I have been meaning to declutter and sort out our new family room (converted from our garage) since last Christmas but the task seemed overwhelming. There were just so many books, cds, games, printed music, video games etc. And it all had to be fitted into two large and two small bookcases. And one of the large bookcases is still in our small utility room, making accessing the washing machine very difficult and annoying me on a regular basis!. It is full of printed music, music magazines, plastic bags and other miscellaneous stuff so needs emptying before we can move it. Just thinking about dealing with it all made me feel tired so I kept ignoring it.
But then I decided to take my own advice and START SMALL!!!! In this case, the big task is trying to sort out all my books. I have filled one large bookcase already but the rest of my books are in boxes, piles on the floor or stuffed into the other smaller bookcases. Despite having taken several bags to the charity shop, there still seem far too many for the one remaining bookcase (currently in the utility room – see above!) and I have been giving up on trying to make a difference.
So on Saturday afternoon, I decided to concentrate on other stuff in the family room and ignore the books. I challenged myself to deal with each object I picked up. I managed to repackage two computer accessories that weren’t being used and put them in the study where we usually keep computer items, as well as an Ethernet cable that had been hidden by the other two items. That left a bit of a gap on the top of one of the small bookcases which cheered me up. But I felt I had done enough by then so left it for the day.
Then today I decided to do a bit more and, again, returned items to where they should be eg 3D glasses to the ‘Spy Kids 3’ DVD box, CDs to the CD bookcase, books to the book pile as well as adding to our recycling bin several discarded papers that had been forgotten about and weren’t needed. Finally, all I had left in one of the small bookcases were music and guitar magazines and quite a lot of free space. Amazed at how quickly I had made a difference, I decided there and then to move all the music from the utility room into this small bookcase. Altogether this took about half an hour and I could not believe what a mountain I had made of what turned out to be a mole hill of a task.
The next step will be to move the bookcase out of the utility room into the family room. I should then be able to get more books off the floor which will be great. Of course, I then have to decide what to do with all my son’s computer games but one step at a time!
The moral of this tale – declutter a bit at a time and you will be amazed at how much difference you can make to your home.
