Digging Our Way Out!

You know that feeling where you are always stepping on stuff and you feel claustrophobic in your own home?  Our house felt like it was swallowing us with all the stuff oozing out of cupboards, closets, drawers, and counters.  I’m not even kidding when I say, before putting our house on the market it was common to walk through the door and not have anywhere to sit my purse.

Our house attack process literally had us touching everything we own.  We pulled everything out of all the dark stuffed places.  I had stuff in all my old purses.  Just junk.  Like when I switched out purses, I never cleaned out the old one.  To date we have given away 24 bags/boxes of stuff to Goodwill.  I have four bins of kids stuff to sell at a local kids consignment sale this week.  We have filled two trailers full of stuff and taken it to the dump, and I have thrown countless other bags away in our trash cans.

Lastly, there are a few things like the kids rocking chairs, bean bags, picture frames that I didn’t want to part with but I knew in order to make this house feel bigger and let buyers picture themselves here, that stuff had to go elsewhere.  My in-laws are graciously storing some of our stuff in their basement until we are able to sell this house and move.  I have updated  Our Home tab at the top with pictures of our house.  Before you click over and see the pictures of our house now, check out some of the before shots.

Our boys’ bedroom was one of the worst rooms in the house.  Without having a playroom.  They currently share a bedroom AND it acts as storage for most of the toys in this house.  It was a mess!

I am so proud that we got those dressers cleared out, all the toys organized, and the furniture rearranged to look so much better!  Another room that needed storage help and rearranging was Reagan’s room.  Here are some before shots of her room.

There was so much stuff in this little house.  It feels so good to have cleaned out cupboards and closets, so now there is a place for things to be put away and so the counters are even clean!

The den/school room/craft room is by far the most used room in our house.  There were so many school supplies and things stored on counters and in boxes on the floor. I cleaned out the cupboards, so it all fits inside there now.  We also got rid of ALL those dvd cases and are now storing the dvds in a nice thin case.

The after pictures are still astonishing to me.  At times I feel like this isn’t our house because “where is all our stuff?”  It feels so much better now.

If you too feel like decluttering, even if you are not moving, please go visit my friend Ann Marie over at White House Black Shutters.  If you follow me on twitter or instagram you probably have noticed I use the hashtag #40bags40days often.  Ann Marie started this whole movement of people decluttering their house of 40 bags of useless stuff in 40 days.  That is one bag a day.  Although I know I was kicked in high gear with getting our house on the market, it has been so encouraging to follow along as other people were doing the same tasks I have been doing.  Go check out her posts and tips through this series!

Now, PLEASE don’t leave without going to Our Home tab and checking out the AFTER pictures.  Thank you so much for stopping by!

*** The winners of our Out of The Box Art Studio Summer Camps have been announced in the rafflleocopter widget on the original post.  I will email the winners later today. Thank you to everyone who entered!