Re: Tell about your big projects, obstacles, outcomes (and treasure!)

[Anonymous]

Grrrr!!! I posted here about my monumental effort organising my laundry cupboard, but somehow it didn’t post. So unfair!!!! I will try again, but might condense it somewhat, as I don’t think I can write the whole thing again.

MOTIVATING FACTOR – Hubby had a friend coming over and there was no room in the loungeroom to sit. And the lounge is also the first room any visitor sees when they walk in.

STARTING POINT – Loungeroom. We recently got an ensemble bed and lost the storage space underneath it, so we put all the stuff from under it into the loungeroom until we could accomodate it elsewhere. I moved this stuff into the bedroom (shoving it wherever it would fit, just to get it out of the lounge) and vacuumed the loungeroom carpet, which had accumulated cat hair dust bunnies and feathers from a costume I had helped make recently.

NEXT PORT OF CALL – Our bedroom. The stuff from under our bed could not stay where I had put it, as it was in the way. I took everything off the shelf in our built in robe, and went through it all. I culled all my winter tops, putting the unwanted ones aside for charity. I put my bags (from under the bed) up there, along with my much smaller collection of winter tops.

I then cleared out the stuff from the floor of the robe. I found a bag of old clothes, so I sorted those and some went to my daughter, and the rest to charity. We had a plastic box full of our old linen, so I refolded it all to make it fit the box better, and gave it to my son, as he has our old bed. Other linen was put aside for cutting up. My box of shoes (from under our old bed) went into the space created by removing the linen box, and everything else was put back neater than it had been. I found some trouser coathangers in my stash of stuff from off the floor, so I hung up a heap of pants, which created space in the shelving unit (where I had stored the pants folded up). Then I could put my small blankets on the old pants shelf (they never had a spot previously). I managed to store all my bits that had lived under our bed, and only ended up with our old queen size quilt to find a space for.

MOVING ON TO – The laundry. I had always planned to make room in the laundry cupboard for our spare linen, and I had the quilt to find a place for, so to the laundry I went. Our cupboard there had been worked on in fits and spurts over the years. Some things were in labelled boxes, and the games had been moved off the top shelf when we got out new shelving units through the house. Our spare single bed quilts and big blankets are now there. I had collected old shoe boxes to put other stuff in, and they have been empty and taking up space in the cupboard for years.

PROCESS – I left the linen on the top shelf, and left the cleaning chemicals on their shelf, but moved them to one side. Then I took the existing boxes out, one at a time, and sorted through them. Boxes without lids were exchanged for the shoeboxes I had been saving, so they could be stacked and use space better, and every box got labelled with the contents. I ended up with one shelf full of boxes for – Batteries, Glass/mirror cleaning cloths (because they get used for other cleaning and ruined), Sponges/scourers/old toothbrushes and scrubbing brushes, Mop heads/dustpans/brushes, Shoe polish/spare laces/insoles/waterproofing, Rubber gloves/gardening gloves, Hooks/tapes/glue, Light globes.

I found two spare plastic crates and put them in the bottom of the cupboard. In one of them I put general purpose, washable, cleaning cloths (mostly old flannels or cut up towels). In the other one I put all our reuseable shopping bags, which had created a mountain on the floor next to the washing machine.

I ended up with spare boxes without lids. So I used them to store the chemicals. I grouped them into categories – garden/outdoor stuff (which cannot be stored in the garage due to the heat), rarely used stuff (BBQ cleaner, turps, metho etc), and commonly used stuff (floor cleaner, laundry soaker, bleach, etc). Hopefully this will cut down on the amount of time I spend finding stuff for the rest of the family, as well as reduce the amount of things hubby buys more of simply because he has a “boys look” and can’t find it!!

THREW OUT – Surprisingly little. A broken bike pump, a few screws, wall brackets for the kids’ electric toothbrushes, a couple of containers of cleaning products that had dried up, crusty sponges, and old shoe laces.

MOVED ELSEWHERE – Tools! They seem to accumulate in our laundry cupboard, but there is no longer a “junk” box to chuck them in, so hopefully they will stay in the toolbox in the garage. I also put bike pumps in the garage, along with a container of drywall screws, a tin of varnish, pruning shears, and some painting gear.

TIME – About 8 hours, though this included time spent having meals, and dealing with the laundry I was washing/drying at the time. I never bother to estimate time in advance, as I am useless at it, and I work better if I just tackle something and do what I can in the time I have.

OBSTACLE – Running out of containers/boxes that were suitable for what I wanted them for. I could have continued my trend into the garage and kitchen if I had found boxes to store some of the stuff I moved there (instead it is in a single box, ready to be sorted later).

TREASURES – The baby screwdrivers I could really have done with last time my glasses broke! More lingerie bags than I knew I had. But the biggest treasure is the extra space – a whole shelf, and the floor space by the washing machine.

TIP THAT WORKED FOR ME – Containers!! Of any kind. While I was pulling things out, I had spare boxes to put stuff in. One was for the garage, one was for stuff that did not have a place (much of this ended up in boxes in the cupboard, or being moved to other parts of the house, as I progressed). And I had a small box for all the little bits and pieces to go into until it was time to sort them.

Having containers to put things in as I sorted meant I could shove it all out of the way if needed, and I also didnt’ feel the stress of having to finish, because I knew that the stuff was contained and would not end up in a pile that got kicked everywhere if I walked away for any length of time. I am much more likely to go back to sort things if they are contained. A pile of stuff would result in me looking at it and not knowing where to start, and then giving up.

RESULT – The stuff from under our bed has been put away. I have a tidy walk in robe (my part, anyway!!). The contents of the laundry cupboard are now easy to find, stored in such a way that they are hard to mess up, the frequently used stuff is the most accessible, and there is a free shelf for our linen (that currently sits in piles throughout the house). A bonus result is the extra floor space by the washing machine, where I could put a shelving unit for improved storage of the buckets, dirty shoes, and the backpacks that seem to migrate around the house without finding a permanent home.

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