Bringing My Clutter Under Control..The Start of My Year Long Project

One of my goals for this year is to lay my hands on everything we own and decide if it stays or goes. We have lived in our current home almost 15 years now (time goes by so fast). There are things that have gotten pushed into closet or put on a shelf and just left there. So I want to get our items under control and only have what we truly use.

I will be tackling our whole home. I don’t need to do any work in our garage. Our garage doesn’t need to be decluttered it is already clutter free. My husband is a real neat freak person and the garage is his domain. I will just be working on the living areas of our home.

My plan is to work on one room/area a month and get through the whole house decluttered by years end. I know I have read many books about decluttering your home in just a weekend, a few days or a few weeks. I don’t want the decluttering to take over my life. I want to go at an easy pace so I don’t get burned out and just want to shove the stuff back on a shelf or in a closet. I also I want to be able to have time to really do a great job and clean as I go. One drawback is that the areas you have already done can become clutter again. 🙁

So to combat the clutter moving back into our space, I will be working diligently to keep the areas I have already declutter, clutter free. My saying will be one thing in, one thing out, when I need to purchase something new and every item must have it place or it doesn’t belong in my space.

I know my husband will just love the changes as he has really enjoyed the more organized look of our home after the other series and I have done over the past year. (3 Weeks to a Cleaner Home, 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home and 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home Simplified) I also noticed that as I decluttered certain areas of our home those rooms just seemed more inviting to me or less busy.

My Plan for this Month

For this month I am tackling the living room. You may ask why I would start with this room first. Well I looked around and thought this room would be the easiest to do (my lazy nature kicking in here). I also wanted to have some real success my first month into my whole house decluttering, so I wouldn’t get discouraged and want to give up (which can happen with things out of my comfort zone).

The second reason I picked this room is because it is one of the rooms we use the most. So by seeing the living room so nice and clutter free I am thinking it will just motivate me to keep going and get the decluttering work done in every room of our home. (not a bad plan huh?) 🙂

I haven’t decided how I will do the updates if I will just give a finally post at the end of the month or do a mid month post and then the final room pictures at the end of the month. I guess I will just have to wait and see how this first month goes. If you have a preference of how I update my progress, please voice your opinion in the comments below, I am always open to suggestions.

Also if you want to follow along, jump in and start working on your living room. I would love to hear how your decluttering goes too.

Do you have an organizing project you are tackling this month?

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