How my house lost weight

Hello there! How was your weekend? Ours was great – how about those Colts?! There’s a lot of folks in Indiana dragging today, we had to stay up and watch a the whole thing. What a great game!

Anyway, I didn’t get any DIY done this weekend because I had one. sole. focus…get the rest of the house DECRAPIFIED.

By the way, I can’t take credit for that term. A very lovely reader used it years ago and I was instantly hooked on it. I asked her if I could use it cause it was so awesome. And I do. It’s a good word.

I’ve mentioned once or 75 times that I’ve been working on cleaning out the house for the past few months. I didn’t realize how long it’s been till I looked back at some posts. It’s been a LONG time.

I don’t mind the process but doing as intensely as I did got to be a little much at times. I would stall out for a week or two and then go back to it. And I was easily sidetracked and would have to finish up DIY projects as I went along.

I got ‘er done. A lot.

I think the biggest difference is in the kitchen. The drawers open easily (nothing “sticking” as I open or close them):

A functioning drawer is highly underrated. I like not fighting with my drawers. :)

I showed you how I cleared out the utensils and organized them here:

And the clean and organized pantry last week:

I use a lot of dressers around the house, including this one in our foyer. The handle on that top drawer (my tool drawer) has broken twice because it was so heavy. Now it’s decluttered and light as a feather:

As light as tools can get anyway.

And no, I don’t organize every bit of stuff in the drawers – when there’s less in there I can see to find what I need easily so I don’t think it’s needed.

There are even a few completely, gloriously empty drawers in the house!:

The other room that I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in is our mud room – the floors and shelf were covered with, well…CRAP.

Even the utility closet was a mess – now we just open the door and select the cleaning tool of our choice:

I had been hoarding floor cleaning stuff. It was a bit ridiculous. I need one broom and a couple floor cleaning jobbies – not 12.

While I was at it I gave the whole a room a nice coat of clean white paint:

I’m SO glad to be done with the yellow in there and I’m still in love with the white!

The bathroom linen closets were purged and organized as well:

Complete with LABELS on the bins so they stay that way!

While I was at it in the downstairs powder room I added some fun to the laundry chute:

Want to smile when you open your closet? Add polka dots.

One of the rooms that lost the most weight was our guest room. The closet was a dumping ground for sure. I cleaned it out and used some scrap wood to make better use of all the space in there:

While I was at it I painted the room (it had been waiting years for its turn):

Still loving that light green color too!

I can’t even tell you how many trips to the recycling bins and Goodwill I made – I lost count. I actually have a load in the back of my SUV right now. I just had to get that last pile out of the house. :)

I do have a few more spots to tackle that I knew I’d have to wait on – the master closet is one. Lots of laundry happening this week and then we can really start going through all the clothes. That room just by itself will take at least a month. It’s bad. Very bad.

But the garage is up next on my list. I’m completely reorganizing and moving things around in there. My plan is to create a workshop where there wasn’t one so I’m super excited about that.

And finally…the BAG. While going through the house there were always little things that hung me up. You know, those little jobbies you are pretty sure you need but you can’t think of a good spot and wait, maybe you don’t need them but you need more time to decide?

Yeah. I put all of those in a bag:

Those annoying things trip me up suck out my decluttering mojo. So they must be bagged till I can deal with them. It helps. Cause I’m a bagger.

I already found the rug I’m planning to use as my inspiration in the mud room inside. I knew it was in the house but couldn’t find it anywhere. I wonder what other treasures are in there?? I’ll go through that today, take the final trip to Goodwill and I’m calling it done till next year!

Usually I tackle this earlier in the new year, but I started later this year. Oh who am I kidding – it went all year. But it is nice to hit the holidays with a house that weighs about 200 pounds less, figuratively and literally.

Ahhhhh…it is a GREAT feeling!! Virtual high five y’all!!