Declutter Challenge

So I decided not to create a new blog for purposes of my sanity. Instead I will just continue to post to this one, and I apologize to anyone who wants to see mostly craft-related posts. You can skip these.

So if you're interested in joining, you can join at any time. Sign ups are here. The whole idea behind this challenge is to spend 30 minutes a day over 30 days getting rid of clutter in your house. The organizer encourages people who join after May 1 to start where everyone else is currently, so that you can ride that wave of momentum, instead of stressing yourself out starting at the beginning.

Week 1 is bathrooms and closets. Until today, I haven't had much time to actually work on this every day, between my kiddo not napping, appointments, and pregnancy exhaustion. However, today was my "day off." So not only did I get to sleep in this morning (by which I mean, I got out of bed at noon) and then do whatever I wanted with my day. One of the things I actually wanted to do was to get caught up. So first I tackled our bathroom, which has one single medicine cabinet in it. While I was taking things out, I also cleaned the inside of the cabinet, which gets done infrequently at best, and then put everything back that I actually wanted to leave in there. Here are the results:

Before	After

Some of the things I threw out or removed: expired medication (to be disposed of properly), empty perfume containers, things that don't actually belong in the bathroom (namely medications which don't do well in the fluctuating temperatures and moisture that is found in any bathroom), back up floss containers, and things we don't use anymore.

Then, because I was feeling pretty good about myself, I decided to tackle the linen closet as well. I spent quite a bit of time organizing the inside of the linen closet a while ago and even bought storage containers for our hair accessories, first aid kit, my makeup, the bathroom cleaning supplies, etc. Here are the pictures:

Before	After

I got rid of an entire plastic shopping bag's worth of expired contact lens solution. It expired in 2008/2009! I also consolidated several items, got rid of things that I never use (most of my nail polish, hair products, even some lotion I haven't touched in ages), put away stuff in the first aid kit after removing expired meds from there. I'm also looking forward to getting rid of some post-pregnancy items once this kid arrives in June, but until then, that sitz bath and inflatable ring, etc. will just have to continue to live in there.

The expired meds still need to be taken care of, so they are living in the trunk of my car for now, until I have time to take them to a disposal site (address is printed out and in the cup holder of the car). I figure that's the safest place to keep them out of reach of my toddler. And I also need to figure out what to do about the few things I found to donate, including a never-opened, non-expired pregnancy stick with instructions that I have corralled together in a Ziploc bag.

All-in-all I'm feeling great about my progress so far. Up next will likely be our coat closet. We have so many unnecessary pairs of shoes and coats in there, it's pretty crazy. Now that I've started, I actually look forward to doing more purging. I've always considered myself to be a hoarder, and in many ways I still am, but it felt great to drop that bag of trash in the trash can and the recyclables in the recycling container without even a hint of guilt.