Tidying a Huge Mess Challenge

Study/Guest bedroom needing a huge tidy up

All done. Now it's an inspiring retreat again.

Do you ever get overwhelmed by the hugeness of the mess? I do. I get paralyzed. I walked into this room and straight back out again repeatedly for three days. I finally just had to get it done in the morning of the day my Dad was coming to stay.

It's a disaster, where to start!

Oh dear it's awful. Can't even get the other door open.

I'd been doing a lot of crafting and getting out bags of projects and not putting anything away. Then other things started to be dumped here, notes, travel brochures, even the box I keep the Christmas cards in found it's way onto the bed. Ahhh.

I decided to begin by putting away the sewing projects. The bags were removed and stored in another cupboard in the kitchen. I took the half filled hobby box at the end of the bed and stored all the fabric pieces in that. Then I gathered up all the paper pattern pieces and put them in a shopping bag. Odd bits of embellishments were stored in the sewing box. I rejigged the shelves in the wardrobe and put the sewing machine and the hobby box away. 

Also at the end of the bed, I had an overnight bag with slippers and a nighty, still not put away after a weekend at the beach. I took care of that too. Now the end of the bed was clear. One space cleared, felt amazing. I was energized to push on. A plastic bag was filled with old notes and other papers I no longer needed along with scraps of fabric that were unusable. The important papers were filed and the CD's were put away in their proper storage box.

Nearly there. About now I want to dump what's left in a bag and sort it out later, but I didn't let myself do that this time. I kept going and put everything back in it's proper place. That was the hardest bit. Finishing isn't my strongest skill. 

The clean and serene romantic retreat.

Organised cupboard.

I love that the bed is clear so that side of the room is finished. I'm getting a proud-feeling payoff at this point. I also have made progress on clearing the corner where my notice board stands against the wall. I can get the two wardrobe doors open at this point. The storage boxes are stacked neatly.

However, you can see a corner of the desk which is still messy. This is supposed to be where I write but it became a dumping ground too. Very uninspiring. This last area was tidied up with everything being put in it's proper place and any rubbish thrown away.

Here it is looking all tidy and cute. I'm writing this blog late because I couldn't face this room. It's been such a huge effort that I couldn't resist making it the subject of this week's blog. The clean up was a massive challenge but I love that I got there.

My inspiration/notice board needs a makeover, stay tuned for that, but at least I've pinned up the current year's calendar. It still had 2018 before the clean up. This years calendar was some of the flotsam that had washed up on my desk.

Now this space is lovely again, I plan to try very hard to keep it tidy. I think I need to invest in some shelving for the wardrobe so that when I access things from the lower boxes, I don't put off putting things away due to the difficulty of getting to it and packing away after.

I found that focusing on clearing one area at a time very helpful. I also searched for categories of things and put those away all at once. I was ruthless in chucking out stuff that I really didn't need. I had to do some reality checks like, 'You've had this for fifteen years, do you really thing your going to use it? If the answer was no, out it went.

I can breath in this room now. I think I avoided making a start because the sight of it drained me.  But knowing my father couldn't sleep in this mess made me panic a bit. The adrenaline hit energized me. Once I got going it wasn't too bad but near the end exhaustion was winning and I had to really push myself to finish. 

Now that I have enjoyed my Dad's visit, and  by the way he said he slept very well in here, I'm enjoying writing my weekly blog and I hope you've enjoyed this little journey of mine. If you have a space that you'd like clean and can't get yourself to do it, invite someone over to stay the night. Works like a charm. :) 

Dora writes,
Heart Melting, Passionate Romance.