Clear Out The Clutter Challenge: Planet of the Bins Edition!

So we have been working on this Clear Out The Clutter Challenge from Money Saving Mom! It has been a very encouraging an inspiring challenge! We needed some decluttering done around here!

We have been taking this by steps:

Baby Step #1: Kitchen Pantry (see before and after)

Baby Step#2: Bathroom Closet (see before and after)

Baby Step#3: The WHOLE House!!

Yea, we have been working on baby step #3 for a little over a week now.  After clearing out the clutter in the closet and pantry, it just really made us have a desire for a decluttered and simple atmosphere in our home everywhere! We try to keep things clean, but we have too much stuff! It is not necessary!

We got inspired then to just go through everything, nook and cranny and all! We are getting rid of anything that we have not used for a while and that we really do not need!

When we first started this, we thought, “oh we will find a thing here and there that we can give to the Salvation Army and such.  I am sure we will not have enough for a garage sale or anything!”

Boy were we naive! We ended up pulling both cars out of the garage and filling it up with stuff! So now we are going to have a garage sale this year!!

So how are we conducting this family project of whole house decluttering? Well, we moved to the “Planet Of The Bins” for a while!

Remember how we have told you about having plastic bins (that we buy 1-2 at a time a paycheck for less than $10) to help us try to be organized? We have bins to store our seasonal clothes, bins to keep with future baby/kids clothes, bins filled with new clothes for growing kids, bins for gifts, holiday bins, bins to rotate toys (makes the kids think they are new) and we even have a bin for each of the six of us to keep memories from our past! We like the bins as they are easy to stack, can be easily marked (and color coded), and if our unfinished basement ever floods (heard too many basement flooding stories), hopefully water damage will be a minimum.

Well, the process works and has worked, but we had too much that didn’t fit, that was sitting out to be put in the right bin… you know the story (unless you are super family ;)) and so it just accumulated at a rapid pace. Soon our basement became, “where should I put this…oh in the basement” type of basement.  So we made a commitment to reorganize or organization system and rid ourselves of anything unnecessary!

This idea transferred to decluttering even the main living areas.  The first thing that we did was bring up all clothing bins and we washed and collected every item from every part of our home that contained cotton you can wear and use and sorted it!

We had these 3 options:

1. Keep and put away for current use
2. Keep and store for future use
3. Garage sale pile

Well, the clothing part is now nearly done and all things in a place, during this process, we have had a box on all 3 levels of our home to put anything we find that we no longer need into a garage sale box. Next to each box, was a garbage bag for the stuff that is really…. just for plain junk! The system is working well and kids are helping joyfully!

After the whole house clothing and cloth materials (bedding, towels, etc.) sort on the Planet of the Bins, we ended up with 4 garbage bags and 4 boxes filled with clothes for our garage sale! That is a lot of clothing to rid ourselves of! PLUS everything is in it’s right drawer, shelf and bin!

The quote of the week from our six year old as she carries a pile of clothes to the Planet of the Bins: “boy, isn’t it just so much fun to organize our house!” I really hope she thinks that as we dive into the next WHOLE house project – TOYS!