Tag Archives: declutter

We’ve written about garage organization, basement organization and kitchen decluttering. These areas are usually where our clutter accumulates the most but there’s another one that’s a favourite hiding place for junk; our closets. Like our garages and basements, our closets are typically a dumping ground for things that we don’t have a home for. It’s another way to temporarily cloak our addiction to stuff, especially clothing.

Moreover, because clothes are one of the hardest types of items to get rid of, you’re left with bulging closets that require you to wear safety equipment every time you open their door. In today’s market of fast fashion and competitive clothing markets, low quality, high quantity, discounted clothes have paved the way to closets full of clutter.

Buried in these closets is the roughly 20% of clothing that most people actually wear. The other 80% of items are never worn because they’re too old, don’t fit or still have tags because they looked good in-store or were a great deal.

If this sounds familiar and you’re tired of staring at a wall full of clothes thinking you have nothing to wear, it might be time to declutter your closet.

Readers of this blog know that we’re big fans of decluttering and organization, with articles on topics such as organizing your basement and beating back-to-school clutter.

Those articles mainly covered the how–with tips and tricks, the when–with timed decluttering sessions, and finally the why–your sanity, of course! It’s understandably challenging to take the first step in decluttering when the mountain of junk in your home is overwhelming. The only way to conquer any mountain, however, is always the same: by taking the first step.

So today we’re going to give you the last piece in the puzzle, the what. We’re firing off a list of 300+ things you can throw away so you can take the first step to conquering that mountain today.

Howdy folks! How’s the kitchen organization coming along? Last week in part 1 we talked about the first task in organizing your kitchen: decluttering. It’s understandably a massive undertaking for most of us but a necessary one before you even start looking at kitchen storage. To be honest, we ourselves haven’t been able to set aside a big enough block of time to completely declutter our kitchen yet either. The truth is, we haven’t had the chance to ship the kids off to their grandparents.

What we have been doing is decluttering for 15 minutes every day–a tip you might know from our article on beating back-to-school clutter. It’s been pretty successful so far and we love how we’re finally able to use a cutting board on the countertop without relocating half the kitchen.

Give these timed sessions a try if you find yourselves short on time or babysitters. It’ll allow you to start putting some of these kitchen storage tips to use even if you haven’t completed decluttering yet.

Are you finding yourself practicing your Jenga skills every time you’re cleaning up leftovers and need a Tupperware container? Have you opened up your pantry cupboard door in the morning and been knocked square in the nose by the box of Fruit Rollups that was precariously perched on top of your box of cereal? We know you can answer yes to both of these, because we certainly can.

Because the kitchen is the most often used room in our homes, it’s usually also the most cluttered and disorganized. Our house is no exception. Every evening, we spend a considerable amount of time cleaning up the kitchen after dinner but every morning, the hurricane of breakfast prep and morning rituals take their toll.

You remember when you were young and watched people in sci-fi movies using cool handheld computers? They were from a time in the distant future that could look up anything and have the information immediately right in the palm of their hand. Well, that time is now and those people are us.

For us, the main reason this happens is probably because we spend a significant portion of our time clearing tiny weapons of mass destruction off our floors and don’t have enough time to clean the kitchen and the rest of the house. Other reasons are more typical ones, independent of whether there are little people booby trapping your every step. The first is simply having too much stuff in our kitchen, and the second is the lack of good kitchen organization.

To tackle the first problem, we know we’re going to have to declutter and get rid of all the stuff that’s collected in our kitchen over the years. If you’re going to do the same and need some help on how to organize your kitchen, read on. This is part 1 of a 2 part series. Next week we’ll be taking on our second problem: kitchen organization.