Organizing and decluttering the homestead

[sumi]

My mother and I had a bumpy relationship all my life, which lead me to me finally giving up and cutting contact with her 3 years ago. Not for lack of trying from my side, she simply would not allow things to work between us. My father and I (thanks to my mother) never had a good relationship, until he moved into a care facility and my son was born. We finally clicked and had a wonderful, wonderful few months, before he sadly passed away, much too soon! My grandfather and I never got along either... We could not have a conversation without arguing. Then my father and gran passed within weeks of each other. The double loss knocked the wind out of my granddad and we finally met and connected and got along so well! I treasure the few years we had before he too passed away. It's so wonderful to have a good loving relationship with a parent and grandparent. Beekissed, your mom sounds so amazing and she raised an amazing daughter!

 

[Beekissed]

Sumi, she is truly amazing and if I have any natural good in me, outside the goodness of Jesus Christ, it's largely due to her.

The organizing and decluttering continues....got the grandkid's dresser drawers and stored clothing out, sorted and eliminated, stored some more and now have a dresser that only has clothing that fits in it. Relief! Fall and winter gear out and ready.

Still working on the pantry....have the tool shelf to organize yet. Will try to get to it tonight after doing outside work all day.

Each day I get a little further along on this ongoing project and it feels GOOD.

Bought a dowel rod and curtain rod hangers so that I can hang up my canning rings in the pantry...can't wait to get that done!

Finally got that bedskirt I bought at Good Will on Mom's bed...only been hanging around here for a year now. Bought another, better one, there last week for my own bed, so changed out the bedskirts there. NICE.

 

[sumi]

I'll bet that feels good! I got rid of so much stuff when I moved. It's amazing how quickly we can slip into clutter and accumulate too much unnecessary things. I'm going to guard against doing that again. 2 Weeks in and so far so good I really need to sort out my guest bedroom though. I put a lot of things in there for sorting through later and have done a great job ignoring it so far

 

[milkmansdaughter]

Nothing like having company to give you incentive to clean a guest room! I'll be cleaning mine this week.

 

[treerooted]

I'm in choas(ish). The kitchen has had an overflow of dishes for over a week now. Our "office" space has become even more cluttered if that's possible; there's hardly any floor space. Our "playroom" has been left deserted and still has lego on the floor from the summer. The upstairs bathroom is dirty. Our bedroom is stacked with clean clothes not put away, I'd say for over a month now and is in desperate need of an actual cleaning. There's still a tent ready to be properly rolled-up in the sun-porch. The wood room needs wood stacked for the fire. The hallway still needs the proper seasonal coats and outwear switched out. The mudroom needs things put away into the shop. The shop.The shop is a year-long project that needs a full organization plan and shelves and hangers and whatever else set up. The barn is littered with empty feed bags and empty beer bottles that need to be returned for a refund.

And I need to make a meal plan.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I'm kinda right there with ya! My house got turned upside down when I moved my parents in....had barely a couple days to empty out a breezeway storage room and set that room up as a bedroom. My breezeway was my storage area for EVERYTHING. Now - I know where NOTHING is that was in that room. We just ran around looking for a place to put things...some in the garage, some in both of the extra upstairs bedrooms, some tossed....just a mess. I have a couple weeks off for Christmas so hoping I can try to organize a bit better...

 

[NH Homesteader]

I'm not even going to talk about my husband's workshop outside because my brain will explode. But my master bathroom has been half torn apart for months and my bedroom is packed full of stuff that needs to go back in there and baby stuff I have no space for. Somehow we are going to have to fit the crib in there.... Eek!

Yeah we're with you!

 

[treerooted]

I wish I at least had an excuse

There's really no good reason for our place to be in the state it is.

I've been on a bit of a high lately for thinking about future plans, doing some organizing, but not much has transferred to the house and I've crashed a bit today, which can be hard to deal with. So now the house messes are glaring at me in neon lights. What would we even do if I went back to work? My husband would say "it's not that bad"...ok, but it's not good either!

 

[tortoise]

I'm feeling cluttered too! DH isn't happy with the state of our house. It's not.... bad? But it's messy every day. I simply can't keep up with the amount of "stuff". I did a major purge a year ago, but I didn't touch storage areas. Those things keep creeping back into the living area and breeding, I'd guess, from the look of my house.

My current area of focus is my laundry room / pantry overflow / linen closet / broom closet / appliance garage.

I bought an Instant Pot that will replace my dying bread machine that I rarely use other than the dough function, 2 crockpots, and a rice cooker that's on its last legs. That will free up a bit of appliance space.

DS2 will be out of diapers in the next year. (Right? Please) which would free up another chunk of space in there since I have cloth diapers and disposables stored in there.

January is my annual eat-down-the-pantry month, so maybe I can empty the pantry overflow cabinet - and not refill it?

I don't know. I'm just so "over" piles of everything on top of my laundry machines! The laundry room is the first room to overflow into the living area - and also the first room that gets dumped into.

 

[Britesea]

My personal nightmare is papers. I hate to throw anything away until I've looked it over, and I don't have a good spot for those papers you just need to have... you know, like the latest copy of the car and house insurances, the receipt for the car tires in case you get a leak while it's still under warranty... not to mention magazines with an interesting article that you didn't have time to read yet. Anyway, stuff doesn't get tossed until I can look at it and decide whether we need to keep it or not, and in the meantime it all starts taking over. Then someone says they are coming over so I grab all the papers and throw them in a box and stash it in the bedroom or the pantry, and of course once they are out of sight I forget about them and the next batch starts to slowly take over. The worst is when the occasional bill gets shuffled in there and suddenly you get a polite call from the gas company asking if you would like to pay your bill over the phone please?