Alright, kicking of 2022 in a return to Covid precautions and expecting to spend a bunch of time at home. Plus we’re currently in a major cold snap so another reason to stay inside. To be honest I started this week while still in 2021 but the thing I pulled from my Pinterest board is a week long “decluttering challenge”
Just realized this is a super long post, so feel free to look at this image and then wait for what I assume will be a shorter post next week (no promises though).
Although probably pretty boring for anyone else, here’s how the 1hour + 7days = Decluttered House week went.
Day 1: Kitchen
– I usually do this on New Years day anyway. It’s a really great way to kick off the new year with a clean fridge and organized pantry.
-We actually do a pretty good job of keeping on top of cleaning the fridge so the main part of this was pretty quick. I did find some assorted jams/jellies in the very back of the fridge and a bottle of Kombucha that I think was trying to create a new culture on its own.
– Pantry clean out was a good idea, organized and took stock of what we were getting low on. I’m a big fan of using glass jars and clear storage containers to put food in after the box has been opened (crackers, cereal, etc) so that helps us keep the food waste down.
– We don’t have a junk drawer but I did clear out the organizer box where we store mail, notes pads etc. That was nice.
– We use all our small appliances, the juicer has been seriously under used through December – might need to find some cool juice ideas for future weeks!
Day 2: Front Entry/Family Room/Dining Room.
– This was a really quick task and did not need the full hour. (Also who has dressers in their family room/entry? Am I missing a great design/storage trend?)
– We redid our front hall closet last month (and when I say “We” I mean my husband did it). Before the overhaul we did go through all our hats, mitts, jackets and donate what we didn’t need anymore.
– All other areas are pretty minimal already AND we still have Christmas stuff up so I feel like I might night to carry day 2 over to a bit later in January.
– It didn’t take the full hour so I used some of that extra time to get a head start on Day 3: Bathrooms.
Day 3: Bathrooms
– Alright, so this was a big one. I did two of our bathrooms in the hour (the 3rd bathroom is the Kid’s so I just leave that one alone)
– Probably would have taken less time if I would have just stuck to the 5 things on the list but since I was putting the effort in I also gave both a good clean. Found a number of expired things to dispose of and organized things like all of our extra toothbrushes, floss and first aid supplies.
– Little ad for my side hustle selling Scentsy products: really loved the job that the bathroom cleaner did on the baseboards. If you want to try it let me know!
Day 4: Bedrooms
– Well…going to need to redo this day. I spent a lot of time going matching up socks and then sorting through my collection of jewelry and then decided to do a quick vacuum…I proceeded to vacuum up a doily (who knew anyone even used those anymore right?) and spent about half an hour removing it from vacuum.
– I did manage to add some things to our already started box for donations though.
– Spare room and my closest will have to get done another day!
– Over all I don’t feel as great about this day as I did about my progress on the first three days!
Day 5: Office
– This one I have been working away at over the week, doing a bit of organizing and decluttering during work breaks. Our office is multi-purpose, it is actually my real job work from home office, my crafting space, a spare TV watching area and occasionally a workout space. There is a lot happening in this very small room.
Day 6: Garage
– This one is a pretty limited one. A lot of the garage is where my husband stores tools and a lot of his toys. I am not touching that. I did work on the bike stuff (mostly mine), our “home gym” area and the collection of garden supplies.
Day 7: Basement and Attic
Ok, seriously who can declutter their basement and/or attic in an hour? Thankfully we don’t have an attic but we do have a crawl space that is crawling in storage boxes (see what I did there? hahah)
– So for this one, I decided to only spend the time focusing on all the Christmas stuff and let me tell you, it took more than an hour.
– After several additional trips to the crawl space to find “the” storage tote for whatever I was putting away I decided to use my cricut machine and make dozens of snowflakes to mark all the holiday bins.
– I’m pretty happy with the results but think that they could all use more snowflakes so this may turn into a longer term project and anytime I’m using white/light coloured vinyl for projects and have some left over will make more snowflakes and stick them on the bins.
Well, if you stuck with me this far – thanks!
Week two will be something shorter, and maybe edible?
Outside in Kelowna 