rabbit hair” because Angora is something I’ve heard of!!!
Oh, and it’s good to know it’s hypoallergenic!
Hypoallergenic??? One of the fibers I’m most allergic is rabbit!
angora rabbits! love them! and their hair/fur! they are adorable also.
My neighbor around the corner has Angoras and alpacas. She spins hair from both of them with an spinning wheel. It is amazing to watch!
The counter looks great! And it really didn’t take you long at all to get it looking so much better.
Clothing tags as lipstick blotters. I’ve totally done that, but yeah, you can’t save tag for long after you’ve given it that type of treatment.
You know something? I first checked out your blog *years* ago. I moved on without attempting your suggestions because a) my place was cluttered but it wasn’t piled up like the before photos in your posts and b) I was certain that all I really needed was to be better at organizing. Fast forward five+ years… My place is piled up everywhere, some places to embarrassingly near the ceiling. (Stacks of stuff and boxes of stuff I moved out of my way…a pile I kept telling myself I would go through and “organize” “when I got a chance”.)
I now realize that I needed your decluttering tips all along. I sure wish I’d known before my stuff got this overwhelming.