decluttering progress

We've made quite a bit of progress on our decluttering journey since starting March 5th with the rest of the "40 Bags in 40 Days" crew. I've shared some before + afters on Instagram and Facebook as we went along. It's great motivation putting your messy house on display, and it's been encouraging to get cheers from friends along the way as I share the progress.

We started out ahead of schedule by taking a Saturday and having the kids visit Grandpa + Grandma for a few hours so Ben + I could divide and conquer on some large projects. He took on cleaning out (which involved a lot of dusting) and declutting underneath our bed. I took on the closet in the playroom (before + afters on Facebook). Then we rearranged the boys room to move the changer/dresser into the playroom (which will be baby P #3's nursery as well) and moved Kai's dresser into their bedroom. It made a lot more room for the boys' beds and unblocked the closet that Desmond's bed had been in front of. 

Then that Sunday Ben went to hang out with my brother during the boys' rest time, so even though it was our day off I got some work done on the boys' dressers. I consolidated all of their clothing into the dresser in their room by weeding out the too small stuff and now the changer in the playroom is ready for new baby stuff! 

This week a few areas fell behind due to illness. I woke with food poisoning at 4am Tuesday, so that day nothing got done. I was also behind on a few pieces of areas that were mostly finished. Sometimes decluttering one area creates more clutter for another. Other times I had to choose to focus on the area and set aside one category of things that were part of it to get the bigger job done. For example, our desk had a great system of in-process and to-be-filed papers housed in 2 magazine files. They got ENTIRELY too full and while I decluttered the desk I moved them to the bookcase. When I decluttered the bookcase I still didn't get to the files, it will be a big job. 

Technically I don't have filing on our list until a couple weeks from now, so it can wait, but because they're on the bookshelf and the rest of it looks nice...it bugs me. Plus I'd like to get my once working filing system back up and running. What will help is that we are getting a separate filing cabinet (our ginormous desk has 2 file drawers that are nearing full) from Ben's parents to keep some things out in the garage. This will be a helpful solution for things that need archiving. 

As you can see I struggle to not get ahead of myself even when I'm behind. I want to jump to another spot on my schedule because it's next to one that is finished or it's just a complete eye-sore. However, I don't want to get in the habit of going off schedule too much because it's helpful and I made to keep everything organized! 

Here's a before + after of the bookshelf with the unsightly files strategically cropped out...

Today I had a rescheduled coffee date so I had a little time at home when dropping off the groceries before picking up the boys to finish the coat closet. The shelf with the purple bin was cluttered with kids' art supplies and finished projects. I was able to clear that out and make it more accessible for Malakai. 

These are probably the most underwhelming before + afters you've ever seen. These were relatively small in the "bags" created. The coat closet did result in an entire 30 gallon tote full of winter coats, hats + gloves to store until fall. 

So there is some of my recent progress in the 40 Bags in 40 Days challenge. For more day to day progress make sure to like the Breaking New Ground page on Facebook! We are doing pretty well at getting things spring cleaned and I can't wait to see how our house looks and feels by Easter!

By the way, there's still time to enter the Freshly Picked Moccasins giveaway!