The Declutter Diaries is a series of posts I did for a former blog as a glimpse inside a real decluttering project [with occasional editorial comments from my present self]. You can start with Day One here.
[Note: things are rather sporadic at this point. I’ll try to label the posts with all the days that are included, especially all the missing days.]
Day 41
[I have no idea what happened on this day, there is no entry.]
Day 42
Today I worked on my front entry and hallway. This was surprisingly easy to declutter, mostly because there wasn’t that much there. It just looked messy because it wasn’t organized very well. I am trying out a new shoe rack for the front entry hallway. The old one didn’t work well with shoes constantly falling through into a heap on the floor. The new one is actually a set of shelves, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
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[I’m sorry the above pictures aren’t quite from the same angle and distance. I am making notes to myself about how to take good before-and-after pictures.]
[What I notice about these pictures is that straightening up and containing things really makes a big difference in how things look. I overhauled this area again last summer so there is even less junk here now, and no recycle bin. As convenient as it seemed to have the recycle bin there, I realized that the first impression people had of our home was a bunch of trash! Not good!]
The Ongoing Battle of the File Cabinet
I continued the battle with the file cabinet in the upstairs hallway. I made some headway, but it just takes soooo long to go through file folders. So far I have about an eight-inch stack of paper to put in the recycle bin. I was really hoping I’d be done with this by now, but there is an amazing amount of paper that can be stuffed into a deep file cabinet. By my approximation, there was about 4 feet of paper in there (yes, of course, it was stuffed to maximum capacity and beyond!).
My new plan of looking for what I want to have instead of what I want to throw away was marginally successful. This did get me going quickly, but it turns out there is too much that I want to save! Granted I haven’t looked at some of this stuff in ten years (as evidenced by the gardening info I found for a state lived in ten years ago), but it’s tough to just toss the whole thing without even checking to see what might be in there. It could be valuable! I might want it someday! (Did I just hear somebody make an excuse?)
The battle rages on…
[It continues to rage. Just today I spent a crazy amount of time looking for a file I’m sure I have somewhere. And once again the file cabinets are completely full and I have “temporary” boxes of files and paper looking for a home. I’m pretty sure this is the next project I need to tackle.]