It is day 30 of the 40 Bags in 40 Days Decluttering Challenge. Today I get to share with you one of my own projects.
My guest room closet is my space in the house for my hobbies/memories. The room used to be my home office until shifting things for a second kid. Since then it has slowly become a disaster area for memorabilia and my personal craft supplies.
I am an avid knitter, a barely part-time scrapbooker and a two times a year sewer. This closet contained bins of yarn (sadly not my complete stash!), completed hand knit hats for my Etsy hat shop (https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmilyAndrewKnits), fabric, a sewing machine, scrapbooks and bins of memorabilia. I also have supplies for beading and coloring in there too. I like to think of this closet as my “some day” projects. You know, when you have a lot of extra time on your hands.
I would like you to note, even though I am a professional organizer, my spaces don’t look Pinterest or Instagram worthy. They are real. This closet could be in any home I work in. Sometimes getting the item back to the closet is more important than stacking it in picture perfect bins!
My Accomplishment
Today I had a window of time with no kids, no clients, and no pressing projects. I was ready to be ruthless. I am proud to say that I got rid of 8 bags of fabric, yarn and misc. items. While I still have a lot of supplies, I am now able to reach all of them without taking out bins to unbury other bins. That is an accomplishment!
Where I got stuck was where most of us do, on memorabilia. That took the most time, because I felt like I needed to really hold each item and decide if it still meant something to me. I limited myself to one memorabilia box. I weeded out all of the photographs and put them aside for a larger project of scanning and archiving all of them. If I picked up something and it didn’t make me smile, or I couldn’t remember why it was important to save, it went. I am down from at least five miscellaneous holders of cards, photos, and other items I dumped in there for my “some day” scrapbooks, to one simple box.
I consider this day’s work the first layer. I cleared out at least a third of what is in there. My goal is to get through even more, but I know with my limited time and emotional capacity for more difficult decisions, that today was a great accomplishment! We won’t talk about the other areas of the house the other craft supplies live…that’s for another day.
I hope you feel the same sense of accomplishment in your projects.
Happy Organizing,
Kristin