This January I committed to decluttering our home and setting up systems to make it easy to stay organized and tidy.
I typically take the beginning of every year to declutter, so there’s nothing unusual about that process. However, this year I am doing a #onebuyamonth shopping challenge, where I am only making one purchase each month this year. The combination of decluttering (read: ruthlessly purging) and minimizing the flow of “things” coming into our home has been life changing! It has created so much space for me to think about what we really need to make our house serve us, instead of us serving our house! With less stuff to put away, the tidying process is so much easier and takes so much less time to do so.
The amount of energy and mental space that it took to unpackage, try on, return, etc. is now free to be used towards other things that are more life-giving! The overwhelm of keeping clean and organized is gone, because we have less stuff to manage. I wish I started this sooner!
The thing I have been most surprised about is how long it is taking to declutter my WHOLE HOUSE. There are years worth of stuff that has been ignored and the initial motivation I had when I started is waning, but I keep reminding myself WHY I’m doing this.
I wrote out my Primary Goals when I started this living minimally process and they are:
1. Declutter, organize and simplify my life (less is more).
2. Learn how to be financially responsible (budget/save).
3. Be intentional about what I’m buying and bringing into my home.
4. Learn to be creative with what I already have (stop impulse buying).
5. Create space (mental and physical) for things that matter.
At heart, I am a shopper. Always have been.
So 2023 is the year I have said YES to decluttering, simplifying and not impulse buying for myself and our home. You can follow along on my journey through my Stories on Instagram, under the “#onebuyamonth” highlight. I plan to dedicate a specific post about the details of my Shopping Challenge here on the blog soon, I’m excited to share my process of creating a Wardrobe Capsule and my monthly purchase updates!
I have a weekly date with myself (usually on Sunday) where I have a cup of coffee, map out my calendar for the week, meal plan, and make notes of my to-do’s (I carry over any that were not done from the previous week). I love this time to myself and always appreciate getting myself organized once the week gets going!
This week, I tackled decluttering and organizing our hall closet, which is located right off of our kitchen.
We don’t keep jackets in this particular closet, as we have a bigger closet at the end of the hall near our back door. This hall closet is used primarily for storing our office supplies, desk supplies, cords, papers to file, etc. The layout of this closet is a bit unusual as it does not go all the way to the floor, because the stairs to our basement on the other side of the wall cuts it short. So this has always made this closet somewhat weird to have to climb up on the landing to get any coats on or off the bar. So office supply closet it is!
I have three drawer units that I put side-by-side to keep us organized. We have two of THESE and one of THESE (which has two larger drawers for bigger items), both come with a top lid that has organizing compartments.
The right drawer unit has a drawer for each of us. This is where I put any school papers, art, cards, school/sports photos all throughout the year. I later file that year’s worth of “special things” into a school memory box that I bought for each kid, which has a hanging file folder for each grade (Pre-K through 12th grade). I found mine on etsy, you can find some really cute ones if you search for “school memory box”. These bins help my kids be more at ease with me throwing away most of the other stuff that comes home every day, because they know they can either keep the papers that mean something to them or take a photo of them (with my phone) and throw it away in real life.
The middle drawer unit (which I still need to print out labels with my favorite LABEL MAKER) stores our medical bills, shipping envelopes, label maker/tape replacements, house reno bills/contracts, frame hardware and phone supplies.
Here’s the left drawer unit…
On the top lid of the drawer units are our flashlights, shipping tape, stationary, tape measurers, spare change jar and dry erase markers (for our whiteboard calendars on the next wall).
On the top shelf of this hall closet are a few random items. Two binders that organize appliance manuals and original receipts, a portable DVD player, more shipping tape, an SLR camera and a megaphone.
I do believe that along with decluttering, setting up systems is key to maintaining organization. Everything must have a “home” that requires minimal effort to put away, otherwise it’s just not sustainable for me! These drawer units have been super helpful for just that. The manual/receipt binders and kids’ school memory boxes require a lot of effort up front to setup, but they are so worth it for the peace of mind to know the important (and sentimental) things are being put in a safe place that is accessible if needed.
That’s it for this week’s organizing project! Hope your week is off to a good start! It certainly feels like a Tuesday rather than a Wednesday since the kids had a three-day weekend, but I’m not complaining!
For other organizing projects around our house, you can check out our…
…and if you want to see some of my favorite organizing storage solutions, you can check them out here…
HOME & ORGANIZATION AMAZON FINDS
Happy Wednesday, friends! xoxo
