Baby steps.

Baby steps.

Last weekend it was the utility closets in the carport. This weekend I want to tackle the garden shed. Then after that the barn (not an animal barn, but a DH piles of stuff barn). I'm thinking the barn might take 2 weekends, though. After that, a ginormous yard sale!

Aunt J

We recently had "Spring cleanup" day in our town. Put almost anything out curbside & they haul it away. It is fun and provides for much entertainment. Well I totally forgot and the truck was sched for Mon pick up - Truck never came Mon

I made it a game - first to get a pile, started, then to have the biggest on the street - attic, basement, garage - yep did that. Then I was getting such a kick out of this I wanted the biggest pile in town. Well my unscientific study proved mine was. Poor dh he always worries when he sees this going on - "what's in there, did you throw out any of my..?" All JUNK, lots of consolidating

Back yard picked up & I made 3 trips to the dump (outside the curb pick up)

On to the closets -1 huge bag of clothing to cleaning lady, 4 to goodwill, one bag of baby clothes to the new grandson ((6mos) and yet now, another bag put aside for cleaning lady -

Oh, if that wasn't enough - back to the attic I went to further organize - then I vacuumed, then I mopped! DIRTY...

I spoke to my sister last night and said "I should be delivering any minute now!" No I'm not, but it does seem like it.

I find it quite emancipating!

Great thread. I started spring cleaning last week. I am actually having alot fun just getting to the point of a clean organized space to decorate. I had a serious creativity block when it came to decorating our newish home (we moved in last year). We don't have alot of money to spend on the house at the moment. Ironically having the limited funds has opened up my imaginiation and I am being so much more productive.

I am taking the house room by room. So far we have cleaned out the garage, the kids game closet, the pantry and I am finishing up the laundry room today. I have found it motivating to snap a before and after picture. Here is an example:

Garage before

I have to take babysteps as well. If I have this huge to-do list I will get so over whelmed that nothing will get done. I usually try to just take 1 small room or closet a weekend. It takes longer but I seemed to get so much more done this weay

XoXosMom: Amazing transformation of your garage!! Lots of hard work -- and it really shows -- well done!

Well done to All here! :) Clearing out clutter, cleaning, re-organizing can be hard work -- with amazing results! I always feel a sense of Lightness and calm when finished those kinds of tasks.

I did a HUGE clearing out when we switched to laminate flooring in the late fall BUT did tackle the Junk drawer in the kitchen AND the master bedroom closet yesterday -- always helpful!

Still to do: when the weather improves in the later spring/early summer we need to take down the blinds and give them a good cleaning. Also need to powerwash the outdoor chairs!

Jan at Rosemary Cottage

Wow, that garage transformation is truly impressive! I'll bet you were good and tired after all of that work was done, but how rewarding to see the difference!

Sounds like many here are thinking along the lines of clearing out and cleaning up. I still have so much to do ... and so much I don't want to do. Jan's mention of cleaning blinds sent a shiver of dread down my spine. Mine are pretty darn gross, and they desperately need cleaning, but I'm not looking forward to the allergic sneezing fit they'll set in motion when we finally start in on them. I may invest in a supply of those filtered masks to wear while working on this particular project. They look rather silly, but who cares, right? ;-)

Have you all spent any time on the "Organizing the Home" forum? It's a fine resource for inspiration for the projects you are tackling.
I'm switching my two front upstairs rooms...my husband was working out of town for two years and we kept a small apartment there. Now that he is back home full time, we are desperate for closet space, so have decided to turn half of our bedroom into a closet, and move my workspace into the other half, which allows us to put our bedroom into the front room with the lovely bay window. So purging, organizing, hammering, and and schlepping are the order of the day for this weekend!

XoXosmom: Forgot to mention that "snapping a Before and After Photo" is a GREAT idea -- we do have an old photo album that shows pictures of our house when we moved in here in 1993 -- its great to see how far we have come since then!

Jan

Before our new countertops were installed, I took everything out of the kitchen, and before I put it all back, I went through and threw away or put in the giveaway pile anything that was unusable or that we didn't need. That alone made it feel almost like a new kitchen.

I do need to go through all the closets. They are not too bad, but could use some rethinking.

Our basement is a disaster area, but one thing at a time.

We too try to do a little bit each weekend and don't confine it to any one particular season, just try to chip away at it year round. I can't do too much all at once or else I put myself flat on my back for weeks, and for the most part DH has to be supervised (at his request, after he did something that was the polar opposite of how I had explained how to do it - in writing!). I actually vacuumed/dustmopped three rooms on Tuesday, which laid me out for the rest of the day but I got it done. I'm absolutely worthless today, a combination of a residual migraine left over from yesterday, working too hard at physio yesterday, and Major Tom's come to town. A couple of weeks ago DH finally put up a shelf and hanging rod in the guest-room closet so he could move his clothes out of the MBR closet - he gets up at oh-dark-thirty so he dresses in the guest room because I'm a very light sleeper. We have bouncy floors upstairs and just his walking across the MBR floor is enough to wake me up. We also sorted his clothes and a couple of bags went off to Goodwill, and a lot of the boxed-up stuff stored in the guest-room closet was moved to the back of the much larger but very daftly-designed MBR closet (it's under the eaves so you have to bend over double to get to 2/3 of it). Irritatingly, DH has a commitment for Sunday from 11 to 6 which means we'll get Sweet Fanny Adams done that day, and that's supposed to be the only decent day of the weekend weather-wise. I need to sort my clothes - 80% of which won't fit right now but the docs assure me they will again, but at least half of THAT is stuff that will never see the light of day (raspberry suede mid-calf skirt? black velvet blouse with burnout sleeves and deep keyhole neckline? nuh-uh) so I might as well be rid of it, and maybe I'll do that Sunday while he's gone. I did sort my shoes and threw out most of them - beyond worn out, I had had one pair for 23 years! - although a couple did make it to the Goodwill bag.

I'm also hoping that we can get the guest room furniture rearranged (we've been here since Sept 2007 and the furniture in there is all still pretty much where the movers dropped it! LOL) on Saturday so I can get the bed made up... the bedding is very bulky and is making quite a big pile.

DH won a set of really nice pots and pans in a contest at work so when that arrives we'll need to reorganize the kitchen cabinets and ditch most of our existing stuff. Most of it's quite worn and was mediocre quality in the first place so I'll probably pass it along to friends for their camping gear. Don't talk to me about the kitchen junk drawer though. Just don't.