OK, next time I make a big declaration on here I must think it through. I started the big declutter last September. Then we went on holiday for 2 weeks in October and although I managed to stay on track a bit between that and Christmas it has just stopped since then, even I was wondering wtf happened to it so you may have thought I'd just given up! But no, I just lost track of time and all of a sudden it's May next week and the decluttering is still not done. The last post was
here in December.
A few things I really couldn't plan for, like deciding to climb 2 mountains this year and therefore having to start training and working on fundraising in January, kind of hijacked all my time. However I was so close to the finish line, I had pretty much finished the list, with only the furniture left to go and then rearranging all my new empty space to look gorgeous! To get to the furniture I had to actually get rid of the boxes piled up waiting to go though. The last photo I shared was this, for scale that pile of boxes came to my shoulder height.
Not a lot happened then for a few months, but in Jan I threw a bit of a strop about this stuff STILL being in the hallway and Tom took 2 boxes of books, DVDs and random stuff to the charity shop. I got rid of the cream chairs of freecycle in January, as we now have our benches. with the dining table. Then last week I got rid of the old turtle tank filter, the old tent with a broken zip and some bubblewrap on freecycle. Now there isn't much left. I took the old computer to my sister last week, and sold the armchair and chest of drawers on Gumtree for £15 so we are really getting there. There is one box
still left of random stuff, mostly electronics and Toms old man cave stuff (i.e. an old broken xbox, approx 500 pairs of headphones and random cables) which have lived in this box since we moved in together, but we used to have an attic to keep it in so it was OK, but now it's got be used or got to go.
We are slowly getting there with getting rid of stuff, then last weekend I started moving the furniture around out there. I moved the music equipment from the little drawers in the corner into boxes in the now empty bookshelf, then moved the wardrobe round to by the door and the bookshelves to the opposite wall.
That's a bouldering mat leant on the wall, nowhere else to keep it for the moment.
All the music equipment that was in the small chest of drawers is in the butterfly boxes (£2.99 from B&M), the gloves and scarves are in the bottom one too.
Look at all that space in the middle!! As a reminder this is how it looked before:
All of the chairs are gone, the small drawers are gone, the brown bookshelf next to the door is now inside the wardrobe, the guitar cases are on top of or inside the wardrobe and half of the books are gone. The only thing I want to do in this room now is get a better shoe rack, one which is enclosed so the shoes don't look so messy and also one that is a bit more sturdy as ours is a bit wobbly.
Now the hallway is full of things for a jumble sale at
my fete on 17/5 in aid of Maggie's Centres, so the decluttering has stopped again but I am contributing a load of my own stuff to the jumble sale so hopefully that will be the last and I can share some more before and after pictures!
