My declutter goals are my hall coat/shoe/scarf closet...bad, bad, bad. The coats hang so low that the shoe shelf is covered, so I'm reaching in blind for my shoes. The scarves are hung on those hangers with all the holes that you loop the scarf through, but it's difficult to see the full selection. I've purged as much as I can...so now it's a matter of creative solutions

I want to declutter a couple of drawers and the pantry. The cellar is a whole other story! I don't even know if clutter is an appropriate word to describe it! My theory is that a man created the clutter therefore a man should declutter it. So, I guess that I should send hubby downstairs to work on his creation!

We're helping my FIL declutter, which means accepting all his gifts.

Funny.. amoliveira

So true Sigrid.

Definitely count me in!! I already have my plan for three areas in my house....1. The kitchen pantry 2. Our master walk-in closet, and.....3. A room I have claimed to be my sewing area/office/storage area.... I am extremely excited about it!!! My goal is to have those three finished by January 31, 2015. Then I will do another set of 3 areas. I feel that this way of doing my decluttering/re-organizing, is better because I am not overwhelmed by setting any unrealistic goals like "having entire house re-organized by March 31st"; but yet, I am not procrastinating either.....just setting each set of 3 goals/tasks in order to be sure and have a better year and definitely an organized one!!!!!

It's great to hear that everyone is decluttering. It's so liberating. I've had clients tell me that after we organized their space they found themselves visiting the space for no reason other than just to stare at their freshly declutted space. It's an awesome feeling.

Get Organized, I agree, I had clients that actually did just that. Said she sat on the sofa and marveled at his collection in new glass curios flanking an entertainment center. Her collection on the other side. Instead of spread out through the home. She felt peaceful and emotional. It felt so good to hear her feel that.

Finally finding a solution to a cleaning problem has the same effect on me. I organized and cleaned my kitchen, but the oven window was ruining EVERYTHING. For years I'd had an ugly cobweb in that window. It appeared 3 months after the stove was installed. I had no idea how to clean in there. Two days ago I learned a trick with a coat hanger, scrubby cleaning wipe firmly attached to the hanger, and feeding the wire up through the vent hole in the bottom of the door. Inside glass in the door is clean for the first time in 9 years! Every time I go in the kitchen I turn the oven light on and just gaze. You'd think I'd gone back in time to the first color TV lol.

I will join! My office looks like WW3 hit it and the garage contents have got to be sold by June. Am tackling the office first for January, selling on Craigslist and eBay etc then I will face up to mountains of untouched clutter in the garage. Watch this space for hellish pictures. Hopefully there will be a before and after worth showing!! Now the cat is out of the bag there is no going back. Yikes.

Today's project was to see how much of a difference I could make to a room in 5 minutes or less. I chose the horribly cluttered catchall desk where I spend the most time per day. The desk butts up against my kitchen island. Before, my kitchen was so cluttered that the desk was hardly noticeable. Once the kitchen was wrangled into sparkling good shape, the desk completely ruined the effect. I set a timer, pretended my in-laws called from just down the road and frantically cleaned my desk in 5 minutes, without stuffing anything in drawers or pantry. Everything was put where it belonged and I wiped off all the cola can rings, dust and crumbs :) http://azprancingponyfarm.com/2015/01/13/january-cure-get-together-and-3-minute-surface-sweep/

Prospera: The sad thing is, is that most of the stuff thrown on my dresser actually has a space that it belongs to, I'm just too lazy to walk it to where it belongs. I have beautiful furniture, I'm looking forward to seeing it again. We donate our old towels to homeless shelters, they are always in need of towels, sheets, blankets and pillows, shampoos, conditioners, toothpaste and tampons. I replace our pillows on a regular basis, they don't wash well and are inexpensive enough to just be replaced, they all go to the homeless shelter.

I am also working on the "Commercial" project, whenever we are watching T.V. and a commercial comes on, I give something 4 minutes of my attention, my kitchen is now clean and uncluttered pretty much all of the time. Without having it be a task.

Jean. Cleaning desk. Great Job! sometimes our thoughts about envisioning a clean up, will take a long time. Thanks for proving that it doesn't sometimes :)

So I decided to declutter & reorganize my coupon storage area. Here are my results.

