I'm a huge fan of Organize 365®. I listen to Lisa Woodruff's podcast (https://organize365.com/podcast/) fairly religiously and a lot of what she teaches about organization really resonates with me. She talks about phase of life and life events as they relate to stuff―the accumulation of, and decluttering of our things.
When I hit 40, I had officially hit the height of my accumulation phase. With a family and house, it became painfully obvious to me that instead of living my life to the fullest, I was in the business of stuff management. Constantly moving things from here to there, taking care of our things, and finding homes for new items coming in had become completely exhausting.
She also talks about "hot mess" spaces. This is one of the things I love about her programs. She gives 100% permission to have a hot mess space and even encourages it. It's the zone where things that have no home in the house essentially land until you have the opportunity to go through them. It's the idea that you declutter your main living spaces first, which I have been doing for a few years now. Yes, it has taken me years to go through our house. And I will admit, I have more than one hot mess zone.
Motivated by Lisa and the desire to finally start conquering my toughest spaces, I decided to take charge of my largest hot mess zone. This time was different though. I really thought about my process as I worked through the space and decided to document it. I hope it inspires you and my steps are helpful. Comment below to share your process as well. We're always looking for new tips and methods to set our stuff management on cruise control.
Step 1: Decide on the big picture vision for your space.
For me, it was twofold. One, I wanted to reduce the actual amount of items by 10-15%. You are probably thinking that's not aggressive enough, but the truth is three quarters of the items were holiday décor which I use. I declutter my holiday décor every year as I repack the bins so while there is a lot, I use everything.
To that end, I also wanted it to be primarily holiday décor storage. If I wasn't already using an item somewhere in my house, why not? Why was I storing it? It was time to get rid of the things we didn't need, once and for all.
Step 2: Ask yourself if you are using the space effectively.
It's not a huge area to begin with but I decided to start by taking a picture and studying it for a day or two before I did any decluttering. At this point, I was simply trying to understand if I was using all the space. If I wasn't, why not? And could anything be moved around to increase my use of the space? Wait for it...
I told you it was a hot mess! But in all seriousness, If you look at the picture, you can clearly see that I'm using a lot space in front of the shelving units. Bins and items seem to be pouring out of the shelves onto the floor, but if you look at the top shelves, the picture clearly shows I wasn't maximizing my use of the storage space up there. The space is limited at the top due to the ceiling height and pipes, but this is what I love about a photo. Problem areas become very clear and I clearly needed to see how I could better utilize the space at the top. The other thing that really bothered me was that some of my bins were quite large and I couldn't see through them. What was in those? I'm not a big labeler (more about that later) but I wanted to see if I could eliminate use of those solid bins in my reorg of the space.
Step 3: Take everything out.
There was no way I was going to solve this problem unless everything came out. I had to go through every item and make a decision and I was ready to practice ruthless decluttering. Luckily, I have a family room space close by where I could spread the bins out. This also gave me the chance to give the shelves a good cleaning and apply a fresh coat of paint to the floor and walls behind the shelves. Oh yes, I was going all the way with this project!
Step 4: Use your stuff.
This seems obvious but there were items that I could actually use around the house. A good example was the rug. My parents had given this to me and it wasn't the right colors or size for any of my rooms, but we have laundry in the basement and it was perfect for in front of my washer and dryer.
Step 5: Start sorting.
I set up a garbage bin and donation boxes. I was sure to reinforce the boxes with packing tape on the bottom before I started to fill them. For items where I had multiples, I made sure to have all items spread out together first before making any decisions on which to donate. Take for example my Christmas mugs or Easter baskets (yes, I'm not hiding anything here). These were easy places to really pare down.
I also had a sell bin. I've had a lot of luck selling items on Poshmark and Facebook Marketplace so anything I found that I thought was sell-worthy went into a separate bin. At the end of the process, I had an awesomely huge donate pile (you can see it from two different views below).
Everything I donated was in really good shape and I know I was ready to finally tackle this space because I laughed at myself a few times throughout the process. Take for example the Americana basket and pitcher. I picked them up at a thrift store about four years ago because I thought they would be perfect for a 4th of July party. We've never hosted 4th of July.
And the glass globe was a future project. I don't even want to tell you how many years I had been holding on to that thinking I'll figure out something to do with it. But in the scheme of things and the little free time I have, there are so many more important and rewarding things I could do, like work on my children's scrapbooks.
Honestly, there really wasn't anything I had a hard time letting go of. I went into the process knowing it was an important project on my journey to simplify my life by reducing the stuff. If it wasn't going to be used or I didn't love it, it could no longer take up space in our home. Bottom line.
Step 6: Remove items that don't belong.
This made the biggest impact in the space in my opinion. In the process of going through everything, I found a few things that just didn't belong in the space. Over time, they had just landed on one of the shelves. Take for example the crystal bowl that was just hanging out unprotected. Since we'll be undertaking a renovation soon and I don't currently have a place to display everything, I have a totally different shelf area in the basement where I'm storing our nice crystal for our future dining room. I took a few minutes to wrap the bowl properly and moved it over to that space. I have no idea how it ended up in my hot mess space to be honest.
I had seasonal pillows which I moved to a linen closet upstairs. In hindsight, it made sense to keep them with my other holiday décor, but it just occurred to me as I was staring at them that It's kind of gross to store these in a basement. There was kids sports equipment as well that I combined into a bin and moved to another area. And then I found the converter pieces for my son's crib. I gave them a good wipe down and moved them to his closet for when he's ready for a toddler bed.
Step 7: Get clever with your storage.
I had a few large holiday tins that I put on display in my foyer each season. My snowman one was filled with corks which I'll never use so I donated them and filled it with our Christmas tree lights and angel. That freed up a lot of space in one of the actual storage bins.
Step 8: Organize.
Now it was time to repack the bins. I was careful to store like items with like. When I had everything packed and not a space was wasted in any bin, I listed the items contained in each bin on index cards and dropped them in their respective bins. As I mentioned, I don’t love labeling everything. I feel like the labels themselves can add to visual clutter so the cards are how I'm going to try to stay organized moving forward. This way, I'll always know the items should fit back into the bin when I'm packing up decorations.
I was able to get everything into clear bins for the most part without buying any new storage containers. I was left with only one large black bin but I had some small trees that needed a home and wouldn't fit in the smaller clear bins. I was able to get them all into the one of the large black bins with some garland so I really needed one large container and like I said, I didn't have to buy anything new.
I had some left over packing paper that was in good condition when I was done, so I folded it flat and placed it in one of the eye-level bins for easy access throughout the year if I needed it.
The whole process took me about a month. Some days I was able to spend an hour working through the items. Other days, I could only find 15 minutes and I would do a quick speed purge. And there were many days I couldn't find any time to work on the space. I'm at a stage in my life where I have to give myself a lot of grace (two small children and working full time) so I wasn't going to add any additional pressure on myself by assigning a timeline to this project.
I'm very happy with the final reorganized space. What do you think?
I feel like I maximized the space well, even on the highest shelves. For that odd space at the top, I was going to buy some wreath bags but I decided to use some old plastic blanket bags that I could easily see through and stack my wreathes. The tree base and a bin of my son's artwork I'm storing were also flat and fit nicely at the top.
It's not the most beautiful space in my home, but it's super functional. And that is a beautiful thing.
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