I was sure I wasn’t going to make it this month. That’s why I skipped posting about it last week. So much other things to do… I even had a draft ready of a post stating that sometimes things don’t go as you plan them. But then I crossed off a few pressing things of my list-of-more-important-stuff and I did find some time and energy to tackle my Three Things.
First, the closet. Here’s what I started with at the beginning of the month.
Doesn’t look too bad, but that’s because the rest of our cloths wasn’t even in the closet…
Two weeks ago I did some decluttering, and stuffed some summer and too small cloths in suitcases, but this is where that ended.
Still no room for our cloths. So I did another round.
One of the suitcases went home with one of the girls (who has her own appartment now!). Those shoes (in the red boxes) I never wear, since I’m not the type of girl that goes upstairs before leaving the house to find the right shoes. I brought them downstairs to see if that helps (or maybe I’m a just-one-pair type of girl, we’ll see). There are also some hiking shoes in that closet that we hardly ever wear, so I’ll find a place for them downstairs too (those are out of the closet, but not really stored somewhere right now).
I sorted through the christmas stuff, put the Christmas books in the bookcase, the music and movies with the other music and movies (make sense, doesn’t it?) and threw some stuff out. I went from two very big boxes to one slightly smaller box. Succes!
Now we do have room for our clothes.
Left to right (sort of): three suitcases, containing summerclothes, too small stuff and bags, sleeping bags and boxes of old toys and my wedding dress. Hanging: his jeans and his shirts. Behind the shirts are a dress and a skirt of mine, and a leather coat that doesn’t fit, but that I want to hold on to for a little while. In the white drawer baskets: my trousers and sweaters, my t-shirts, bedlinnen and his t-shirts.
I still didn’t paint or buy fancy shelves, but it is a lot more organized.
Then it was time to tackle the cupboard that houses our photo albums and all stuff related to that.
I took everything out and started sorting. That didn’t help much.
But I didn’t give up, kept sorting and ended with this. One bag of trash (mostly paper – receipts and other memorabilia of our travels that on closer examination don’t really add to the memory), some things that need to be stored in our office (cd-roms with drivers and manuals) and an empty box that used to be on top of the cupboard and contained even more stuff (and patterns, that I put on my sewing table for now).
The thing that improved the organization of this still full and cluttered cupboard the most are in the middle of the top shelve. I sorted our papers into sex of these plastic envelopes. One for each of the girls and one for me and husband together (containing reportcards, swimming diploma’s etc.), one for family things (newspaper clippings – these girls have made a few public appearances, notes they wrote, things like that) and one for cards and small things some of my (blogging) friends send me. As I said, it’s still looking cluttered, but I know where to find everything now.
My last “thing” was to hang some curtains in the kitchen. It was a small thing to do, but I’m very pleased with how finished it looks.
Before:
After (never mind the color difference, it was too late in the afternoon to take good pictures):
So, I actually did finish my three things (mostly because I felt some pressure from blogging about it). Phew.
4 years
1400+ pages
350,000+ words
7 books
each new one feels like such a milestone… I wonder if it ever gets normal. I hope not.
Oh my, I’m not doing very well keeping up with this blog. Maybe it doesn’t feel like that to you, but I’m so close to giving up almost daily. But then I realize all I have to do is translate what I posted on my Dutch blog. I should be able to keep up with that. Or not?
I’m still not sure.
But as long as I haven’t decided what to do, here’s my Tuesday post ;-)
I sorted through all our cloths. The summer cloths are now stored in the suitcase we will be using in February again.
The rest got sorted also. The big pile on the right is what doesn’t fit me, the pile left to that will be donated.
I’m still hoping to loose that weight again, so the too small cloths are stored in another suitcase for now. I am working myself up to donating it anyway, but I’m sort of attached to some of these.
And then I tried to get everything back into the closet. Uh… that’s not really what I was hoping for.
Still a lot of work to do…
My things for this month:
- organize closet (started, see above)
- declutter and organize photo-cupboard (ignoring this one for now)
- buy or make curtains for the kitchen (I bought one, but haven’t gotten to sizing and hanging it yet)