Nice!!! Get Organized. Looks so neat and convenient.

I do not have clutter. Period.

Sounds like I'm fooling myself?
I have mess. Not clutter.
I don't need to rid areas of things to clear up, because there aren't that many. I've never acquired unnecessary items... However, EVERYTHING I have seems to mix itself up into a disordered jumble...
I don't mind all that much though. Part of a chilled life ;)

Za

I got my laundry room half finished today. I painted, my son and I build a table to fit the space so I can store my heavy, yet small, appliances, and I organized lightbulbs, cleansers, etc. in wooden crates. Even with building a table from scratch and painting, we got the closet section of the laundry room done in less than 5 hours. I need to paint the shelves, paint the rest of the laundry room, figure out a shelf system that I can actually reach over the washer and dryer, but it's coming together well. http://azprancingponyfarm.com/2015/01/14/january-cure-more-on-the-laundry-room-project/

Jean, how about shelves and on the top, Install some pull-out shelves above wash and dry.Need to know depth of them first before building shelves. Home Depot or Lowes. On line too. Different kinds.

The washer and dryer are on drawer pedestals so they're very tall and deep. The one shelf over them is the same depth as the ones in my pantry, about a foot deep, making it impossible to reach. I was thinking about adding a pull out shelf in front of the existing shelf. I can't use the existing shelf anyway, at least not without a ladder so I won't lose anything by putting a better shelf in front of it. it'll be wasted space, but it's wasted space already lol. I'll go see what Home Despot has to offer. Thanks!

Darla Scheuerman I have that same bedroom set! I don't have the dresser, but have the bed and TV armoire. Part of my challenge to myself this weekend is to dust and clean those metal vines in the headboard and footboard. It's tough to get in between those decorations to get it clean. I may have to finagle a tool out of a wire hanger covered with a furniture wipe. I sure love that furniture though.

Jean: I love the furniture, I shopped for two years to find the right bedroom suite. All my furniture in my home is very ornate with lots of curvy metals. I use a swiffer duster, makes dusting in on a regular basis super quick and easy.

Jean: Have you considered just pulling down the shelf above the W & D and decorating. Assuming your pedestals have drawers? I was going to install shelving above mine and thought, I can't reach it without a small ladder, not even a step stool, I would just collect more crap that is rarely, if ever used.

It'd sure be nice, but this is a small house and I need the storage space. The drawer underneath the washer houses my laundry detergents, iron, etc. The drawer under the dryer is devoted to dog and pony meds, syringes, leashes, grooming, etc.

Just saw this. I'm in if it isn't to late.
I have been moving boxes around for years. I mean years. I'm going to tackle these.

Over the past year, the clutter has taken over my house! I won't even list all that needs to be done. This has encouraged me to start and reminded me that even small projects end up making a difference. Thanks, everyone!

Oh goodness....I am having heart flutters...lol :) I can't have clutter. Not possible. We've had bad water leaks a few times and the mess of that was clutter enough for me! If there's anything .... I have to say the shed outside and I didn't make that mess. I just refuse to go look at it! Lol :) Avoidance in this case......If I get a look at it...... everyone better run..... because it will be cleaning day. Good luck to all on decluttering. :)

BTW, Christmas eve.... someone broke into that shed.... they didn't even steal anything! I think they were afraid if they pulled one thing.... they'd never survive. They'd be buried. Lol :D True! If I get the nerve, I'll post a picture. It's ridiculous!

Success! Sort of! I got the top cleaned off, all my necklaces are hung, as well as my earrings, I found "the other one" in at least 20 pairs. I did have to hang an additional wrought iron rack. My over flow, over sized bracelets went in to a wrought iron bowl in to the top drawer. The down side, I had to clean out that drawer, all that got moved in to other drawers, probably my next de-clutter post.

TheDarlingBecca: it is so hard to get started, I started with 1 cabinet, just 1 that was the goal. If you look at the overall picture, you just grab the wine bottle. 1 small thing is the key, it motivates you on to the next cabinet:)

P.S. I checked with my daughter, she does not want her nose sucker from when she was a newborn, she seemed baffled that I would save it . . . :).

Darla that looks so clean. If you want to protect necklaces, this is what I did. Now I have two shadow boxes stacked :) I use long dressmaker pearl pins.

