The Great Purge: Beginning

My husband decided not to go hunting today so we were able to start our house purge early! We decided to start in the junkiest part of our house, our bedroom and bathroom. Whenever we have company coming over we usually focus on getting the core part of the house clean: living room, dining room, kitchen, and guest bath. We usually throw stuff into our bedroom just to get it out of the way and since no one but us ever goes into our bedroom it mostly just stays there. 

We began by mentally labeling every item as either keep, trash or donate. We started with under the bathroom sink and bathroom closet. I am bad about holding on to different lotions or shampoos that I "might use" but then never actually using them. So we threw out all of my "might use" and only kept "definitely use". I realized that I owned 3 straighteners and 3 curling irons! Who even needs that many? I quickly noticed how this purge is going to save us a lot of money. I found a lot of items that I had considered lost and was about to purchase new ones. I was also considering buying some shelves for the bathroom to put our towels on. It turns out that after we cleaned out all of the junk in the bathroom closet that we had plenty of room for towels! Here is the before and after of our bathroom closet:

After cleaning out the bathroom closet, we were able to condense our storage containers and freed up several others to be used somewhere else. We then moved on to the bedroom and our closets. Our bedroom was mostly filled with junk that didn't have a real place to go. This is where our piles of donate started piling up. We put tons of clothes that didn't fit just right or were just never worn into the donate pile. I tried to keep a small assortment of clothes that don't fit just right just in case. (Side note: I've always heard that it's a good idea to keep a few items that are a size below and a size above for women who fluctuate in sizes. I really liked that idea because I gain weight easily and work really hard to lose it. It keeps me from being depressed about not having a single thing to wear if I do go up or down a size suddenly.) My husband's closet:

Back to talking about the purge: Next we worked on the laundry room. My husband and I have moved 3 times in the 3 and half years that we've been married. I still haven't completely unpacked from all those moves. We had garbage bags full of bath towels, washcloths, kitchen towels, and rags just laying in our laundry room. We went through those and sorted them out to be washed. Here is the before and after:

Finally we ended the day with the pantry. Our pantry is another room, like our bedroom, where junk is just thrown into and the door shut behind. It's amazing how much better it looks just by getting rid of the junk! I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's actually organized.

Our house currently looks like more of a mess than when we started but that's because we pulled everything out to make our purging decisions. Our organization day will come later. I've been gathering all of our storage boxes so that when it comes time to organize I'll be able to see what I have to work with and hopefully save money on not having to buy too many more. Being organized doesn't have to be expensive. Make sure you don't just organize junk and be resourceful. I found some Christmas storage boxes for less than a dollar and they store just as great the whole year round as they do in December. ;)