A Call to Declutter

I'm feeling the stress of having too many things around the house, and worse than that - my things are not organized. More and more, my heart is leaning towards "Less is More" in my life. And so my pursue to decluttering and purging and sorting begun. I don't know where this will lead me but I hope to my ultimate goal of everything in the house has a purpose.

Home Office

I started with my home office/scrap room last week. It took me 2 days to go through my scrap stuffs, books, gadgets, files, bags, etc. to turn it to look like this.

This is one of the 3 cabinets in the room. This holds my scrap magazines and books on the upper left, a box of old photos (sorted), photo albums and scrapbooks, archived photos and scraps in DVDs; photo papers, bond paper, scratch paper, and my idea binders and more photo albums.

The name box is bought from India on my last business trip and the bird cage canvas is bought in Singapore. On top are some trophies and foreign coins in bottles of mayonnaise. While cleaning this hanging cabinet, I found 5 broken eggs of lizard on the top shelf behind the albums. Eeww!

I have purged the standing bookshelf that not holds my cameras and paraphernalia, photo albums, scrap supplies and selected books.

The last cabinet are my 4 filing drawers. I only managed to clean one drawer that holds my daily office essentials - pens, notebooks and sticky notes.

But even then, these are what I've brought out of the office. Already, my office don't feel cramp anymore. I put most of my books in a plastic bin, many of it I plan to give away.

Master Bathroom

Here's the truth - I haven't been using my bathroom for quite sometime now because it is simply disorganized. Toys are all over the dirty tub, toiletries are everywhere and worst the loo has seen better days. Honestly, it seems like a dumping area of sort. Even Justin who loves to play in the bath tub has lost interest as well. Until the past Sunday.

It all started with just wanting to clean the toilet bowl so I can at least use it. Armed with my cleaning agents and brush I am posed to tackle the job. But I guess I was on the point of I can not take the situation anymore. Instead of just the bowl I overhauled the whole space, from ceiling to floor.

I followed these 4 steps (from Leo Babauta)

1. 1. Collect everything in one place - as in everything out of the door. There's only 1 cabinet so it is fairly easy, but it is way up there that taking out all what's in there is like an exercise.
2. Choose the essentials - only what I will use inside the bathroom, anything else is either thrown or moved somewhere else.
3. Toss out the rest - the truth is 50% of the things I put out of the room went to the trash can. Yeh, figure it out, half are unnecessary baggage.
4. Organize the remaining stuffs neatly and nicely - I easiest part.

So, here's the transformation.

Before: it seems not so bad from the photos above. I just need to really sort the many things scattered around. What was not so obvious from these photos was that I almost lost my arms scrubbing the tub (I already thought of removing it and just have plain shower area. I dusted the ceiling and the window - cobwebs a plenty; then scrub the tiles and same with the mirror.

In-progress: Before I break for lunch, this is how it looks like. Not so bad right? Can I just have it this way. I don't want to put anything here coz I know it will easily turn into mayhem again. Look at all those things I need to sort (top left photo). Maybe the photo is smaller, but that is a big basket full of toiletries.

The finished look: Only the important are put back. Now I know I have to buy cotton balls already. The small basket contains the toys of Justin. I just kept it there knowing Justin will surely ask to use the tub again. I will make him put it back on the basket after use or no using my tub anymore. And don't under estimate the impact of the lacy window curtain, it really makes the bath cozier. Even Jerome thought so, too. I also put aromatheraphy burner to perk up the relaxing ambience.

On my list to complete the make-over:

1. Install the towel rack that I bough on my birthday last year (whaaat?!). Yes my bathroom has no proper place for towels. My last helper broke it and it was never replaces since.
2. Buy new floor mat - DONE
3. Renovate the overhead cabinet from L-shape to straight.
4. Declog the drains of the sink and tub.

My bath is looking so much better now, and my oh my...I was flat tired. I finished around 4 in the afternoon. It's a whole day affair with minimal breaks. And I don't want to go through that again.

Closets and Vanity

So inspired with the transformation of the bathroom, I tackled the closets and the vanity table the following day, Monday. I'm on a row - cleaning lady on my vacation from work.

I skipped taking photos and focused on completing the work. Cleaning closet is totally a different challenge than the bathroom. Sorting the clothes, which one to keep and which to toss. I tossed out quite a lot if I may say, mine and Nestor. Just believe me that I can now see all my clothes and my cabinet can breathe. Though I still have to transfer some of my skirts and pants to hubby's cabinet. He's such a low maintenance guy and has a lot of extra space. Excuse me but I need to buy half dozen of seamless undies. My personal perk.

And look at my little beauty bar. A simple kikay touch and throwing cosmetics unused for a long time are all it needs. But not to say that it's not mind- boggling. End point, I love the girly look. If there is one place in the house where I can be totally pink - this is it.

It looks like this an hour ago.

And look what I found from doing all these cleaning. I only have one missing molar but I have these two that used very little then kept to darkness. Found them but thrown them, too. Just not my thing to have a metal inside my mouth.
And look at these trashable and the don't know piles after all these laborious activities.

It's stressing me really. Honestly. Can I just throw it all?
I have quite a number of learning, reflections and things I want to do and change but save it for other post. One thing that stands out - I want to live with less.

ICANDOIT. I believe I CAN.