Everyone does spring cleaning and we tend to do a bit of fall cleaning as well as far as purging. Our house is on the small side, our family is large, and our place is ‘home base’ where things are kept for safe keeping or just kept in general.
We were, to be blunt, bursting at the seams. Things had to go! To be fair, we have very little closet space, so that makes it hard to begin with. No linen closet, small bathrooms with small cabinets, small bedroom closets, etc. We live in a split foyer – small entry with stairs up and stairs down.
Luckily there is a good amount of area under the lower stairs for some storage but it was full. Middle daughters abandoned bedroom became pandemic headquarters along with housing the items she left behind when she moved in with her fiance. The bathroom downstairs is unfinished and so that was being used to store some items as well. There was just too much stuff.
With updating our 30 year old house with new roof this past December, new windows and siding next week, and room by room changes in the past few years, we decided to not do the same spring cleaning we have done in the past where it seems we simply visited with kept items then neatly returned them to their hiding places. This time we decided something had to give and a lot had to go.
First was our daughters old room. She and her fiance came and took all of her remaining belongings! That leaves the pandemic supplies like a lot of bathroom tissue, hand sanitizer, coffee, and the like which we had started keeping in there because the room wasn’t being used for anything else. We actually gathered quite a bit of supplies and have been relocated, dispersed, and will be used up. Hubby already has plans for this room, of course!
Next was the under the stairs area. Boxes of photos, boxes and space bags of baby clothes, boxes of antique glassware, boxes of holiday decor. Photos were fairly recently sorted so they remained in their boxes. Baby clothes sorted, dispersed to their owners who are now grown and soon having babies of their own, glassware condensed to fewer boxes (from 4 to 2) and holiday decor (not including Christmas) purged to half the amount. Not bad!
I love decorating for holidays but I find as I get older my tastes are definitely changing and less is more at this point. The next time I open these holiday boxes I will once again purge more. I just don’t need all of these things and for the most part, I decorate my coffee bar and buffet and that is enough for me.
The last room was the soon to be bathroom. Camping items, small pieces of furniture, some seldom used toys, wrapping paper, etc. A catchall that needed to be empty and no longer used as a huge closet. Items were easily dispersed to new homes and the local thrift store. Thank goodness for the local thrift store we use, it is open 7 days a week which makes it super easy to drop items off when it’s convenient for us to do so.
It makes me happy to be able to share things I have loved but no longer need and to know someone else will be so pleased when they come across these items in a little thrift shop. Getting a good price on some gems and money going to a good cause at the same time.
We literally removed 50% of what we had stored and have two empty rooms to turn into a bathroom and an office for my husband. It makes me feel like the house gave a huge sigh of relief and so did we. More air, more empty space, fewer material items and I love having a simpler and less encumbered home.