Live More With Less: Week 1 Link-up

The first week of my Lenten Challenge to get rid of clutter and clean our house within an inch of its life is done. I started with Thomas’s room, mostly because of the closet. His room is pretty bare right now – a crib and a twin bed take up most of the available floor space, so there’s not much to declutter in the room itself, so that just required a deep cleaning.We’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s focus on the closet to start.

Thomas has a big walk-in closet with a window in his room. Because it’s big and he wears the same Peyton Manning jersey every single day, he doesn’t really need the huge walk-in closet. So I tend to just throw things that don’t have a place on the floor – meaning that it was the perfect place to start this challenge. My secret hidden clutter zone.

I started by taking everything out of the closet and sorting through all the boxes of outgrown clothes, hand-me-downs he never wore, and random stuff that has accumulated in there. I ruthlessly went through his clothes – anything I didn’t love, got put in the hand-me-down or Goodwill box.  I put all of his clothes that I’m keeping into three diaper boxes – one for 6 – 12 months Spring/Summer, one for 12 – 18 months Fall/Winter, one for 18 – 24 months Spring/Summer.

After I finish Nell’s room this week, I’ll buy bins and assign a color to each kid, but for now the diaper boxes do. And everything else that isn’t something he currently wears? 1 big box of clothes marked to give to friends. I dropped a load off at our neighbor’s house yesterday – it felt great. Here’s what his closet looks like now:

Just the clothes he’s currently wearing, a box of his winter bed linens, and a mementos tub (things that he’ll want down the road but we don’t have surface space to display right now with two beds in his room) live in his closet now. Thomas walked in and said, “Wow! What is this place called?” Sorry kid, I’ve been depriving you of a secret hang-out.

And for his room, I washed all the sheets and put on his rugby stripe duvet for summer, vacuumed and scrubbed everything, including baseboards. The room needs to be repainted and I’d like to change out the window treatments, but Thomas has successfully slept in his big bed for naps and nighttime this week, so once we take the crib down, I’ll turn my attention to the painting and decorating portion of his room. But here’s how it looks now:

How did you do in week one? In week two I’ll do the same to Nell’s room – focusing on the toys and clothes and deep cleaning. Link-up below if you have any cleaning or de-cluttering progress to share this week!