Days 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

I decided to take a break from this project with the promise to catch up as soon as I could. I was ill for a couple of days and also incredibly busy for the others. I've left most of the huge projects until last which has put me off from attempting them because they were so big. Probably not a good idea, however-- I caught up today. 

Why do I always put stuff on top of my fridge? The best answer I have is: it's out of the way, and I can hardly see it up there, so I often forget it's there at all.

So everything's off the top of my fridge and I cleaned out the cupboard above it. Booyah. 
I hate this formatting. I'm not sticking around to figure it out.  

Here's another area finished to the best of my ability. You will not see the before photo.

Again, another area, no before photo. Trust me that this looks awesome compared to before. It was all trash.

 This is probably the least organized cupboard in the house. I won't tell you what I found in there and how many duplicates of things I had. 

It's obvious that my baking cupboard is now beautiful.

Day 16

The area today is my food cupboards-- all of them (except my baking cupboard which is an insane undertaking). 

I really shocked myself here not only by putting all the seaweed on the top shelf (yes, the top shelf is exclusively for seaweed!), but moving the shelf down so I cab actually reach it. I NEVER have enough room on the bottom shelf here. I actually moved another bottle in here and I still have space left! YAY!

My good ol' beans and grains cupboards. Beans on top, grains on the bottom. Right now they're all mixed up.

In some ways, it probably looks messier, but I assure you it's well-organized in there. I threw out grains and beans I'd had for way too long (they weren't good anymore), and now I know exactly what my inventory is. This is a nice feeling. Oh yeah, and I also moved this shelf down too. I am handier and more ambitious than I thought.

This is some misc stuff, Asian cooking stuff-- more of it, and the bottom shelf is mine and Bruce's can cupboard.

Bruce saw this and said "we could do a better job with that bottom cupboard. It doesn't look better, just different." He's right. He'll probably throw that paper bag full of onions out too. I found some powdered wasabi and pickled ginger! Life is awesome! I am rich!

Day 15

 The container cupboard. This one gets ugly quickly. Why? Because I chuck stuff in there willy-nilly. I actually throw it in there unless it's glass. This has to stop. 

My dozen or so Mason jars are all dirty or in use. Most of what was in that cupboard were mismatched lids and containers. They're now Gonzo. Anything that could be recycled was recycled, as always.

  
I had a weird idea in the summer that I should collect spice racks and categorize my spices by rack (Indian, spicy, etc). This was poorly thought-out in many ways, among them is that my spice jars are of a million shapes and sizes and there's no way they'd fit on any spice rack unless it was specially made. Bruce does owe me a homemade spice rack. Maybe I will get it for our tenth anniversary. That would be awesome. 

This is my main spice drawer. It's usually fairly organized, but since starting my business, a lot of things have been neglected around here and this is one of them. It's also one of the areas that makes me the saddest to see neglected. I was putting this one off because it needed a lot of work. I finished it at around 12:30a.m. 
 

Oh, this is so nice to see. I'm sure a lot of you think this looks ugly still, but I like the variety. I also love to reuse and hate to buy unnecessary things. Also, spice jars are usually clear and I'm not a fan of keeping spices in clear jars so I minimize that as much as possible. At least the drawer is dark, which helps. 

A lot of jars didn't have top labels or labels at all because I recognized the jars. I insisted on labeling them all on the top. I also have a brown bag full of overstock (I don't have much as I buy in small quantities-- these are the ones I forgot I had and bought recently when the drawer was a mess). I have a list of my overstock that I'll keep in this drawer to reference. I did attempt to alphabetize these, but it didn't work out well because of the variety of sizes.  This project makes me really happy because I cook and bake so frequently. Mmmmm! Kind of tempted to bake right now.

Days 12, 13, 14

 This area has been in various  states of disarray, the one on the floor being mostly caused by a package from Bruce's mom. The trunk has looked like that for a while, which was me half cleaning off another surface and just leaving it there. 
 

This area has also been looking stupid for a while and used to have even more junk on it. Anyway, I cleaned it off.

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I realized yesterday that I was only a few moves away from getting the bedroom totally done. 
 

You can't really tell how awesome it is and how much work I've done, but it looks fucking awesome in our room right now.

 Not ideal, not beautiful-- but certainly uncluttered (at least for me). I'm really impressed. I just sat and stared at it last night. It's not been like this before- including when we moved in over a year ago. 

I also cleaned off the DVD rack in the living room and I'll have you know I also cleaned out INSIDE the trunk and two dressers. I found lots of missing stuff, paired about 15 or 20 pair of unmatched socks and got rid of a ton of stuff too. Didn't find any $ that I didn't know about, but that's okay. This feels great.

Day 11

This is two days' worth of clearing. I finished 95% of this one last night, but of course it's not finished until it's finished and things are looking (as) fabulous (as possible). This is the other thing I stare at (remember the ugly metal shelf?) while in bed. Gorgeous, huh?

