Sort, Purge, Clean!

This week I'm dealing with clutter. And junk, either stuff I don't need or actual junk. My amazing fantastic neighbour Susan came over last week and we completely purged and cleaned my kitchen. Now the only things on my counter are my coffee maker and kettle. Seriously. Gone are the pill bottles, pens, papers, and assorted crap that gets put there for lack of a better place. The secret: stuff that doesn't belong in the kitchen is GONE.

Tips for people who have clutter and want to make the effort to get rid of some: get some boxes. Or bags. Pick ONE room and get to work. One box is garbage, one is recycle, one is donate, one is stuff that belongs in different room in the house, and one is keep in that room. Do NOT put away items that belong in other rooms until you are finished. Simply concentrate on getting that first room done. Then take the box of stuff that belongs in other rooms and go room to room putting it away. You'll be amazed at how fast you can get the area clean. Then start the next room.

Next I'm organizing my office/sewing room. I have several boxes to get through and then I need to get my desks made. Once that is complete, I'll take all my partylite stuff upstairs and start on my living room. For anyone who's been in my place, you'll know that my living room is kinda cramped with bookcases and baby stuff and our huge tv. Since Delilah will be crawling and getting into everything soon, I've decided to jump the gun and just cut back on the stuff she can get into. I'm going to pack all my books on the one bookcase into a tote and take the bookcase upstairs to be re-purposed for my Partylite stuff. The altar bookcase will move to where the other bookcase is right now, and the items on it will be moved to a corner curio cabinet and corner shelf in the corner the altar bookcase is now. The curio cabinet will have doors to house my incense and candles and such. There will be a shelf or two for all my esoteric books and then my altar items will be placed on a freestanding corner shelf above the cabinet. The floating shelf that is currently in the sewing room will go above the tv for displaying items and the end tables will be freecycled. My green Ikea rolling table with shelf will house the DVD player, VCR and one of Ben's game systems. The DVD stand will be gone since I plan on putting all our DVDs into one of those storage binder systems. All of the cases for the DVDs, along with our VHS tapes (yes we still have those!) will be placed in storage in the basement, labelled for easy retrieval.

Sounds like a lot of work, and it probably is. But so worth it! I'm imagining how bare this room will be, how clean and relaxing it will seem. And I can't wait to start. But first I need to get some totes. They have them on sale at Zellers for 6 bucks off, only until Friday. I'm going tomorrow to get 4, to start. Then I can pack up my books and take that shelf upstairs.

Well, I guess I can get started sorting through some stuff upstairs in my office. Get sorting!