The goal, declutter our house in 30 days, before the kids are home for summer vacation. Today’s post is about how it’s going after completing week one of the declutter challenge. I promised I would update you with a decluttering diary of sorts, and today is the first update.
I got a bit of a late start on this project. I blame the garden, but if I’m being honest with myself, it’s more about feeling overwhelmed and procrastinating. I had to dig deep to address the overwhelm and even referenced an old article about decluttering when overwhelmed. Thank you, past self, for that gem. Current self appreciates.
In general, I noticed this week that the starting part was the hardest. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I even found myself taking the extra step of not only decluttering but also rearranging the decor, organizing things a bit differently, and playing around with how my home looks and functions. It’s been a while since I’ve found great joy in that or found a flow state in our home in general. I 100% blame the clutter for the lack of home joy.
But enough about that, let’s dive into the decluttering diary for the first week. And if you want to play along, here’s the 30-Day declutter challenge with the accompanying PDF printable I’m working on.
Day One – Removing The Trash
Okay, here is why I had a hard time starting this challenge. With this step, doing a trash sweep of our home, I was in denial that we even had trash to remove. I had this mental block telling me I don’t need to do this step, I’m sooooo good at tossing things that are damaged beyond repair, expired, or beyond their usable life. But I forced myself to do it, and surprise, surprise, I found trash. LOTS of trash.
I forced myself to grab a trash bag and walk through the house with my decluttering eye at full attention, scanning for trash. There…on the floor by the washing machine…an old, ripped, oh so flat pillow that the new kitten peed on…trashed. And there, the toddler air mattress we’ve repaired so many times it’s practically one big patch, and yet it still leaks. And there, a stack of old paperwork and seed catalogs we don’t need.
Before I knew it, I filled up a couple of bags of downright trash from our home. I didn’t go too crazy. I know there was so much more I could probably dig into, but one of my declutter challenge rules was to keep each step under 30 minutes. When the timer rang, I gave up the ghost.
Day Two – Addressing That Junk Drawer
I feel like the weirdest family in the world because we don’t have a traditional junk drawer. But we also don’t have many drawers in our kitchen. But in the spirit of the declutter challenge, I did address what would be our junk drawer. It’s a small drawer in our kitchen that holds chargers, cords, flashlights, and headlamps (a necessary country living apparatus for midnight chicken checks that 100% belongs in the junk drawer).
I checked each flashlight, removed the ones that don’t work, replaced batteries on a few, and put back the keepers. Simple enough.
The cords were another issue. A few years ago, I bought a few multi-device charging cords. They have three different charging ends which cover ALL of the things that require charging via a USB block in our home. But yet, we still have one million other charging cords.
I took every cord and charging block out of the drawer and only put back the universal charging cord and block. For now, I piled all the extra charging cords into a small tote. The plan is to collect them all during this declutter challenge and then address them as a group. Likely, toss them all.
Day Three – Decluttering And Cleaning The Refrigerator
Here was another blatant denial moment. I didn’t think we had any refrigerator decluttering to tackle. However, I often opened the fridge to see what we had to make dinner with, and it would be full. But yet I couldn’t find anything to feed our family with. Huh. I guess I did need to declutter.
So I went through category by category, reorganizing as I went, with the first step of purging what was expired or anything I knew we wouldn’t eat. Things like a hot sauce we bought to try and ultimately hated.
I also tried to give hard stops for the space dedicated to condiments. I like the bare minimum in terms of sauces and condiments, and lately I’ve been leaning into making my own fresh sauces. Move over, Hidden Valley Ranch, momma’s making her own! But the rest of my family does not agree.
The refrigerator decluttering could probably use one more pass, but it’s a big improvement over what it was before. It’s like the same feeling after decluttering a clothes closet, everything left is things we use and eat regularly, making meal and snack decisions so much easier.
Plus, it was handy to have it cleaned out since garden season is upon us. The amount of fresh veggies I cram in here before processing can get out of control once harvests start rolling in, and I need every inch of refrigerator space I can get. Here’s the refrigerator before and after (decluttering AND grocery shopping).
Day Four – Tackling The Bathroom Cabinets
This was the day I felt like I was REALLY making a decluttering difference. We have three bathrooms in this house, all of which are small and can only fit the bare minimum. So, setting up each bathroom as efficiently as possible is necessary. Since this was a big step for our house, I gave myself a couple of hours to declutter, clean, and reorganize each bathroom cabinet.
First Floor Bathroom
This bathroom is under renovation and currently a construction zone. As such, everything that’s normally in a bathroom cabinet was in boxes. So instead of decluttering a cabinet, I set up a shelf, decluttered what was in the boxes, and organized all the bathroom cabinet stuff on the shelves.
This bathroom is the main bathroom where we store alot of things like medicines, first aid, etc., so this was the most time-consuming bathroom to work through. I tossed everything expired, realized how little sunscreen we had, placed a big order, organized everything by category, and found homes for things that didn’t belong here.
I have to say, that is one organized bathroom shelf, and it makes me feel so good. I intentionally put the kids’ things, like sunscreen and bandages, lower so they have easier access to them. I do need to figure out how to store medications better. If you have a product or system that works with children around, please let me know. Everything has child safety lids, but I would prefer one more level of protection.
