Culling the house Part 1: Reclaiming the spare bedroom

Good morning!

I hope everyone is doing well out there, and that there are no hurricanes, snow and ice storms, or polar vortices  that people are dealing with.  We’ve all had enough of those things, for sure.  Today, I’m sharing a post on reclaiming my spare bedroom.  I’m not sure how it got to this state but I’ll walk you through how I “tamed” the mess, reclaimed my spare bedroom, and kept my motivation up along the way.  Warning:  Some psychology reflections/tips here, and as I’m fond of saying:  Take what you need/can use and leave the rest.  And lots of references to “stuff”.

I loved this definition of stuff:  “matter, material, articles, or activities of a specified or indeterminate kind that are being referred to, indicated, or implied”.  It pretty much covers everything, yes?

So, does everyone have storage issues?  Because I sure do. I didn’t used to, really, but then I started a tablescaping blog.  For those who aren’t familiar with tablescaping, it means you like setting pretty (hopefully) tables and in so doing, generally acquire varying amounts of stuff.

The spare bedroom is our dumping ground – its where everything ends up when we need to put things somewhere that don’t have a home- it usually happens when we have to clean up in a hurry.   Here’s what it looked like in early January 2022.  Not the greatest way to start out the new year.  But if I was honest, its been this way -more or less – for about two years now.  Probably since Covid started, but this is it definitely at its worst.  And so that’s where I’m starting from…

Its really hard to see that there’s a bed under all this stuff.  I’m normally a pretty organized person around the house.  I dislike clutter and mess.  A lot.  It makes me anxious.  And so I did what many people do when confronted with something that makes them anxious – I avoided it.  Closed the door; out of sight out of mind.  Sort of, but not really.  Its still niggling there in the back of my mind.

So how did it get this way?  It could be any number of things: Lack of time, lack of energy, lack of motivation, being over-committed, and the list goes on.  Any or all of the above lol.  In my case, in addition to my lack of time and motivation, there was/is a more fundamental problem, and that is that we don’t have a lot of storage space in our house.  In fact, apart from the garage, we have two linen closets and this smallish space under the stairs that doubles as my craft room closet and storage space.

Here is the craft/storage space under the stairs in our basement.  It has some shelves on the back wall that are chock full.  And then some.

There are bags of stuff on the floor – flowers mostly, I think.  Its hard to get in and out of here…

And bags hanging on nails in the studs – mostly garlands, I think.  It was not a pretty picture and I knew that I was probably going to have to go through mostly everything in here to see what I didn’t need anymore and what I wanted to keep.  And I haven’t culled any of this stuff since we moved into the house in 2013.  Almost nine years worth – no, don’t even go there – its discouraging at the outset to even think about that.  Daunting, in fact.  A plan was needed instead.

Plans are good.  Or a plan, singular.  Basically, I need to better manage my limited storage space.  But before I can put a plan into action, I need to decide what I want to accomplish.  I want the flowers in containers so I can see what I have and off the floor so I’m not tripping on them.  I want those bags off the studs.  And I want to create some space for my overflow candles and bottle brush trees.  Okay, good.  A start.  I also need a timeline.  The date on the first photos of the state of the bed (above) was January 1, 2022.  I gave myself a month to get it done.

So plan into action.  First of all, I have a ton of Christmas wrapping paper.  Its hard to see it, but some of it is in containers behind the clutter on the shelf with all the trees.  There are also two more containers on the floor under the shelves.  I know that I don’t need all this paper and I’m pretty sure I had it before we moved into this house.  And if I haven’t used it in all the time we’ve been here I’m unlikely to use it in the future.  Plus, its difficult to access with all the other stuff in the way.

So going through all the wrapping paper was the first step.  Most people probably already know this, but when you have a huge task in front of you, break it down into manageable steps, especially if you only have small spurts of time to work at it.  Be kind and give yourself a pat on the back for every simple step you’ve accomplished.‎

Of course my culling spilled out into the family room –  there was certainly no space to sort it in the bedroom…  Tip:  Be prepared for the mess to get worse before it gets better.

I had to go through all the Christmas bags as well.  Here you can see the number of wrapping paper rolls that were destined for donation in the blue bags.  Wrapping paper culled.  Check.

Next came the flowers.  I wanted to them in containers so I could actually see what I had.  With the two containers of wrapping paper gone on one shelf and another two on the floor, there was now some room for my flowers.

Sorting through flowers…  I put them into containers by season.  Turns out I have a lot of flowers.

Flowers are off the floor and stored in containers on the shelf and on the floor under the shelves.  The larger Christmas flowers are on the very top shelf in bags.  All relatively easy to access.  Check.

Tip:  Try not to undermine your successes with negative qualifiers.  What do I mean by that?  Focus on what you accomplished and not what you didn’t.  As an example: “Well, I made some progress tonight, but I didn’t get as much done as I wanted”.  As it stands, it almost sounds like you “failed” to accomplish something and how helpful is that?  Just put a period after the word “tonight” – better yet, an exclamation mark – and lose the rest of that sentence.

Okay.  Onto to making some space for my candles and bottle brush trees.  Oddly enough, I didn’t take a picture of these shelves before I started.  I just have this one picture in which I’ve taken out most of the boxes of ornaments so I could go through them.

Culling the ornaments.

And done.  Yes, I know the shelves are still very crowded (negative qualifier here lol), but the overflow candles and most of the bottle brush trees now have a home, except for the ones that were too tall for the shelf.  Check.

Am I making progress on the bed?  In this blue bag is a Christmas centerpiece that’s been here forever.

It finally found a home beside the Christmas flowers on the top shelf in the storage room. It’s been on the bed so long that it’s actually made an indentation in the bedspread.  Yes, that’s summer stuff there too…  But, you can see parts of the bedspread now.  Yay.

Things got a little worse when I decided I might as well clean out the bedroom closet too and other stuff crept on to the bed from hidey-holes unknown.  Tip:  Expect hiccups along the way; try not to get sidelined and just stay focused on the plan.

Finally (after some elapsed time), all that was left on the bed were things to be donated.  I dropped it all off at the thrift store on Sunday, January 30th.  Timeline met.  Check.

In the storage room, I didn’t find a place for all my flowers and I wasn’t able to get rid of all the bags on the studs.  Most of the bags held garlands which are now hanging from the nails.  Yup, I’ll have to dust them before I use them, but at least I can see what I have.  Is more culling required?  Absolutely.  This storage room is never going to make the cover of House Beautiful, but that was never the intention.  Tip:  Be realistic with your expectations; my storage room is a small space and has to work hard to accommodate everything I want to store.

And the bed? Completely uncluttered.  Oh wait.  There is one more thing on the bed – its a luxurious set of new sheets!  Last tip:  Treat yourself (or your guests in this case) for a job well done.  You deserve it!  As the school of behaviorism tells us, positive reinforcement increases the likelihood that the behavior will occur again in the future!  And this is a very good thing for me since there are other areas in our house that need my culling attention lol.

And on that note, Happy February everyone and happy culling if you are so inclined!

Sharing with Between Naps on the Porch, Metamorphis Monday.

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