So I may have a problem, ok maybe a big problem. We have lived in our house for over 13 years and somehow I have managed to accumulate A LOT of stuff and it is pretty remarkable how much you can cram into little nooks and crannies! So with our growing family, so has our amount of STUFF! It is time for a major purge! What started as a little project (one closet) turned into the WHOLE HOUSE! I started with a closet, then the pantry, then the kitchen, then our gym and pretty soon I was in every single room! (Of course while cleaning out one room, I make a mess of another!) But the good news is I packaged up an entire BOX TRUCK of great things that are off to a better home. I am donating a lot and I will have a garage sale. (I love garage sales, I love seeing our stuff go to new good homes, I love the personal connection and I donate a portion of the money and put the rest in my kids banking accounts! But that is honestly a whole other post!)
The whole thing started with a meeting with my dear friend Katrina Teeple from Operation Organization. Though I’m a very organized person, I’m a bit of a neat freak and perfectionist, I needed a little help getting started. It was so big and overwhelming I didn’t really know where to start. So with a little help from Katrina, she showed me where to start. It was quite enlightening to go through rooms and see the opportunity to let things go. And more importantly the need for creating stations! Instead of having duplicates or even quadruples in multiple places, the pairing down and creating particular stations where you can go. Like having everything for travel in one closet, versus having everything spread through 3 or 4 closets, makes sense yet I never thought of that. Plus I never realized how many multiples I had of one item, like 8 peelers!!! So clearly I had to do a purge and ship some things off to new homes. And once I started I couldn’t stop. In fact, I am still at it.
This is still an on going project so stay tuned and I will happy to share all the new tips I get! I have a lot to learn but I can definitely tell you this, letting go is quite freeing. It is allowing me the opportunity to let go of things and clear space. It is funny, just the letting go of the physical things has freed my mind! And it is taking everything in me to not fill up the free space I create. I am going against my instincts to immediately fill the open space. So I am trying to leave them open for a least a week and see how best to use them and more importantly not just moving stuff from one spot to the next, (which I am notorious for doing).
Here are some before pictures of my madness! I will post my afters as soon as this project is complete. But first here are the pics of the madness I created! (My Husband wants to kill me, of course I did this after our house looked amazing and clean!)
This is our library! Which clearly is overly cluttered and NOT WORKING. My dream is for this room to be a quite and calm reading space for the kids and maybe a small office for me since I have lost my office. I want this to be a great quiet learning space! I have some work to do!
Tearing into the kitchen! Never realized the importance of making the space working for me!
This is what used to be our GYM. You can see that it turned into our storage room! And NO I am not a hoarder, but I know how this looks! 
Ok I know this looks bad, this WAS our guest room but it looks more like madness! It has to get worse before it gets better, right? That’s how I am going to think about this!
Ok so I may have taken over the whole house! But don’t worry I will put it back together. Just give me a week or maybe two! 🙂 By the way, my love for The Container Store is running deep right now! They are definitely helping me make better use of my space. I can’t wait to share the finished product and all the great space saving tips I come up with.
And yes, I DESTROYED our house and I have to say it has been fun and I can’t wait to finish this project and I know the finished product will be SO WORTH IT! ( My husband thinks I’m crazy! I even got into the garage. I’m not playing!)
I love this! You just made me feel normal.
I love purging stuff, but my husband and 6 kids hate it, especially the kids who hate to get rid of anything. But, with a family of 8, things pile up quickly. Every Sunday afternoon we do what I call a Sunday clean. All 8 of us, even the 3 year old, rolls up our sleeves and do a whole house clean, room by room, and as we clean we purge anything from old papers or toys to small pieces of furniture. It sounds like a huge project but with the 8 of us it takes less then 2 hours. And when we wake up on Monday morning we are ready to tackle the week ahead.
OMG I have three kids (my youngest a little younger than your son) and over the past few years my house looks like mayhem with so much “stuff”. My guest room looks very similar to yours! I love purging and have been trying to sell my good new with tags clothes on eBay and also plan on having a garage sale at some point. As well as major black bags going to big brothers big sisters. My only problem has been trying to do this while the kids are home. I need for them to go to a weekend at grandmas in order for me to really truly destroy my house the way I want to 😜😜😜😜😜. Also not sure if we are done with kids so not sure what toys and clothes of the kids to get rid of …any suggestions with that?
Good for you! Less stuff means quicker clean ups!! More time to spend doing other things! Keep going!
i had the same thing till i put up signs allover the neighborohood and had a hugh yard sale and made some money and made space to its a hard thing to get rid of ur stuff sence it took a life time to get and giving u memories to others but u gain so many time toghter it dont mean that much anymore its what in u mind and what u saw is what counts so good luck to find what u do god bless
I can’t wait to see the finished product!!! I desperately need to sort out all the cupboards in my house but It just seems so overwhelming. Its winter down here in Australia, so I might wait for a rainy day and lock myself away in the spare room for a few hours and get started!
Have you ever thought about having a reality show? There are so many filthy ones out there but I would love to see more decent ones out there. I enjoy your movies and have been following you since 7th Heaven. Thanks for sharing what you do.
Love garage sales wish I lived closer would love to come to yours