Organizing Binge

The best way to kick off the new year is to get rid of excess, right? I felt the urge to deep clean and purge our apartment. It's partly due to the clock ticking down to our move back home and partly the general frustration with every over-flowing closet in our 2 bedroom apartment. We're TWO people, how do we have so much stuff?

I wish I had remembered to take before pictures of the kitchen. Although it's the most organized room in the house, it was full of expired pantry items, piles of aluminum foil pans and cleaning supplies. Apparently, I hoard cleaning supplies.

I re-organized our spices, throwing out everything that's older than a year. I cleaned out the pantry, throwing out expired or unlikely to be used items. I moved the Keurig closer to the fridge because those extra steps in the morning were bugging me (it's the little things, right?). I purged some cleaning supplies and made use of the excess foil pans I've been hiding to help corral all the bits and pieces in the kitchen.

 

 

There are a lot of things I dislike about our current place, but the kitchen is not one of them. For such a small space, it's full of storage and more cabinets that I know what to do with. I would kill for a gas stove, but everything else is perfect.



Since the kitchen was done, I moved onto the biggest disaster. The bedroom. As much as I hoard cleaning supplies, I have a serious clothes problem. As in, I keep all the clothes that don't fit or I don't like even though I never wear them. I had piles under the bed, in the closet, all over the place.

I'm somewhat embarrassed that I moved 5 trash bags full of clothes and random knick knacks out of the bedroom when all was said and done.  But the room looks so much better! Of course I failed to take a picture, maybe next time.

I'm hoping to tackle one closet or room each weekend so the whole place is cleaned up in no time. Once the place is clean and organized, I can focus on things like my new sewing machine I'm itching to play with.

How'd you spend the first week of 2014?