Girls Bathroom
The girls’ bathroom holds very little, so this was a quick cabinet to clear out. I started by decluttering and organizing under the sink. Pretty much all that’s under here is a trash can, extra soap and shampoo, and a few rolls of toilet paper. We had stored some scrub brushes in here, but I moved them back downstairs with all of our other cleaning supplies. The cabinet is also broken in multiple places, so there were a few bits and parts stored here, which I kept. We want to replace the cabinet and sink, since we don’t love the double faucets, so we’ve been reluctant to repair the broken cabinet.
The biggest declutter was the first aid cabinets hanging on the wall. They’re a vintage find from back when we first renovated this bathroom in 2016. I love them, but they are useless for storage because they still have vintage bandages in them. I had a hard time tossing them back then, but now, we could use the storage. Out they went. I had planned to replace the contents with the girls’ Welly bandages and essential oil rollers. But once I emptied the containers out, I realized they were a rusty hot mess and just left them empty.
Primary Bathroom
Fun fact: our bathroom sink cabinet still holds some tools and supplies leftover from our bathroom renovation in 2023. Huh, I think it’s time to take those out, which I did. It was the only thing we had stored in the cabinet, so after removing it, I filled it up with the extra toilet paper for now. I’m still not quite sure what I want to store in here since there’s a large storage cabinet right beside the bathroom in my closet.
I also decluttered the vintage cabinet hanging over the toilet, but there wasn’t much in it either. I think I need to spend a day and really organize this bathroom to make it work better storage-wise.
The big project for this bathroom was decluttering the cabinet next to the bathroom. This cabinet also holds other things, like extra clothes (painting clothes), so the first step was removing anything that didn’t fit the purpose. Then I went through and purged anything I don’t love or use anymore (bye old lotion and eye shadow). Then I gave a quick organizing pass. In the end, I realized I had three open packages of razor blades, which I consolidated. I also found homes for things like bobby pins, makeup sponges, and other things that didn’t have good homes. It’s by no means perfect, but now everything fits, and it’s much easier to locate what I’m looking for. And did you see the free space?! It’s like the holy grail of decluttering!!!
Day Five – Approaching The Linens
It’s linen day. I’ve been looking forward to linen day for a while since the linens have felt absolutely out of control. See overflowing sheets in the photo above. We had too many sheets for each bed to fit the storage space or our needs. Plus, so many sheets were worn out and needed to be tossed. AND we still had sheets for bed sizes we don’t have anymore.
I started by pulling everything out. Blankets from the blanket chest and sheets from the cabinet drawers (except they didn’t fit, so there was also a rogue pile in the rocking chair). I sorted through the blankets first, refolded them, and put them back. Most of them are vintage grandma quilts with no chance for us ever getting rid of them.
Then I sorted through the sheets. I refolded each one and sorted everything by bed size. The old pillowcases and sheets with stains and holes got tossed. The kids did a number on some of our sheets during an unfortunate markers-in-bed phase. Then I kept one extra set of sheets for each bed, one set of sheets for the pull-out couch, and donated everything else. So much better.
Day Six – Paring Down The Spice Cabinet
The spice cabinet is a touchy subject at our home. I like the basics; my husband likes the blends. I started with the bags of bulk spices. Anything we haven’t used in the last year, I tossed, and I took the opportunity to top off the spice jars. We repurpose our jars, just buying spices from the bulk section of our local market. Sometimes, I buy more than what fits in the jar, so I keep the baggies of bulk spices in a basket until there’s room for them.
Then I went through the blends and had Colby determine what he does and does not want or need anymore. I followed that up by going through the other things in the cabinet, like birthday candles, food colorings, extracts, muffin tin liners, etc. Much of what I went through we use regularly. Good job, us (pat self on back). I tossed one spice blend that no one in the family enjoyed.
Day Seven – Decluttering The Kitchen Pantry
Our last step for the week was a doozy: decluttering the kitchen pantry. This included both the pantry cupboard and the deep pantry shelves that we built last year. Both had gotten a little out of control.
First up, the pantry cabinet. Everything that has sat in here for a year and no one has eaten? Gone. My husband went gluten-free this past year to try to support his trigeminal neuralgia and had great success. So all those gluten-ous snacks of his that no one else likes were tossed. Afterward, I took a little time to reorganize, grouping cans and decanting cereals and grains, etc., so it’s much easier to find what I’m looking for now.
Next up were the pantry shelves and the deep pantry of flours, sugars, oatmeal, pasta, and more. I’ve kept it relatively organized throughout the last six-ish months since we built the shelves, but there was still a little fluffing to happen.
All in all, I went into the week thinking I would maybe get rid of a dozen things. All in, I removed 265 items from our home. I also did a little extra decluttering; it’s not just the items for the projects above. There was a decent stack of kids’ clothes in there as well. Needless to say, it’s always those who don’t think they need to declutter who need it most—Hashtag wise words.
Pssst…Who else is decluttering? Anyone? If so, how has the process been going? Do share in the comments below!
