Thursday, August 1, 2013

How I Decluttered 3 Shelves in 9 Minutes Plus a Decluttering Haiku Poem


Recently I took 9 minutes to declutter the three shelves of this little bookshelf (above). You can see the "before" picture on the left and the "after" picture on the right. It's still not the prettiest part of our house but it's a lot more functional now. Here are the steps I took to get it done:
  1. Remove everything from all 3 shelves
  2. Put things that belong somewhere else in a basket
  3. Clean the shelves and dust anything that needs it
  4. While the shelves dry, sort what is going back into categories (the categories I ended up with that went back on the shelves were gardening, cleaning and pet food; there were also things for the recycling, trash and donation bins)
  5. Label anything you won't remember (in my case this was the sunglasses box on the top shelf in the after picture - this box was present in the before picture but hard to see because of all the clutter)
  6. Put the categorized keepers back in their new homes
  7. Enjoy the newly cleared space!
And, if you've been following along, I also took a photo of the microwave area which is still nice and clean from my previous decluttering session.

Here is my little decluttering haiku poem promised in the title of this post:

Decluttering frees
us to focus on the best.
Simplify to joy
Are you working to unclutter or simplify your home? I'd love to hear about it!

May God bless you!

PS In case you're wondering the Whole Foods bag is what we use for our recycling. Not pretty but I haven't come up with an inexpensive better idea yet. If you have one I'd love to hear it!

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