Uncluttered – Week 3 Progress So Far

We are half way through Week 3 of Joshua Becker’s Uncluttered online course, and have made some really wonderful progress.

The assignment for week 3 was to declutter the car, the living room, and any other common rooms, such as the family room or dining room. Joshua explained in the introductory video that he selected these areas to start with, as they were generally not as bad and therefore easier to tackle. Obviously, he has never seen our living room or dining room!

We decided to start in the living room and divide the room into areas. We will declutter a different area of the room each night. Monday night, we decluttered the end tables. One end table is a step table, with two drawers and two flat surfaces. The other is a doughbox, with storage inside, a space in the front for magazines, and a flat top. Here is what they looked like before we decluttered.

The step table is at the end of the tan loveseat.

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The doughbox is rather hidden, but you can see the lamp sitting on it, as well as a pile of books.

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And here is the after!

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The drawers of the step table now hold only my current “in progress” knitting and sewing projects. The surfaces are clear, except for coasters.

The doughbox was full of junk! 95% of it ended up in the garbage. I have wanted to clean it out for quite a while, but the surface was covered with books, so I could not open the lid. My favorite find? This somewhat skeevy brochure about vasectomies. The couple on the front looks normal, but open it up and the brochure features a fellow with a porn-stache and his feather-haired, seventies-looking girlfriend, basking in the afterglow. I laughed so hard that I nearly peed myself.

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Anyway! Now current magazines are stored neatly in the front of the doughbox, replacing the knitting, iPhone parts, resistance bands, hair scrunchies, and other detritus. The entire inside is empty and clean. I will probably store the few scrapbooking materials that I still own inside.

Tuesday night, we decluttered the top of the computer desk, and Wednesday night, we decluttered the desk drawers. You can see the before above. The desk had so much stuff piled on it, no one could actually work there. But here is the wonderful after!

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The remaining areas in the living room are the sofa, which my daughter will declutter, the tool shelf, which my husband and I will go through this weekend, and the area around the TV, which mainly just needs tidying.

I doubt we will get to the dining room this week, but will instead roll it into next week along with our bedroom, which is not that bad. The best thing about this whole process, other than finally, FINALLY getting the house decluttered, is that we are learning to break the rooms down into manageable tasks. A little bit of work each night is already making so much of a difference. When we finally get to difficult areas, like the third bedroom, we will not feel so overwhelmed going though them.

The other great thing is how great we feel after hauling things out to the trash or to the donation centers. We’ve used the momentum to do a little decluttering in other areas as well. I am going through my CDs and getting rid of all those on which I only like one or two songs, after putting those songs that I do like on the computer so that I will have them digitally. Steve has been going through his papers and schoolwork from the last two years, sorting out what to get rid of and what to keep. There are starting to be open spaces, clean surfaces, and bare spots in the house. It’s totally awesome!



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