Check-In No. 4

It doesn't take much for inertia to take over my life. A couple weeks ago, I decided I could take a weekend off because it was my birthday... fair enough. Then last week, I just... didn't do anything. And this week it was a STRETCH to do a tiny bit of decluttering. But I did it. For you, my readers. All four of you.

OK, that's a lie. I did it for me. Because I like making progress, and um, I needed to find some tax paperwork.


ONE STEP FORWARD

If I may remind you of our starting point. Note the shelf on the right, second photo down.

I had done a little work on this handy, skinny little bookshelf already. The drawer unit holds cookie cutters, and I decided that it made sense to let them live on top of the fridge. See? I'm deciding what goes up there, not just shoving things up there randomly to get them out of the way. That's a big step. I also bought two baskets, one of which you see there, which was helpful when I was clearing off the china cabinet last time I checked in.

By the way, it's worth noting that so far, the only money I've spent on organizing accessories is the shelf unit in the hall and these two baskets. I've got a lot of containers already; I'm trying to repurpose them as much as possible. This accomplishes TWO decluttering objectives, because I have to go through the junk in the container to empty it, and then I decide what to fill it with and where to put it.

That's progress.

So at today's starting point, we have the shelf to the left. Lovely, no? No. I'd like to say that I sorted through that big pile of paper and put away all the things that no longer appear on the shelf. However, what really happened is that I dumped all the papers into a big laundry basket, with other papers waiting to be sorted. Maybe one of these posts, when I'm either feeling really brave or I've had an exceptional amount of wine, I'll post pics of the paper pile.

Then I took all the craft supplies that had piled up in that corner (including a package of brads that I really needed for a Christmas present last December, grrrr) and dumped them in a pile in the craft room.

That little white shopping bag on the top shelf? Has Christmas ornaments in it. Does that happen to you? Every year I have new ornaments or a handful of things that don't get put away with the Christmas stuff and then they're orphaned for 11 months. I need a better system than that. But at any rate, they don't need to live in prime real estate for 11 months.

You would not BELIEVE the size of the dust-bunny that was hiding under all that crap. Yuck. Anyway, ta-da! shelf on the right. Love it. Maybe we'll even try playing some of those games.

TWO STEPS BACK?

What do you mean I have to KEEP CLEANING this crap up? over and over? Man, housework just sucks, it really does. I need to hit that pile of stuff under and around the table, but I'll say that the top cleaned off a lot quicker than it did the first time. Look how shiny it is, too. Mom would be proud.

How about that fridge top? I take stuff off of here almost every day. It's a nearly irresistible clutter magnet. That white thing on the right is an extra shelf for the fridge door. Actually, I think it goes to a former fridge. That we no longer have. It's going in the trash. The basin might stay, but the stockpot has an actual home. The juiceboxes might also stay, but at least they're consumable and won't live there forever. At any rate, it's still clean enough to make me feel like I'm getting control.