Simply Clean It Out

It's not so simple for me to just clean out a room!  I find that I have emotional attachment to my "stuff".  I also have the "what if I need it someday" syndrome.  Along with the emotional attachment, and "what if I need it" , if you throw some memories in there it becomes a disastrously hard process for me to go through the room and get rid of stuff.

Today we tackled our laundry/ storage room.  We really had no choice as it was getting to where we could not move down there.  I am putting pictures in this blog so please don't judge me, but this is how a room that is ignored can easily become.  Over crowded with way too much stuff.  Our laundry room was screaming out for help as you can see, I have only one view of the room, why, because I could not get to the other corner to take a picture, sad I know.

Everything was everywhere.  My shelves were full so things started to spill over onto the floor creating obstacles.  The room was starting to become non-functional.

It took my husband and I a little over one hour to clean out this room.  We started by cleaning off the ironing board so we could use it as a table to see what we had as we pulled things off the shelves.  I put like things together to make our decision making easier.

I found that I had 12, yes, 12 flower vases!  Yikes!  We paired that down to a very manageable five, still too many maybe but five is better that 12 and as I have said before this is a process. 

After one hour of work this is our room now.

The ironing board is up against the wall ready to be used but not out to be used as a table.  Any flat surface is a danger for me as I tend to set something there with good intentions of addressing it later and the later never comes.  Also, notice there is a shelf that is mostly empty and the floor is clear.

Here is the corner we could not get a picture of before:

Nice and clean and organized now.

We pulled out all of this stuff to go to Good Will and or the dump.

This only took us one hour to do but in reality this room has been eating away at me for months now.  Once I got started and I had someone else down there to talk through some decisions it wasn't so bad, and now it is done. 

Take a step today to clean something out, it is a relief when you are finished.

Remember, keep it simple.