January Uncluttering

Like everyone else in the world I find January a very motivating time to declutter some old stuff and clean house. Especially after getting some great new things for Christmas it’s time to make room.

I recently came across the William Morris challenge and thought I’d give it a try. It’s all about creating the home you want based on this quote:

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

–William Morris.

So, with that in mind the goal is to clean, declutter and donate items every day. At least one thing per day in one area. I can’t promise to blog every day or even to track what I’m working on but as long as I’m making progress it’s all good. Let’s start with today, shall we?

By process of eeny, meeny, miney, mo I chose this organizer in my office closet that I got from Ikea years ago:

It’s not particularly beautiful, but it is useful. And the labels mean I don’t have to take it down every time I need something.

I was able to clean out an entire drawer of  coupons that I don’t use, many of which expired 18 months ago.

There was a drawer for BART cards… well this one was interesting. I have $6.45 in metro cards from trips to Washington D.C. and $8.83 in BART cards (across 6 different cards). So I’ll use the BART tickets for my next trip to the airport, a one way is about $10.

I do have a lot of calendar stickers, stars, price stickers and such which are fine – the container keeps them organized and the drawers are labeled well.

Business cards also came out and I replace that drawer with label refills and a drawer for Post-its. Still going through the huge stack of biz cards and tossing the old ones, entering the relevant ones and finding myself amused at the items I’ve kept. Like a Borders reward card. Organ donor card. Rebate cards and even more BART cards.

Since I was going through the office supplies I decided to empty and refill the bottom drawer in my desk. Here’s what it looked like before I moved the post-it’s, label maker refills and paper to the closet:

I filled the drawer here with items I use all the time but don’t need right at hand. You know, glue, tape, paper clips. All that jazz. I didn’t throw much away, just cleaned it up so everything is visible (no stacking):

While I was working at the desk I decided to go ahead and do the second drawer which has pens, pencils, highlighters and sharpies. Also a slot for my 3-hole punch.

There were only a few things I actually threw away/donated, most went back into the desk.  Does that count for 3 areas? I know, I should spread it out over a few days but once I get on a roll I need to keep going.

I purposefully am not creating a list, a process or a system around this project. Just keep working on one space at a time and only keep items that are useful or beautiful, preferably both.

About these ads