I don’t usually do how-to posts.
I’m all about the emotion of living life, not necessarily organising it. There are far more better qualified people that talk about organising than I ever could. For one, I can’t be bothered with the relentless photo staging and taking. Who has time for that?
However, you will recall that a while ago, I spoke about how decluttering my life is really helping me to get on top of my depression. Shortly after that post, I signed up for The Organised Housewife’s 20 Days to Organise and Clean Your House challenge. I admit. I was a bit dubious. I really don’t like being told what to do. But, as I have also mentioned, I am a course-collector/hoarder.
To say that I have been inspired is a complete understatement. I have no idea how long it will last, but this past week, I have found a new found purpose to my existence. Cleaning and organising is as boring as crap, but not if you couple it with a bit of creativity and this is where I have become inspired.
I have shown you my pantry, so this week, I decided to tackle to my laundry.
That puppy was a mess. We have lived in this house for three years now and to be honest, I have never really sorted it out from the day we moved in. It was the most uninspiring place to be. I would literally gather up all the laundry dotted around the house, chuck it unceremoniously into the basket, do the washing, pop it in the baskets, where it would sit for days before I finally got around to putting it away.
Of course, that just made for a mind full of jobs that were not getting done. This is not good for clinical depression.
So when the laundry came up as a task to be done in the 20 day challenge, I did not need any convincing.
First of all, I took everything out of the cupboards, and I ditched everything I had never used or not used in the past year, nor was ever likely to use. I want to be able to tell you that I sorted through it, donated what I could, recycled and the like. I didn’t. Everything just went into a big black bag.
Before you write to tell me how irresponsible that is, please bear in mind that I have clinical depression. Just taking this step of decluttering my life is a massive step in the right direction. Once all the decluttering is done though, I promise you that going forward I will be heaps more “green” responsible. I just needed to get this done.
I knew that I wanted my organisation to be creative, but I was struggling to come up with ideas. I looked through some posts on The Organised Housewife and came across this guest post by Jess from Forever Organised. It was perfect.
Admittedly, I didn’t so much as feel inspired as just copy what she did {why try to improve perfection}.
And here is the result.
The first thing I did was to get new hampers for the laundry. These are just $15 ones from Kmart. I could have opted for more expensive ones but didn’t have time to shop around. I’m pretty pleased with the result.
Then I started tackling the cupboards. What I did was sort everything into groups and then labelled the baskets according to that. My groupings may be a little weird.
Inspired by some people who have made their own washing powder, I decided to make mine with my Thermomix. I used Thermofun’s recipe which you can find here.
Finally, we have a fair whack of medicines. This year hasn’t been a particularly good one for us in terms of health and I was really struggling to keep them all organised. This $15 drawer set from the Reject Shop was just perfect.
And there you have it. I have to say a massive shout out to Kat who runs The Organised Housewife. The program is amazing. It is hard work, but she very much encourages you to do what you can, to keep the lists and go back to those tasks that you couldn’t quite manage at a later date. The Facebook group is amazing too (very private so you aren’t airing your “laundry” to all and sundry).
Have you done some decluttering lately? Has it helped your frame of mind, even if you don’t suffer from depression?
Until next time,
Oh that’s pretty! Where did labels come from? I’m inspired. Well done!
Hi Carly. I made these labels myself using my silhouette cameo which is a cutting machine crafters use. It would be just as easy to create them in MS word though, print them off and cut them out.