Wrapping Up the January Project

Our January decluttering project has been the storage room. The has turned out to be a bigger project than I expected. It’s surprising how much stuff I can get in a box and still get the lid to close.

The shelves along the wall were the focus of the project. The goal was to get the boxes off the floor, put like items together and get rid of things we don’t use and love. We do love coffee, but there is a limit to how many coffee makers even we can use.

jpeg image-4bdd1b64c501-1

I posted about earlier progress here. These are the piles from the second part of the project.

It was a lot of work! I’m very proud of the progress we made and motivated to keep decluttering. Sorting the kids keepsakes and the photos will be on going projects along with the shelf of Legos. It’s great to start seeing empty space and not feeling so overwhelmed by all the clutter. I think we accomplished our goals of clearing the floor, putting like items together and rid of things we don’t use.

The final touches will be to deliver the donations, get rid of the trash, the empties and not piling stuff up in there to deal with later.

Planner Obsessed

I love my planner, I know that’s not a secret or a surprise. What’s surprising is how long my obsession has been going on. One of the tasks for my January organizing project was to sort my books in the storage room. In one of those boxes I found 10 years of planner pages, 2003 to 2013! TEN years! Oh my! It’s very possible they have been in that box since January 2014. My relationship with planners goes back even further, it started before my oldest was born (she’s 24 now) an I don’t expect it will end anytime soon.

I use my planner as a to do list. When something I want or need to get done is written in the planner there is an 80% it will get done, if it’s written down – well there’s a 98% I’ll forget. In addition to my to do list, I keep track of appointments, activities and birthdays on the monthly calendar page. On the weekly pages I put a reminder when to mail birthday cards, usually a week before the date. The weekly page is also where I keep my to do list, scheduled appointment, food journal, exercise log, and other reminders that may not be something I need to do but something I don’t want to forget.

My planner isn’t just a calendar or an office supply I tote around. It’s my accountability buddy and some days my brain, because I can use all the external memory I can get. How do you keep track of you to do lists? Do you use a planner, bullet journal or blank notebook? What other activities and tasks do you track to achieve your goals? Please share in the comments I love to get new ideas to (hopefully) keep me organized!

January Project Progress

The storage room decluttering project is going to be more of a challenge than I thought. Even after creating empty space on a shelf, there is still A LOT of STUFF in there.

I started with the things we obviously aren’t using, the 3 small coffee makers and the 2 coffee carafes for coffee pots we don’t own any longer. Candle holders were next, I’m just not a candle kinda girl, I dust them more than I light them.

I was surprised I only had two boxes of books – very full boxes but only two. I combined all the children’s books into one box that I placed back on the shelf along with a box containing my Harry Potter collection. A stack of books went into a separate donate box. I still have 2 boxes on the shelf, but now each are only half full and better organized. The next step is to put all the kids keepsake boxes on one shelving unit. They will have to help sort those boxes.

My progress is very slow. I have some empty space to organize things into groups, like photos and toys, in order to sort later and the donation pile is growing, but there is just a lot of stuff. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by this project. I’m trying to be mindful that every step forward is a good one, it’s going to take a while. But it will be worth it!

January Project

My January decluttering project is our (gulp) storage room, aka the black hole of stuff. It is sort of organized, at least, into broad categories but there is A LOT of STUFF. Some of the things are the kids’ keepsakes, vintage dishes from my parents’ house, boxes of photos, and more books.

Some of the thing are going to be easy to part with, like the 3 small coffee makers and the kids’ karate equipment. Some things will be harder to make a decision about, for example the Lazy Susan that is just like the one my grandma had.

Okay, so that does look a little like an ‘eye spy’ picture. I spy with my little eye 2 food processors.

The craft items and Christmas decorations (which fit in fewer bins than I started that project with) have been sorted and downsized. The kids’ things will be an ongoing project and I’ll need their help to sort those boxes. It will definitely be a multi-step process to get this project done.

What does done look like? To get the boxes off the floor and have a walkway again. To get rid of things we don’t use or love. Phase II of this project will be to NOT put things in that storage room just because I can’t decide what to do with them.