Decluttering and Organizing Your Life....Start Small

In the past week, while surfing around in Blogland, I've noticed quite a few bloggers are talking about and/or holding "DeCluttering your Home" Events this month or throughout 2010. Organizing Junkie is holding a February Decluttering Challenge HERE and there is this Full Year Declutter Project HERE.
Just google "Declutter Blog" and you'll find enough organizing angst writing to fill your day.

Clutter and decluttering seem to be HOT this year among the mommy &/or frugal blogs.

Clutter is bad.....that we can all agree upon.
Clutter gets in the way of you being your "authentic self".....geez, did I just say that?
So decluttering is always a good idea.
I doubt there are few among us who couldn't use a little decluttering and organizing.
Some of us, on the other hand, could use a FLEET of 1-800 Got Junk? Trucks!

In between racing off to grab another load of Catalina deal-ed goodies at Price Chopper or picking up more almost free stuff at Rite-Aid, I decided to take an hour out this week and declutter/organize something in my house.
But what?......what could I finish in less than an hour??

And then it hit me.....well,literally.....it's on wheels you see and the dog can push it if he jumps up on it's side looking for food.
My junk drawer in the kitchen island!
Small and an overflowing pig sty...perfect!!

First I had to clear the island's top....ugh.....the scope of this job is expanding....

Step One....I dumped it out....

 

Did all that actually fit in that little drawer?

Then I took the drawer out and wiped it down.
Here it is all cleaned up.
Can't I just leave it like this?lol

Next I made 3 piles....a "Will Live in this Drawer" Pile, a "Has to Live Somewhere Else" Pile and a Trash Pile.
Every item was touched once....if I touched it I had to make a decision and put it in one of the piles immediately.  No putting it back and dealing with it later on.
After about 15 minutes I had 3 separate piles and was ready to move on to Step Two.


Step Two involved....
1. Putting the trash pile in the trash.   Gee, that was complicated....lol
2. Putting the stuff that was going back in that Drawer back into the drawer, but NEATLY this time.  I had 2 organizing bins in there already but this time I USED them to organize.
Imagine that....
3. Putting the "Needs to Live Somewhere Else" Pile into a bag so I could walk around the house and relocate each item to it's proper location--the canning jar lids in the garage with the canning supplies, the magnifying glass into my desk drawer, the coupons in the coupon box, etc.

And here is what the Junk Drawer looks like now....ain't it pretty?

February 4th and this is the extent of the organizing I have done for 2010.  I have done some decluttering but organizing?.....this be it.

I'll put more organizing and decluttering on my list after I get the taxes finished.
If you've been putting D & O(that's organizing and decluttering) off, you probably have a BIG job ahead of you.
Take my advice.....start small.  Find some area that is small or break a larger area it down into zones to work on instead of trying to tackle a whole room.  Breaking it down into small jobs gives you more of a sense of accomplishment as you can complete something.  When you have a success behind you, you will feel more positive about moving on to another zone to clean.

How about you?  What have you done in the way of decluttering this year?
Let us know in the comments section.

Sluggy