Yes, thank you-- I think it looks a lot bette too. I could still use a better receptacle for my stockings, but I suppose there've been worse places to store one's stockings than cardboard coffins. And yes, I did hang up the painting that I found on the side of the road. I think it's pretty cute.

I forgot to take a close-up of my CD collection before I went at it, but here's a photo of that side of the livingroom before I started this project. Spot the mess of CDs!

And here they are now. As you can see, I got rid of a bunch (blank cds, blank cases, CDs to give away and sell) and reorganized the ones I'm keeping. The small rack is for CDs I'm gonna give one more chance before deciding to give away and also CDs that I've borrowed. The pile beside it is those awful CDs that don't fit in cases (what do you do with these? They are AWFUL!) and the cardboard slips I needed to take off the CDs in order to fit them in the cases. Maybe I'll get rid of those. They're literally taking up space and I'm not a "collector" of music, I just love to listen to it. My boxed sets/larger collections are in the office. I'll admit that I didn't put them in any order when I reorganized them, but I'll definitely do that another night when it's not so late. So, I have two racks for Bruce to use now. He can get his CDs out of milk crates! 

Day 9

This is the shelf in our office. It's kind of a mess. 
 

This is the shelf in our office now. It is less of a mess. 
  

The main desk drawer has been annoying me for a while. My stamper kept getting caught in the drawer every time I opened or closed it. I had a brilliant idea today: to put in a different drawer. 
 

My paper inbox which I began less than a week ago was already a huge pile o' mess. So what did I do? Filed it down to zero. Yup. The desk is now awesome. 
 

Day 8

  
This shelving unit gets neglected because I'm often rushing around in the kitchen. No excuse, really- but an explanation. I do clear this one out several times a year, but it still gets wrangly pretty quickly. 

It doesn't look that much better, but I assure you, I got rid of a hefty armload of stuff and straightened things up. It possibly looks better than it ever has.

Day 7

 Yesterday was insane and I didn't get to an area, so I did two today. Truth be told, apparently this bookshelf was supposed to be done the same day as my nightstand, but I didn't notice until I looked at the list. I will get it all done. Anyway, believe it or not, I do clear this bookshelf off every once in a while so it's not been that long since last time. 

 

It doesn't look insanely different, but it's definitely more clear. Sure I have a bunch of shit on top, but maybe I'll find another space for those things eventually. 

I've wanted to get at this shelf forever now. It grosses me out to look at, and when I'm sitting in bed, I can see it clearly. There was a lot of paper on this shelf, so it took a while to clear. I write so much shit down... notes, plans, project outlines... and they sit.  

Look at that beauty! Ok, the shelf is hideous and it looks weird all bare like that, but I'm excited the junk is gone. The cardboard box on the second shelf is actually empty, but it's a nice box so I will eventually put stuff in there that needs a home. The big pile o' papers on the floor in front of it is the humongous pile of shit I didn't need to keep anyway, and noted dreams and projects that if I want to get to in the future I can damnwell begin anew.

Day 5

 I was super super super busy today and I had a horrible sleep. I wanted to tackle a big project, but since I didn't tackle it first thing in the morning (first time since I've begun), I didn't make time for this until after midnight. I actually cleaned this up a bit the other day, so it nornally lookes even worse. 

I decided I didn't need 40 pens on my bedside table. I don't even spend much time writing in this location anymore. Tried to just keep it to the essential things I needed beside the bed, as well as only the book(s) I'm currently reading rather than all the ones I've begun and just left there. Quick job, but effective. I also cleaned up Bruce's side, but I didn't take a before photo so you don't get to see it yet. 

Tomorrow is also insanely busy and I have to get up in 4 hours. Hopefully I can sneak a quick decluttering job in tomorrow too. Why did I choose December to do this?! Ah well, it feels awesome. 

Day 4

The coat closet has been pissing me off to no end. A major factor is the insane amount of shoes. We got rid of five pair and we each found a rain jacket we didn't know we had, which would've been nice to have known in the summertime. Actually, the lady's raincoat I found I'd never seen before. It must've been left here after a party. Anyway, unless you're missing a raincoat, I'm keeping it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The formatting of this blog is pissing me off to no end, but instead of being perfect about it, I'm just gonna record my progress and keep going. This is my fifth or sixth blog, but blogger just keeps getting more complex and weird. Screw it. Anyway, here is my clean closet. I'm pumped about it. It doesn't piss me off to look at! 

Day 3

Our coffee table, like almost every surface in the house,  has become a catch-all. It's become especially irksome to Bruce. I get it. 
 

I had a feeling that the location of the coffee table was one of the reasons it'd been gathering clutter-- it wasn't even being used like a coffee table should be-- to hold drinks and magazines (and perhaps in some houses, remote controls). I moved the coffee table back to its original location in front of the couch and cleared it off. It could be even clearer, but I'll work on it. This process took the entire length of Devin Townsend's "Ziltoid the Omniscient" album and a little longer.