#icandeclutter Days 2 & 3: The Spare Bedroom

For Days 2 and 3 of my 20 Day Decluttering Challenge, I decided to tackle one of my major problem areas: the spare bedroom.

I couldn’t get a photo of it, but the underneath of the bed was packed from one side to the other with boxes, old clothes and random junk. Here’s what it looked like when I pulled it out:

Believe it or not, this is how much was under there after I cleaned it out last year. Yikes.

This time, I did much better. I was armed with steely determination, and ready to crush any emotional attachments that I was holding on to. Maybe it was because I was mentally prepared, but I didn’t find it too hard at all to start tossing things out. There were many things that I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought were worth keeping.

Here’s the before and after:

Not bad, huh? All I kept were a couple of keepsakes from my grandparents, some photo frames, a couple of bits of jewellery and a few other knick knacks.

My Day 3 task was to tackle the chest at the end of the spare bed, which was packed with clothes that I don’t wear, but hadn’t yet been able to let go of (plus a few of my childhood toys – you just can’t throw out your old friends!).

Here’s a before and after of the chest:

I got rid of a lot of the clothes (and even a few of the toys), but not all of them. I didn’t put them back in the chest though – if I’m going to keep them, I have to wear them, so they are going in the closet. I used the huge amount of space that I’d cleared in the chest to store the box full of keepsakes that was previously under the bed.

To give you a better idea of how many clothes I tossed, here’s a comparison of the clothes that were in the chest and the clothes that I decided to keep. Not too bad!

And here is my ever growing donation pile, which is incredibly satisfying to look at!