Homemaking

Not anymore!  In less than 45 minutes, the cabinet & 3 drawers were minimalized & organized.  There was not much to giveaway, but a ton to throw away!  Old, empty bottles, dried up polish, broken curling irons.

As you can see in the above picture, we keep towels (more on towels later), & first aid on the upper shelf.  Underneath I have a bin for beauty products on the right, a bin for manicure supplies in the middle, & a bin of natural ingredients to make some of my natural beauty products…like Homemade Natural Lip Balm.

These cabinets are deep, which I love, so behind the bins I have several different sized curling irons.

The 2nd drawer holds all things hair.  I have 3 girls.  Age 13, 12 & 9.  With girls comes lots of girly hair “stuff.”

~The first bucket has bobby pins and hair elastics.
~The second bucket has fun little bows that my 9 year old still wears.
~The third bucket has headbands that they all wear.
~The fourth bucket holds combs and brushes.

On to the bottom drawer.

Like I said, I am a cosmetologist/hairstylist.  I have not worked in a salon for over 10 years but I still have fun doing friends/sisters/daughters hair.  This bottom drawer is everything I need for that.

On to the process:

It only minutes to get to this stage, because I took everything to the dining room table.

I started with getting rid of obvious trash.  I then started putting “like with like” into piles.

This is about halfway through.  I washed the bins out as I went.  They were gross.

Let’s talk towels.  If you read my bathroom makeover post, you will know that we have hooks in our bathroom for towels.  Each family member has their own hook and a different color.  The towels you see here on the right are for guests.  The towels you see on the left are old towels that I use when coloring peoples hair.  The grey washcloths are…well..grey wash clothes.  The girls and I use them to wash our faces.

I love our towel system.  I am no longer washing towels 24/7, and I no longer have to cringe when I  hear “SOMEBODY please bring me a towel” after a child gets into the shower without a towel.  They are always there, on the hook, and I wash them once a week or more if needed.

Ok, I know this does not look minimal, especially the nail polish bin…BUT WE LOVE manicures around here.  It is something we do often, as I AM a professional you know.  It is something my girls like to do when they have friends over.  Speaking of friends over, our neighbor girl was over when I was cleaning and she is the one who went through each and every nail polish, throwing out the ones that were old and thick.  What a sweetie!

As far as beauty products, this is not too bad for a house of girls, huh?

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More in this series:

We don’t have a huge backyard, so the girls play in the front yard quite often.  Especially when using their roller blades, ripsticks, bikes & scooters.  Our garage connected to the back of the house, so we like to keep these things that they use often in the sunroom to make it easy on them to grab and play.

I started with making piles of things.  Like with like.  It helped to get whatever looked like trash out first.  Then I had office supply pile, an earring pile, a pile of hair bands & combs, a pile of papers that needed attention, and some miscellaneous stuff.

So on to the scary stairs.  I shared this picture in an earlier post.  I confessed to loading things onto the stairs as I minimalized rooms instead of putting things away.  Now for the most part, it is not as lazy as it looks, because most of that stuff DOES go upstairs.  But it had piled up way worse than I ever let it, as the rest of my house was getting minimalized.

Ahhh…so much better.

After my house is minimalized, I will be turning my attention to some home projects.  Something I’ve wanted to do for awhile was get rid of ugly stair carpet and refinish the stairs in some way.  I have been collecting some fun ideas on my Home: Floors board at Pinterest.

Those 3 baskets that you see in my pic above are for the 3 rooms upstairs.  The master bedroom, the craft room and my daughters room.  My husband is convinced they just collect clutter and just “whatever” gets thrown in there, even stuff that does not belong.  He has got a point.

Am I better off without them?  OR do we enforce consequences to little ones who put things in the wrong basket or things that do not belong on the stairs in them?  It would also help to mark the baskets so there is NO excuse.

Advice?

How about this idea for baskets on the stairs is from Sew Many Ways?  She calls them crap baskets and has one for each family member.  That is an idea!  She puts whatever she finds around the house in the baskets and they are responsible for putting them away.  Maybe this would be a better idea for me.  I only have 3 baskets for the 3 areas upstairs, but this idea might be better.

