Today I walked into the basement to face a few hidden areas of “what do I stock up on” and decided on a big audacious goal for the day.
The Goal:
Empty this cabinet!
Ok, so as my friend pointed out, emptying the cabinet is not really a big audacious goal. But emptying it and dealing with all the stuff so it doesn’t just become relocated piles of clutter could be. 🙂
The cabinet pictured housed decorations left over from a few events I’ve planned, shelves of candles and holders, an entire shelf of rolled paper like shelf liners and removable wallpaper that jumps out at you if you dare open the cabinet doors as well as some random gift items – a wreath I made for a professional pre-covid but they haven’t been back in their office yet, reusable containers I use for wrapping treats, etc.
While addressing that cabinet I also took a pass at this basement cabinet filled with party supplies. I got overly excited and started emptying it before I remembered to take a “before” picture, so here’s a “during” shot:
Party supplies used to have their own armoire (aka the Party Dresser) up until recently, so this was already an improvement, but after these few weeks of practice I was confident I could clean out enough to make room for whatever I kept from the other cabinet.
A few thoughts from the process:
I have a lot of candle holders. I love candles in my home and for events. But I probably don’t need several dozen votive holders. I don’t plan events like I used to, and I wasn’t using a lot of votive holders at the last few events I did anyway. Buh bye. The floating candles that were an awesome deal? I don’t have a pool, pots of water for floating candles would probably just attract mosquitos outside and I’d likely set my hair or the house on fire if I tried to use them in the tub. Buh bye. The rest of candles got evaluated also, and the keepers got divided between the party cabinet and a drawer upstairs near the dining room table, where I often have tea lights burning. You know, instead of going down two set of stairs to retrieve tea lights every time they burn out.
The removable wallpaper I was keeping for covering the stair risers? I could use it to…wait for it…paper the stair risers! After decluttering, I only had about thirty minutes before needing to drive one of my kids to an appointment, but in just that time I was able to make decent progress on that project, too. I kept the rest of the roll in case I need to replace it once I get around to fixing and painting the trim, but I love how it’s coming!
After relocating the rest of the drawer liner and the paper I expect to use soon to a recently cleaned out drawer in my craft dresser, I was able to fit all the other keep items in the one party cabinet, leaving the tall cabinet…drumroll…..TOTALLY EMPTY!!!
I’m so excited to have another space cleared out! Check out Instagram and Facebook for the after photos!
Uncovering Real 