Clutter-Buster 101

Greetings!

The less you buy, the less Stuff you have in your house and the more space you have to store the things you actually need. It's crazy. With three people and a cat living in a two-bedroom townhouse (complete with basement!) we had no room to store all our Stuff.

Realizing this, I went on a binge craze. I systematically categorized everything in our house, room by room, into five piles per room: Need to keep in this room, need to keep outside this room, infrequent use (store in high cabinets and/or basement), and Unused, which is divided further into "good enough to sell on Craigslist", and Donate.

After the Great Purge, I realized I had a lot of potential storage space that wasn't being used (underneath the couch skirt, a completely unused dresser! etc). After moving a few things from room to room and re-organizing, I made a list of what I wanted to organize better (baskets for the pantry/fridge/freezer/spice cabinet, a stable bookshelf). Taking the list from room to room (and to the Unused piles) I managed to find a few things. An ill-fitting counter top wine rack became the perfect towel holder in the linen cabinet. A completely forgotten wooden utility cart is now our kitchen chopping center. It's amazing, we have a whole new look without spending any money!

We also discovered a multitude of duplicates. Why do we have three power drills? Four vegetable peelers? Electronics we had already replaced, two chalkboards and FIVE badly stained whiteboards from our college days. There were things we didn't even know we had: we had even purchased some items because we didn't know we had one on hand!

All of this has led to a new creed: Buying only the needs lets us splurge on the big wants. A non-Depletable purchase is only valid if the item the purchase is replacing is broken beyond repair. (instead of a new computer, Mr. K got new RAM)

Do you know what I really want? I want to get us out of debt, to pay off the credit card and Mr. K's student loans completely. To not have to worry about money. And maybe we can even afford a vacation cruse with the money we're not spending to buy Stuff we already have a version of. Why spend beaucoup bucks on a new dress when there are beautiful ones on sale? Why buy something new when you can make it for half the cost (or even free!)

TLDR: Most everybody has the problem of too much Stuff and not enough room to fit it all. Most of it is duplicated elsewhere in the home. By paring down our stuff and one-use items, money is saved and space for needed items is gained.

Thank you for reading,
~Mrs. K