Weekend Three and we are halfway through The Declutter Challenge by Femme Finance. If you have just joined us – welcome! If you have been with us form the beginning – excellent! Glad you are still here.
We thought we would throw decluttering the garage into this weekend along with the bathroom just in case there are a bunch of boxes with recently decluttered items sitting in the garage, which, let’s face it is one big dumping ground the majority of the time. For those who do not have a garage, focus on the bathroom or choose another area of your home to declutter – this is your journey of sorting and minimalising after all.
Decluttering, along with giving you clarity of mind, can prevent pests and reduce dust, mold and mildew which can trigger asthma and allergies. As well as these helpful benefits, keeping these two areas of our homes organised simply, can help with time management especially in the morning when you hit snooze a few too many times and you are then running late for work, it gives us easier access to what we own and therefore prompt us to use these things more. For this reason in the Garage we are going to use Zones – a designated area of the garage for the storage of certain items. It’s not an original concept but one that seems to work. In the bathroom look at the flow of your day, where are you when you do your make up, your hair? Where is the mirror situated? Are you left handed or right handed?
As usual let’s start with a plan!
Bathroom
- Pull everything out of cupboards and shelves, showers and baths
- Remove everything from all surfaces
- Take used towels, facecloths, hand towels, bathmats and put them in the wash
- Give the bathroom a clean – be as thorough as you like or leave the deep clean for another time and just give everything a once over
- Sort through all the items you have removed. Throw out anything expired, empty, broken etc
- Group items together e.g., plasters and first aid, everyday essentials, make up, skin care
- Are any storage solutions needed?
- Can you decant any items into a more user/environmentally friendly container?
Garage
- Pull everything out and group into like items e.g., Gardening, Tools, full Storage boxes, Sports gear
- Give everything a once over sweep out the cobwebs in the corners and the debris off the floor
- Sort through each item and put them into categories of donate, repair, sell and chuck
- Figure out what zones you want to create in your Garage
- Are any storage solutions needed?
Storage
As we have already mentioned previously, Pinterest is our friend. We could write out all the ideas we find but you’d be reading for miles. So instead, we thought we would pop below the ideas we have used in our own spaces. Hopefully this will give you motivation and we will leave you very clever smart people, to find what best suits you and the space and budget you are working with.
Bathroom
There is a plethora of ideas for the bathroom space that range from wicker baskets, mesh baskets, bamboo containers to marble trays. Some of the storage ideas we have already mentioned in previous blogs for The Declutter Challenge would work here – paint a box to compliment your décor to hold your first aid kit, a bamboo lazy Susan to hold your skin care, tiered stands are a great way to introduce an aesthetic to a bathroom – never underestimate a china cake stand to make the bathroom feel more majestic! If you need more storage, consider a wood cabinet from a second hand shop or metal trolley? If you don’t have a lot of surface spaces how about using self-adhesive caddy’s and attach it to the wall to hold your everyday essentials? 3M Command does a caddy that could be suitable for this purpose.
Check back to our Instagram posts where we have a few examples of ideas that could be used as well as a few below.
Garage
With regards to garage storage, you could go the full mile and fit a full wall of cupboards, racks on the walls for bike and kayaks, integrated handy man set up with hooks and tubs with workman’s bench, pop in a mezzanine floor to store the rarely used – or perhaps that could be a long-term goal.
Now that you have sorted all you have and know what you are putting back into your newly swept garage. Let’s talk about Zones again. Here’s what zones I will be using with a little diagram I prepared earlier:
- Outdoor – covers everything from tents to sporting equipment
- Toys for Storage & Rotation – includes Nursery items we may be using again so they need to be stored and there are a few pieces of bigger equipment
- Clothes – categorised seasonally in plastic stackable tubs
- Tools – this includes items like lawn mower, hedge trimmer etc as well as tools of the hammer and saw type
These zones were designated in accordance to what we need access to regularly and rarely, with the ultimate goal of having the majority able to be reached, everything contained and visually looking clutter free.
It’s a pretty big job and may not be completed in one weekend but its good to have a plan of attack for when you do have the time.
If you’re feeling a bit daunted of the prospect of this weekend’s challenge, you are not alone! This garage of mine I may only get part way with so I think I will start with the easier of the two and begin with the bathroom.
Remember this is your challenge so if the garage is to be left to another day pop it on the calendar so you remember.