LB. very nice, these are all cheap necklaces, I de-cluttered all the real stuff to my daughters in the last year. My husband(s) were always buying jewelry for me, I am blessed. But now at almost 52, I have 4 pieces of expensive jewelry that I actually wear. So my daughters 36, yes the math is correct and 21, they inherited early. Seemed ridiculous to have all these beautiful pieces sitting in a safe for years and years, I stopped wearing most of it a decade ago. And now what I have out is generally inexpensive artisan pieces. And my girls love their jewelry.

I have my sunglasses on the end of the dresser, I'm not sure where else they should go, maybe one of those drawers I über cluttered today :)

I think I will buy a shadow box for each if my girls.

Darla, I laughed out loud about the nose sucker thing. I need to check the boxes where I have saved "things" for my kids to make sure their nose sucker things aren't there. Thanks for the belly laugh!!

My fine jewelry is hidden. That's all inexpensive nice jewelry :))

I copied this idea years ago, recycled piece if lace holds all your inexpensive earrings and brooches.

Easy access, lays back down neatly.

Wow, you have a lot of jewelry!

Too much, I inherited from my step Mother who had excellent taste in artisan jewelry, though I have also given over half of this away, I like to be able to have enough pieces to match any outfit.

Welp. I deep cleaned, straightened, and purged the bedroom. I evicted spiders, dust bunnies and the dachshunds on several occasions. I washed walls, frames, fixtures and switch plates. I washed, dried, rehung my curtain, painted the door to my closet and the door to the patio and washed the windows. I feel like I slept in someone else's bedroom last night! It took 3 days but wowza what a nice difference. http://azprancingponyfarm.com/2015/01/19/january-cure-of-the-addams-family-bedroom/

Jean, I took a look see, nice bedroom. So much work. Love it. I have one suggestion. To allow more light in the room, I would shorten the valance on the window to about 14-15". Love the bedding.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind, but this is AriDzona. Keeping heat out, is more important than letting light in ;) By July, I'll likely be lowering it about 24 inches lol.

Spent the day working on my home office. First I cleared off the stacks of paper on my desk, then I went through my old files and got rid of stuff that's no longer required. I bagged up paper for recycling and flattened and discarded empty laptop boxes....I'm not even sure why I saved them. I cleaned and dusted all surfaces and vacuumed and washed the floors. It was a good start, but I still have lots more paper to sort through and discard. Then there are boxes of pictures and books. Not to mention organizing the bookshelves! This is a project that may take a little while. But hey, it's a start! It's already easier to breathe in there.

GREAT POST! Yes, declutter. All I need to do is watch an episode of "Hoarders" and I'm up and going. I was off today (Thank you Martin Luther King Jr.) and actually sold some stuff and made $80. Our area has a buy and sell facebook page. It's amazing how that will inspire you to declutter.

I had planned on reupholstering a sofa , years back. A large bolt of damask fabric taking up space in my office closet. I still love the fabric. I finally unwrapped and measured it. I couldn't remember the yardage. 18 yards and I finally listed it on craigslist on Sunday. I had it when I had my last sofa. I sold the sofa a very long time ago. Glad to see it gone. If it doesn't sell, I will donate. Feels good just to know it's not in the way. It's waiting for a buyer in the rafters of the garage.

I started on the hall closet . . . Then my husband decided to start dragging boxes up from the basement, so he derailed my plan, as I ended up going through the boxes he pulled up. But we did rid ourselves of 6 or 7 boxes, kept very little. I had to tell him to not bring up anymore of "my" boxes. (He has enough of his own junk that he has hauled around for 40 years without making work for me.) I did not get back to the hall closet, so now I have a folding table with a bunch of stuff on it blocking the hall. Thank heavens it only has three shelves, albeit very large shelves and the ground level holds, vacuum cleaner, floor mopping device, above mentioned folding table & folding chairs and TV trays. Photos to come.

Having had a three day weekend, I finally got the storage closet done!! I could not believe I hauled out an industrial sized bag of trash...

Paper clutter is our biggest problem, with 3 kids and our own bills and mail. It gets out of hand fast. The next big project is now that we own a house we have to go through the boxes that accumulated through the years of living in rentals