How do you handle stairs and the things that belong up them?

I love hearing that you are all minimalizing too, so let me know if you are!

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More In This Series:

Minimalizing My Living Room
Minimalizing My Dining Room
My Big Fail While Minimalizing
Minimalizing My Sunroom

I minimized my living room today, and it really just took minutes.  My living room is not a room that I struggle with clutter, so it was pretty easy.  I will be working through the rest of my house and you WILL get to see clutter, just wait!

Things To Have Close By When Minimalizing
1. Broom
2. Duster
3. Vacuum
4. Trash Bag
5. Bin for Giveaway
6. Bin for Things That Belong Elsewhere

Remember, even though we have cleaning supplies out, WE ARE NOT CLEANING.  We are minimalizing.  A purging of sorts.  We have to train our brains to ignore the dirt and only focus on minimizing the items that we no longer need, love or that need to be put elsewhere.  If we do this then cleaning will be a breeze.  We will get to cleaning eventually.

I DO have the broom, duster and vacuum nearby for the big nasty chunks.  You know, the dust bunnies that appear when you decided to move a bookshelf to another room or to get the layer of dust under knickknacks that are no longer wanted or loved.  It is just for a quick maintenance.  A fake clean if you will.  DO NOT GET OBSESSIVE and start cleaning.  That will come later.

I started at one end of the room and took the time to stop and think about each area and each item in there.

 Questions to Ask Yourself When Minimizing Items:

~Do I still love it?

~Is it being used?

~Would it make more sense somewhere else?  {Keep ‘like’ with ‘like’}.

~Am I keeping this out of guilt because someone gave it to me?  If so, get rid of it!

~Do I really need more than one or two of an item?

~Is this item worth the work of picking it up if out of place or dusting every week?

~Is this a sentimental object I could take a photo of as a keepsake instead of keeping the item?

Another thing to do is get out of ruts.  Mix things up.  Don’t be afraid to move things around if it make more sense to put it elsewhere.  I purged the above magazine holder, then moved it to the other side of the room where a bookshelf that was just collecting clutter and dust was.  See below.

I thought the idea of having games upstairs in the Living Room would motivate us to play them more.  It really didn’t.  Maybe a little bit during Christmas break, but not enough to keep this shelf in the Living Room.  It is a big dust collector.  I am going to practice the ‘like with like’ rule and put the games in the basement on shelves with all of our other games.  Same with the books.  They will go with our other books, all in one place.  No need to have books all over.  Keep them all in one place, except for the specific books you are activly reading.  Keep those where you are most likely to grab them and read them!

This is our TV cabinet.  It has 3 drawers under the TV.  The top drawer was just a mess of items, most trash, lots of stuff that belonged elsewhere.  They went in the ‘belong elsewhere’ pile (I did not get out bins for this room because I knew there would not be much clutter. I just made piles on my rug, which you will see below.)

I will now use the top drawer to keep all of our library books in.  As you will see below, I need a specific place for this as I have paid way too many late fees and STILL found 2 BOOKS in that mess that are overdue.  Fail.

Be thinking of solutions to problems as you go.  If there are pens everywhere, look for a jar to put them all in.  If you are a coupon cutter, find a specific basket to keep your coupons & scissors in. Problem solving is a big part of decluttering and minimalizing.

The second drawer was pretty empty.  It is hard to get open so I left it empty.  The third drawer holds our DVD’s.  I will have my youngest go through and purge the ones she is too old for.  I will give them away to my niece & nephew.

Here is what was purged from my Living Room.  Yay!  Makes me happy!!  The games will all go downstairs.  The magazines will be recycled.  The late books will get returned.  Books will be given to my sister’s younger kids or to Goodwill.  Ahhhh…FEELS SO GOOD!

Now I’m going to resist the urge to scrub my Living Room and move on.  Our Dining Room and Sunroom is up next!

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Do you declutter before you spring clean? Or do you do it at the same time? I have tried that and failed so many times.  This time, decluttering is ALL I’m focusing on first.  Then cleaning will be easy.  I may even reward myself and hire someone to do the cleaning for me.  Just a one time splurge.  Maybe!

Got any more hints for minimalizing the Living Room?