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Spring Cleaning (with pics!)

Synne

Veteran

I have been binge watching Decluttering-videos on youtube. Do you know about Swedish "Death Cleaning" yet? Anyway, I am so inspired to downsize, clean, declutter and donate. Look at the mess our guestroom was in! It was bursting at the seams with MY unworn clothes, old keepsakes and whatnot. It is now a beautiful and tidy playroom for the kids. I am happy to report that the horrible mess in the photos is GONE, not just stuffed in a cabinet somewhere else in the house. To my excuse, the room didn't always look like this. I cleaned the entire house, and threw everything that didn't fit in anywhere else in here. We moved house three years ago, and the clutter just kept growing and growing. (Strange that??) Anyone else in the mood for some spring cleaning?

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23 replies

Latest reply was from Synne

Anonymous

Wow! What a change!
Absolutely yes from me, though we'll be doing the same for FIL and mom too this year so they can move.

Our house is not too bad, but the garage has a lot that doesn't fit in here. When I have time off, I'll work on it.

My main project will be my yard, cause I want to have friends over. I just got a fire pit, and want a few outdoor chairs/table.
Waiting to hear from our yard guy, but will be transplanting some bushes and working on a butterfly/ hummingbird garden. I did manage to install more archery targets in the woods yesterday

RobinF

Veteran

What a transformation! Such a cute room now.

We moved about 2 years ago and clutter is starting to grow again - not too bad but enough that I want to do a big de-clutter so it feels a bit less full. The worst is the room that I use for clothes, crafts, etc so I get where you are coming from.

Synne

Veteran

Suntiger, archery targets! You are so intriguing and fierce! Do tell more. Yes, the garage at our place is also a problem area. But it is DH's domain, so he will have to go at it solo. We have an agreement that the car will fit in there (yikes) come autumn.

RobinF, we upscaled from a small apartment to a house, and fascinatingly enough our possessions grew with the house. I was worried we didn't have enough furniture and...stuff.. to fill up this big 'ol house, but lo' and behold, we ended up with rooms like this. Clutter seems to attract clutter. I am vigilant about decluttering now!

Sisi

Veteran

I am impressed, congratulations! You have been brave.
To answer your question, I badly need a big declutter but I am never in the mood for it. It is a daunting task. I am doing it little by little.
About the "Death Cleaning" concept I had arrived to the same conclusion 4 years ago, before getting to know about it. It sufficed to help my friends clear out their parents' huge house ...
Houses have a special talent for getting cluttered very quickly. One must be very vigilant.

Anonymous

Splendid room! Love the colors Job well done! My plan is to tackle the windows. They are full of city grime. Thanks for inspiration.

JAileen

Veteran

Wow! That’s a lot of stuff.

I had a book from the library called the Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. A bigger impact was our son visiting (after quarantining) around New Year’s. His off hand remark, “It looks like you have a hard time getting rid of anything,” kind of stung. After they left I started culling things from the kitchen and dining room. I have a big pile of things ready to be donated.

Bonnie

Veteran

It certainly feels good to get a project completed. We've finally gotten the garden shed organized, it did look just like your before and after photos, and are now working on the yard. We moved here 2 + years ago and it took awhile to decide what we wanted but it's almost done. YAY!

slim cat

Veteran

What a great results - well done! My apartment is in need of decluttering but with many complications from side effects of shutdown
( depression, anxiety, fatigue - mine and family members ) it will need to wait a bit more.

rachylou

Veteran

Wow! I’m impressed! I’ve been cleaning, but I can only remove so much at a time - small garbage can and really, I need a truck and someone with a strong back to help me, lol Also, I need to find my power saw to cut stuff down to a transportable size. It’s on my To Do list - ‘find saw,’ lolol!

Angie

(website)

Fashion Stylist

WOW!!

IMPRESSED!

To quote you....."squee..."

Runcarla

Veteran

Wowsa! That’s one HUGE transformation.

Anonymous

That’s great - and you must feel so much better . I’m not a decor minimalist but I also can’t function in clutter and disorder . Your photo is making me anxious ! I’m constantly cleaning , tidying , organizing and editing our stuff . I’ve never been one to save things “ just in case “ and I could count on one hand the number of times I wish I had saved something .

Glory

Veteran

This is an amazing transformation. Very rewarding and satisfying and a considerable amount of work. We had a flood a few years ago and I had to get rid of tons of stuff. It’s creeping back especially with 2 boomerang kids back due to covid.

Style Fan

Veteran

Fantastic! I have a closet full of stuff ready to be donated. I hope to transform one of the bedrooms into a study soon. We have too much stuff.

kkards

Veteran

Nice! I brought a bunch of stuff, some clothing, shoes and household stuff to the Goodwill Sunday and yup it felt great

Janet

(website)

Veteran

Wow, great work!

