When Clutter Own's You Part 2

During the last six months I've shared a few posts about my issues with clutter, (find them here, here and here) how I've tried to declutter our house and how I've signed on to various 'organising your houses' programs that other bloggers host in an attempt to make an impact on the mess clutter that we having been living with. So I've taken some time away from blogging and I've been working on finally unpacking all those boxes that I'd dumped all over the house.

In Queensland, we have been inundated with rain during the last two months so it was an easy decision as to were I was going to start. The first area that I needed to address was getting the our KIA Carnival into our double garage especially with the heavier rain falls happening during school drop-off and school pick-up times. Having to time it so that I could run each child out to the car with an umbrella means that by the time I get to the car I am very wet and as the return trip home is done with twenty minutes I usually have to take my clothes off and try to dry them over the clothes horse. So with this in mind I set about clearing the garage out so I could get the car into the garage and the kids in and out without having to deal with the rain.

Before.

Before.

As you can see there is a heap of things in the garage that just shouldn't be there and these pictures were taken after I'd previously spent six hours clearing out things. The majority of the work I'd already done was to remove all the clothing out and install a storage box that I'd purchased from Ikea months and months earlier. One of the reason why I only spent six hours in there was because we had so many large and small items that there wasn't really anywhere to put them.

I started off by removing all the boxes, containers, toys etc and I worked through these sorting them into various piles so that I could put them in there correct position later. I knew that we had a few heavy items like a refrigerator, unused tiles, an old wardrobe and a metal shelving unit that stored poisons, petrol and other items that need to be stored in a shed (which we don't own). With the amount of heavy items I had Mr Opoes work with me so that I could focus my time on going through the stuff I'd moved into the house. It wasn't an easy job, with all the things we had in there it's often difficult to find places for them in other rooms without first looking through a box and only keeping the things we need.

I still have a number of boxes to go through and I know that the majority of the boxes are filled with toys so one of the next jobs I have to accomplish is to organise the storage area in the kid's room which is next on my ever growing to-do list. Clearing the garage in order to get the people mover in took nearly six hours, at least half that time was spent re-positioning things like tiles, an old wardrobe and household items e.g. wooden ladders, art canvas and wooden dolls items. So in total we have probably spent twelve hours so far and there's probably another four to five hours just finalising things once we get a shed organised. It will also mean that I can move the four kid's bikes out of the living room and into the shed.

So if you're still reading you probably want to see same after pictures. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the same angles as the before pictures but I was able to capture a more detailed photograph so that you could see how we went about fitting everything in.

The Garage (80% completed)

After.

Done:

▪ moved all the tiles into an area so that it would be easy to sell them.

▪ stored wooden ladders out of the way.

▪ placed items needing to go into the shed in one area.

▪ put shoes in pink box in the shoe storage area.

▪ swept floor so that the area was clean before the car came in.

To Do:
▪ remove all the shed related items into the shed.

▪ sell the tiles, wardrobe and any baby related stuff that I don't want.

▪ move the refrigerator, clean it and plug it in. 

▪ work on setting up an organisation station.

▪ set up zones so that the room is more functional.

As you can see there are still items that need to be rehoused but for now we are all very happy to have the car in the garage. The other thing that we've noticed is that the garage might not be a true double garage size especially when you take the brick work into account, we would struggle to fit a small car into the space that's left. The fun now is learning how to get down the driveway without damaging the new garden beds. Hope you have some fun de-cluttering just like we did!!

Megan