2024 Decluttering - Minimalism thread

[mommytoalyssa]

I'm so happy for you! I think it is really hard to keep your home decluttered and you are working F/T so it is really hard. You are doing an amazing job and it is inspiring! It makes me want to declutter/organize again but I just don't have the margin right now due to work. Enjoy your decluttered home!

[♥ms.pacman♥]

I'm so happy for you! I think it is really hard to keep your home decluttered and you are working F/T so it is really hard. You are doing an amazing job and it is inspiring! It makes me want to declutter/organize again but I just don't have the margin right now due to work. Enjoy your decluttered home!

aw thank you! yeah it is really hard as i often end up working crazy hours (evening meetings, early morning meetings) . i am the primary breadwinner as well (DH just went to 30 hrs a week so he can have more time to do all drop offs and pickups, dentist/ortho appts for the kids). i am lucky i can work from home 3 days a week and that helps a TON.

though i found that once i got going it was easy to make time for it bc the end result just made everything easier. i probably had a more cluttered house than most - lol.

anyways i got a done this past weekend - for the first weekend in a while we didn't have a house full of family or teens at our house so we got to relax a lot too. I tackled the kids computer room and also the room where DS has his model trains. today i took a full car trunk load to goodwill, and a small bag of excess lululemon clothing to Plato's closet - got $57 on the spot!


Decluttered so far as of 1/28

- kitchen
- master closet - updated 1/19 to clear even more clutter /donate items
- pantry
- guest room
- guest bathroom
- DS room
- DS closet
- back patio
- laundry room
-game room - 1/5
-DD room - 1/6
-DD closet 1/6
-living room 1/11
-downstairs craft area 1/13
-entryway console 1/14
-mudroom 1/15
- kids bathroom 1/17
-master bath - 1/18 - decluttered my side/cupboards, not DH's - will have to do for now
- kids half bath storage (DONE 1/26)
- gameroom storage closet (DONE 1/26)
- kids computer room - DONE 1/27


still left to do (and estimated time it will take:
- master bedroom (2 hours, will try to do 1/29 evening bc i don't have an evening meeting that day, DS will be at band practice and DD will inevitably be on a gaming call with a friend )

With that i will have decluttered my entire house in January, which is insane! though i have find it so beneficial in so many ways.

Only thing left now is the garage which is kind of a mess with boxes and will take a solid half day or so to sort out - I will probably wait for February or March to tackle that so i can take a break.

[jgenie]

Wow!! That’s amazing progress!! I need to get back to it. We’ve had guests since November. I took last week as a recovery week but need to get moving again. Your post is great motivation to get it done.

aw thank you! yeah it is really hard as i often end up working crazy hours (evening meetings, early morning meetings) . i am the primary breadwinner as well (DH just went to 30 hrs a week so he can have more time to do all drop offs and pickups, dentist/ortho appts for the kids). i am lucky i can work from home 3 days a week and that helps a TON.

though i found that once i got going it was easy to make time for it bc the end result just made everything easier. i probably had a more cluttered house than most - lol.

anyways i got a done this past weekend - for the first weekend in a while we didn't have a house full of family or teens at our house so we got to relax a lot too. I tackled the kids computer room and also the room where DS has his model trains. today i took a full car trunk load to goodwill, and a small bag of excess lululemon clothing to Plato's closet - got $57 on the spot!


Decluttered so far as of 1/28

- kitchen
- master closet - updated 1/19 to clear even more clutter /donate items
- pantry
- guest room
- guest bathroom
- DS room
- DS closet
- back patio
- laundry room
-game room - 1/5
-DD room - 1/6
-DD closet 1/6
-living room 1/11
-downstairs craft area 1/13
-entryway console 1/14
-mudroom 1/15
- kids bathroom 1/17
-master bath - 1/18 - decluttered my side/cupboards, not DH's - will have to do for now
- kids half bath storage (DONE 1/26)
- gameroom storage closet (DONE 1/26)
- kids computer room - DONE 1/27


still left to do (and estimated time it will take:
- master bedroom (2 hours, will try to do 1/29 evening bc i don't have an evening meeting that day, DS will be at band practice and DD will inevitably be on a gaming call with a friend )

With that i will have decluttered my entire house in January, which is insane! though i have find it so beneficial in so many ways.

Only thing left now is the garage which is kind of a mess with boxes and will take a solid half day or so to sort out - I will probably wait for February or March to tackle that so i can take a break.

[♥ms.pacman♥]

Wow!! That’s amazing progress!! I need to get back to it. We’ve had guests since November. I took last week as a recovery week but need to get moving again. Your post is great motivation to get it done.

thanks! i've found that once u start, you can really get going and get a lot of momentum from it!

i forgot to mention in my last post I've done a few trips to Half Price Books to donate books. Last trip i donated DD's kindle that she no longer uses plus other items. Came out with $57! Also, i found the Marie Kondo book "life changing magic of tidying up" for $7.99 and Joshua Becker book "Minimalist home" . I remember when the Mari Kondo book was so popular here - i never ended up reading it but i guess i am now, ten years later - LOL!! Anyway from her book she mentions trying to "declutter all at once" and i guess i get that. I ended up decluttering my entire house in January and i think it did help me.

although i've deluttered a ton (i would say got rid of 10-15% of items??) now there are few rooms/areas i am going through again and declutter further

- Master bedroom
- master bath (trying to downsize makeup)
- Game room (there's an area with tons of Legos - need to donate)
- Kitchen (i continue to get rid of excess containers)
- Laundry room (specifically the storage area)

planning to take another trip to Goodwill this weekend to drop off donations and then another visit to Plato's closet.