I cannot stand clutter, so I'm always tidying up the house as I go about my days. I did a big project starting in January in which I finally sorted through and cleaned out many boxes of items in our basement -- some were our own accumulated stuff, others were things I brought home from my parents' home after my mom passed away 12 years ago (dad has been dead for almost 30 years, and we owned that house for over 40 years, so you can imagine the cleaning out I had to do there). Mom kept all kinds of stuff, including many of my childhood toys and other stuff -- school papers, mementos, etc. I ended up donating a HUGE amount of stuff to various charities, and sold $2000 worth of things on eBay (including $900 in vintage Barbie and other dolls). It was a big project to sort, research, and sell or donate, and I still have a few things set aside in the basement (small furniture items that I want to take to consignment), but the project is mostly done and it's a big burden off my mind. I'm now trying to edit stuff regularly, and I'm working on being more conscious about what I bring INTO the house!

Anonymous

I started archery last year cause I found DHs old bow in my inlaws basement. Then I met my neighbors around the corner, and the husband is a big Zen archer. They live on the river and sometimes I shoot there.
#1 is my good target in the backyard- it's foam "self healing." #2 and #3 are a couple of the ones I put in the woods behind the house. They're burlap sacks stuffed with cat and bird food bags and other plastic wrap. I stick to shooting from 30 feet or less with those so I minimize lost arrows! *
*currently missing 8*

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Laura (rhubarbgirl)

(website)

Veteran

Congrats! I really enjoyed the Swedish Death Cleaning book. My mom is not a hoarder, but she's a keeper - she'll keep things for 20 years and then find something useful to do with them. That just gives me anxiety, for some reason.

unfrumped

Veteran

Thanks for more inspiration!
I have been trying to do this, but mostly nibbling around the edges.
Need to get serious!

Echo

Veteran

That is inspiring! Good for you for tackling the tough job. We live in an old farm house that has been in Dh's family for generations. There is one room upstairs that has no vents - no heat, no cooling. For many years, we literally called it "the junk room." We kept all sorts of random things there, but it was just storage. It took me a month to fully clean it because it had bins of my children's school work and drawings and old toys, but I did it. I now use it as a walk-in closet, as the house has very inferior closet space otherwise. But it was liberating to have that space cleared out, and almost felt as if a weight had been lifted.

My elderly mum has been doing this sort of cleaning. She keeps saying that she and her siblings cleared out her mum's house when she died, and she doesn't want me to go through the same thing. She would rather get rid of things on her own and gift other things now. He home is virtually spotless, with nothing in the attics or basement any more. I should do the same, but haven't been quite as motivated.

Your room looks fantastic, and it inspires me to clear out my basement this summer.

cjh

(website)

Veteran

Fab work and interesting stories. Congratulations on cleaning success!

Occasional dabbling or all out organizing and purging is usually fun and always productive around here. The latest project was today. I had brought home a couple of small boxes (shoebox size) of sewing notions from a friend’s. He’d asked me to help him sort and decide on his wife’s sewing things. She died last fall of pancreatic cancer.

After designating a few things for the hospital thrift store, there were some items I could use. I sorted out a bunch of buttons from safety pins and needles, rewound some bobbins onto the kind my machine uses and started to put things away. I was inspired to sort and clean out my sewing table drawers, put away stuff which had been dropped into some catch-all containers and eliminated lots of dust bunnies. I felt really good about consolidating things in my small bins.

It also started me thinking about what kinds of materials I have or might need for Grandma Camp, which my daughter asked me to have this summer for her kids, girls age 12 and 7, and a boy age 10... so I’ll start writing up some ideas for arts, sewing, sports and hopefully some kind of field trips.

Jenni NZ

Veteran

Well done Synne! We faced this when we built the new house in the back yard in 2018. We had lived in the old house for 27 years so it was pretty full. 2 daughters had moved out but there was still plenty of their stuff. As Fabbers may know I am very sentimental with my clothing and in fact with everything, and my husband hoards too for a different reason, in case something may be useful. It felt like giving away treasures. But I managed to donate a lot. I had lots of my dead parents’ stuff too, but a lot of that is gone. ( They had died in 1999 and 2010 so it was a while before even in 2018).
I still kept too much I suspect but it was better than what my parents kept I think.

Synne

Veteran

So great that you find inspiration, and sorry about causing anxiety. The room was a horrible mess. I am so happy to have it done. Now I am working on the inside of all my cabinets, and later will do an inventory check of all my photos on my harddrive. I'm on a roll!