Hello, and welcome to Day Two of the #organizethis challenge. Let the organizing begin!
1. Empty out your space. Now that you’ve chosen your space, and figured out what you need that space to do, it’s time to go through all the stuff and figure out what needs to stay and what needs to go. I find that it helps to empty the space out entirely. This works for your clothes in your closet, it works for the utensils in your cooking drawer, and it works for the stuff in my craft closet.
Holy moly, that is a lot of craft. Understanding that removing all the items is more of a challenge when you’re doing a whole room, and acknowledging too that moving all this stuff out can be disruptive to the flow of your daily life, I nonetheless cannot stress enough how helpful it is. Get everything OUT.
2. Clean and Prep. Now, take this moment of emptiness to clean – wipe out drawers, put down drawer liner, sweep and mop, vacuum baseboards, etc. If you're painting or putting down a rug, do that now. It will never be as easy to get a good foundational clean as right now, so take advantage. Plus, your "after" pictures will sparkle all the more. Go ahead - I'll wait.
Okay. Are we dealing with a blank slate yet? Perf.
3. Gather bins/bags/boxes into which to sort your gear. While paper or trash bags work, I find BIG is the way to go. I think those giant IKEA shopping bags work perfectly. They’re big enough to hold A LOT, easy to move about, and I like the uniformity of lining them all up against a wall and taping a sign to each.
4. Label your bags. Yes, take the five minutes it takes to label your bags/bins/boxes. This way you won’t be confused in the process, or have to guess what you were thinking if you find a bag later on. You will also be more easily able to enlist help. E.g., “Honey, can you please take these too-small pajamas and put them in the bag labeled Pass Down?”
At a minimum, you need bins labeled thusly:
1. Toss
2. Keep
3. Donate
4. Relocate (to somewhere else in the house)
And I find you may actually need something more like:
1. Toss
2. Keep In Room
3. Donate to Goodwill
4. Pass down to family members
5. Sell
6. Repair or have repaired
7. Relocate to new area
5. Sort. Now, put things in your designated bins. Keep in the room only things that go with the purpose you've assigned to the space. Everything else must go into one of the other categories. About sorting: There are some tricks to it. It can be very, very hard to get rid of things. It’s possible you don’t need to purge, if you have room for everything, but it’s probable you do. There are entire library shelves filled with books about how to choose what to let go of. My thoughts are pretty simple: If you don’t love it or find it highly useful, get rid of it. You have no use for broken cutlery or ill-fitting jeans or anything you just don’t like anymore. At least, that’s my take.
I mean, look at all the junk I’ve managed to excise from our home! (And that's just one whole-house purge sesh. There have been many). Over the course of the last two years, employing the same philosophy, I’ve managed to whittle down our belongings to an amount that actually fits in our apartment. The number one enemy of getting and staying organized is too much stuff. I keep that in mind whenever I go through things.
6. Deal with that sh*t. Once you’re done with sorting, which takes much less time if you have actually removed everything, do your best to get rid of some stuff ASAP. I immediately relocate the items that have a different spot in the house, and if you have a trunk or garage or another space, put donations there stat. I try to sell my stuff by posting to the online classifieds as soon as possible as well. I take my repair items to the tailor or whip out the super glue and get to repairing myself. You might not be able to get to all of it, but this day is for trying your best. You don’t want to descend into chaos while you’re trying to get organized!
And that's today's assignment. Depending the space you’ve chosen, this can be a pretty big project. It can also feel like you're not getting to the meat of the situation yet. But it’s the crux of the job – the foundation. So take your time, do your prep, and purge and sort your items. And then, tomorrow, we'll get started on the fun part: putting it all back together! I can't wait to see pics of your purged items, and to answer any questions you have. Ask here or in the FB group and let's keep going!