I'm doing the "15 minutes a day" mentioned below, which ties into that site's 52-week challenge, and wanted to pull it out and give it its own challenge thread for those who are doing it, as I could really use the support. Is anyone else going to try this?
Congrats, mm1970, on the work you've done so far! My counters were already clear from some work I did over the holidays, and my kitchen is too small to have different functions, so I kind of skipped over week one. In week 2, so far I've gotten rid of a broken food processor, a plastic food container for taking relish trays to parties, a whole bunch of baby spoons (my "baby" is 8 years old!), and a bunch of old medicine bottles and assorted trash (who puts empty bottles and bags back in the cupboard?). I also sent a bunch of teas that no one likes to work with my SO. It doesn't sound like much, but it feels GREAT to see those cabinets reorganized and not to have things falling out on me when I want to make some tea!
Someone on this site - don't know who, don't know where, recommended Home Storage Solutions printable calendar for "Declutter your home in 15 minutes a day".
http://www.home-storage-solutions-101.com/support-files/2014-printable-declutter-calendar-final.pdf
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
Over the holidays I worked on just decluttering bits and pieces as I had time. I was home with the boys, so I didn't really have that much time. But I printed January and February and got to work. January is "the kitchen".
Well, this morning my husband helped pick out a few books to donate. Then we tackled two kitchen drawers. Amazing! We still have 9 more drawers to go, but we do have all of January. I got rid of half the stuff in that top drawer. Even if we only do 1/3 of the days in this calendar, we will be SOOO much better off at the end of the year! I really like the small, focused jobs. And doing it TOGETHER is better.