Year of the Purge: Messy House Tour

I’ve been spending most of January catching up from the holidays and reflecting a bit on what I want to focus on for this new year. I’ve also been feeling the strong “urge to purge”. Any one else feeling the need to PURGE ALL THE THINGS in your home this time of year?

I get this bug about every three months to go through things and get rid of excess, and I LOVE the feeling of getting rid of things I don’t need and having some control back with what is in my home; less overwhelm.

ESPECIALLY helpful when your home is a constant construction zone. Though there’s a ladder sitting in our hall for the past month and we have a bare studded wall in our kitchen, I can have SOME SANITY in other rooms of our home that I can retreat to or use without inducing more stress.

There have been moments in the last year that I felt like ONE MORE BOX being in our home and left somewhere random until the room it went into was ready was going to send me to the looney bin. Like when I couldn’t put our new pack of paper towels away in the kitchen because we lost half our cabinets, and so they stayed in the laundry room…on the floor…totally in the way of EVERYTHING.

Ya feel me?

Therefore, I’m finding it necessary that this year will be more than doing our home restoration projects; I want to go full throttle with getting rid of our clutter wherever I DO have control over, including in spaces we don’t normally show people but still use.

You see, since moving to our current home and doing tons of projects and having a baby all in the first year here, several areas of our home became a “catch all” for all of our crap.

For starters, even after a number of Goodwill runs, we still have many things that were left here by the last owner of our home (and yes, we specified that nothing be left…grrrr).

Then we have our own stuff that doesn’t quite fit the style or are the wrong size for our new home and needs sold. I’ve sold some pieces of furniture, but more needs to still go.

Last are the “little things that kill”: small things like office supplies, tools, board games and such that are waiting to be organized as soon as we get furniture or shelving to put them in…

…and then just plain ‘ol junk.

I’m about to reveal 3 spaces in our house we don’t even show friends when they come over. I am showing them to you guys because I want to be held accountable by you good people over the course of this next year to follow through with getting these rooms under control. Will you help me do that?

It’s bad, not gonna lie. Ye be warned.

Exhibit A: Our Barn/Garage

An OCD’s nightmare…

Lots of haphazardly stored tools with NO organization whatsoever. Furniture and an extra mower that we need to sell. Our old dishwasher/nemesis. Project scraps and boxes that just need to be hauled to the curb…

Many of these things are pretty simple to fix, but the organization will take a little more. I’m thinking a pegboard for small tools at the existing work bench in the back, another area for keeping garden tools, places for hanging the sawhorses, and a good work space zoned out in the back of the barn would be a good start. Not sure where to best keep the miter saw yet. Suggestions?

There is also a scrappy (and crappy) work space that sits in the front-left of the barn (one with the green doors in the pic) that needs demolished as it does no good where it is, and we’d be able to pull in at least one car if it was gone.

Exhibit B: Our Basement

Sinking down into the abyss…

As you step down to the bottom, this is what greets you.

LOTS of the things down here are items left by the last owner that we should just take to an auction house, such as the many lamps and ceiling lights, cheap area rugs, 90’s pastel poster print frames, fake flowers, and an old TV. He also left plenty of paint cans behind that we need to figure out what to do with. There used to be a treadmill from him too but we gave that away not long after moving in, thank goodness. We are responsible for the empty boxes, the dresser, and some of the paints and tools.

The garage and basement: these two spaces are no doubt the easiest to accumulate things; any one else able to raise their hand and say “me tooooo!”?

I love clean, uncluttered, minimalist spaces and “a place for everything, and everything in its place”, so all this STUFF causes me SO MUCH STRESS every time I am brave enough to go in to our garage or basement spaces – I can’t stand clutter!

I’m determined that this year we will be getting both our basement and garage sorted and organized. (Who’s with me? Woot!)

Now on to the final, and the worst, I-can’t-believe-this-is-real-life room where we also have clutter KILLING US.

It is SHAME-INDUCING to show this room to y’all on the interwebs, but that’s good because I want it to give me an extra big kick in the butt to make it a priority this year with getting it sorted.

Ready for the downright AWFUL?

Exhibit C: the Office

I avoid this room because it’s so stressful – only my hubby uses it because he somehow is fine with it like this. I have no idea how. Especially because he’s the one that gets really stressed seeing any clips from those hoarder tv shows.

Lots of sorting needs to happen in here. Most of it would be Karl’s stuff, so…don’t know if his side of the office will be as fast to progress…

We need shelving to help store most of our office supplies. But what kind of shelving and where, and how to arrange the furniture…and oh yeah…I need a desk.

There you have it, folks. My not-so-pretty areas that are rather big projects to take on, but I’m determined to make these areas only contain what we need and become functional, organized spaces of our home. I am already dreaming of an organized work table in the garage with all my tools neatly arranged and easily accessible…

What’s your “no company allowed” zone? What spaces would you love to tackle and organize this year? It’d be kind of fun to help encourage each other with our problem rooms this year, so leave a comment below with what you’d like to purge and we can all help each other stay accountable. :)