De-cluttering Challenge - Part 4

One and a half weeks into my De-cluttering Challenge, and I think I've made a fair amount of progress*! ... But, I feel exhausted and want it all to stop! I don't want to keep de-cluttering and organising and going through things... But, I don't want anyone else to do it either... I like knowing exactly what I have, exactly what I'm throwing out, and in exactly which dark and deep space I am storing things for their potential use in the future...

22. Gym

I knew the gym would be a pretty straight forward de-cluttering task, so squeezed that one in next.

Basically, I re-packed tubs of boxing equipment making sure there were pairs (and even if there weren't, they looked neat in the tub anyway), tidied up the TV and music shelf, and was impressed when I only found two pairs of my husband's dirty socks. The main de-cluttering I needed to do, really, was remove the washing that I'd hung up in the gym, because there's usually no room on the line (or I'm too lazy to go outside again once I've put clothes on hangers)... But I did find a jumper, a gym bag, and a bicycle that didn't belong to either of us... Hmm.

10. Bathroom cupboards.
I skipped the laundry for the moment, and went straight to another easy tick off area - the bathroom cupboards. I knew it would be a simple task, as this cupboard is rarely ever used... The main thing to sort through was a box which was filled with hair ties, necklaces, bangles, ribbons, and random bits and pieces... Which were all tangled together.

Once I'd finished with the bathroom, I was ready to go back to the kitchen and finally de-clutter the pantry***! ... It'd would be nice to know what meals we're able to cook this week without having to go to the shops for ingredients we already have :)

My list now:

16, 17. Pantry.
Since de-cluttering the kitchen cupboards, I had an entire shelf (a little one, but still a shelf) free! ... In the pantry, we had a really beautiful china set that has now been moved to that spare shelf to free up space in the pantry - brilliant. I tidied up the food shelves, and things that didn't belong in a pantry I took out and spread out all over the clear kitchen bench to sort through... I dragged boxes of 'stuff to go through' (x3) from the bottom of the pantry, and placed them neatly in the Music area to sort through when I get there****.

To help me de-clutter without knowing it, I made my kids finish off the last of 3 different types of cereal that had only a tiny amount of cereal left in them this morning! My pantry now (please note that I need to go grocery shopping, and until I cram more items into the pantry, it will hopefully remain looking as neat as this):

* I may be cheating... I'm not vacuuming carpets, mopping floors, washing walls, cleaning windows/mirrors, or wiping bathroom sinks as I go**. There is a limit to what I define as 'de-cluttering', and therefore the floors are still grubby and dusty, the walls still have drawings (and squashed mosquitos) on them, and some crayon from my 'melted crayon art' is still stuck to my bathroom sink tiles. And if there's stuff I didn't want to go through at the time, I put it in a box and moved it to a different area.

** With the exception of the kitchen cupboards and bench tops... They were wiped.

*** I fear this will need to be a weekly experience for me to really benefit from being able to see exactly what we have in there, and so I don't keep buying Nutella thinking that we have none...

**** '19. Piano' has now been changed to 'Music area' because of all the various boxes and bags of things I have taken out of completed rooms and placed there to de-clutter when I get to it...