[echoesofspring]

This is inspiring. I did our 2 pantry areas over the last week (ones in the kitchen and ones a closet under the stairs), as I want us to be cooking more and it had gotten so overgrown I wasn't sure what we did/didn't have. It's so nice to have them both accessible, not spilling out of the doors. Eventually I want to reclaim the area under the stair for non food items, but that will have to wait til we redo our kitchen as the current pantry cabinets are super unusable and I don't want to spend any more money on them.

[KrisM]

That's fantastic!

I made a list and have gotten a couple areas done, but everything else just gets in the way. If all the other people who live here could just go somewhere else for a month or so, I could finish it all!

My current project is bedroom swapping for the boys. I started sorting/packing DS1's stuff. Some is easy and some can be done by sending pictures to him. Other stuff he'll have to go through when he is here. But I'm hoping to paint in 1-2 weeks and then move everything over so it's ready for his spring break.

And as I do that, the basement is filling up. I hate that and I never quite get to the basement. I think I will do a garage sale this spring with our subdivision. Then donate what's left.

[♥ms.pacman♥]

This is inspiring. I did our 2 pantry areas over the last week (ones in the kitchen and ones a closet under the stairs), as I want us to be cooking more and it had gotten so overgrown I wasn't sure what we did/didn't have. It's so nice to have them both accessible, not spilling out of the doors. Eventually I want to reclaim the area under the stair for non food items, but that will have to wait til we redo our kitchen as the current pantry cabinets are super unusable and I don't want to spend any more money on them.

that is great! and re: the bolded - i TOTALLY get this. DH usually does the grocery shopping which is awesome, but he is not great at keeping inventory or throwing things out. So sometimes after cleaning up the pantry i will find 5 "copies" of the same thing. and yes it makes it hard to get a sense of what we have in stock and plan what we make.

That's fantastic!

I made a list and have gotten a couple areas done, but everything else just gets in the way. If all the other people who live here could just go somewhere else for a month or so, I could finish it all!

My current project is bedroom swapping for the boys. I started sorting/packing DS1's stuff. Some is easy and some can be done by sending pictures to him. Other stuff he'll have to go through when he is here. But I'm hoping to paint in 1-2 weeks and then move everything over so it's ready for his spring break.

And as I do that, the basement is filling up. I hate that and I never quite get to the basement. I think I will do a garage sale this spring with our subdivision. Then donate what's left.

i hear ya! I feel like i'm constantly cleaning up after everyone else...lol.

and sounds like a great idea re: garage sale and then donating. i wish i could do garage sale but our HOA prohibits it. i end up just donating bc it's so much faster.

and your basement sounds like how my garage is. Right now one half of it is pretty messy (the other half i keep my car in). I wish it was at a point where we could put both vehicles in , but without a basement there is really no other place to store things like bikes, tools, holiday decorations, etc. Not to mention the pile of cardboard boxes we have still to break down from DS's instruments

Anyway... today i went to a different Plato's Closet with a bag of clothes and got $55. (and yes, some of you probably reading this and think - didn't she go last week, and the week before?) it's kind of embarrassing how much clothes i have accumulated (especially over the past 4 years). All in all, over the past several months i have made three trips to Plato's closet, four trips to Lululemon to trade stuff in for cash, and sold a dozen things on Poshmark, plus given away 2 dozen clothing items on buy nothing groups . And probably a few bags to Goodwill. And i still have a decent amount! All this purging made me realize, I don't really need this many clothes!! I am planning to keep going until it's ridiculously easy to get dressed in the morning.

thinking back on it, i think what originally drew me to minimalism in general was the capsule wardrobe concept, especially for travel. Ive always loved shopping but was awful about coordinating clothes and it frustrated me to no end, and packing for trips would take me forever. i've gotten way way better over past couple years but i still got a ways to go. Oh, and having a post-menopausal body now also threw a nice wrench in things , which forced me to declutter even more. lol

[jent]

Just wanted to write in to say, this is fantastic and inspiring. I'm not taking as comprehensive an approach as you, but seeing your posts have inspired me to work harder at moving our "to be donated" piles along. I will get stuff ready and then it sits in piles in my closet. So far I've made a trip to Goodwill and done a lot of Buy Nothing giveaways. I'm really excited that yesterday someone on Buy Nothing took a pile of DD's old stuffed animals that had been sitting at the back of my closet for over a year!

(BTW we can do garage sales in our neighborhood but that is something I never get around to doing... so it's just easier for me to give it away. I justify the fact that I'm missing out on making extra cash, that it's worth it to me for the mental health benefits of decluttering!)

[KrisM]

I generally agree about garage sales vs donating. But our sub has one every year, which helps make it easy. I participated a few years ago and since I had a lot of older elementary and middle school kid stuff, I did really well with the neighbor hood kids. They had so much fun coming every day with more money to buy things. They brought their parents back sometimes. Haha. I really liked seeing them figure out what to buy and be so happy with such good deals. So I'll do it if the weekend works and hope we get the current batch of tweens shopping.