As we prepare to have a new house next year, we’re trying to take inventory of what we have and/or want that way we can get an idea of how much storage we need. We’re big proponents of having a few quality things you take care of rather than a bunch of things that are hard to keep track of, which makes them harder to maintain. Our house is much easier to keep clean now that we’ve donated a lot of things we don’t use or need!
Below I have a few recent declutter projects we’ve completed, as well as some future ones we need to tackle in the next year or so.
Recent Projects
Spice cabinet
Our spices were all stored in a 12″ wide upper cabinet, so making sure that our most used spices were accessible and easy to reach was important. In our new house, we’re going to minimize tall storage, so really this was just a temporary annoyance. However, my cousin gifted me some spice jars for my wedding, so I started reorganizing a little early! I love how the jars are bigger, so we don’t lose the little ones and accidentally buy duplicates. When I was decluttering, I actually found 2-3 jars of some spices that I was able to consolidate into one!
I also love how the new glass jars are see through, so we can see how much of a seasoning we have left while meal planning and making our grocery list. The wider opening makes it easier to fit our tablespoon, which has always been a struggle. During this declutter, we also decided to relocate the seasoning jars to a drawer and keep them in alphabetic order. This makes them so much easier to find! We were able to utilize this empty drawer thanks to the kitchen decluttering we’d done in the past.
Finally, while we love the jars, there are some seasonings that we will continue storing in their bulk, store bought containers like garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, and paprika. Those seasonings in particular we use a lot, so refilling the glass jars would be a regular occurrence. Either way, I love these little jars so much, I plan on getting one more set of 12 for the remaining seasonings we have.
Measuring spoons/measuring cups
Our measuring cup drawer used to be a nightmare despite its small size, mainly because the cups would get caught when trying to close it. This is where we did some major downsizing. For one, we went down to just 2 sets of dry measuring cups. We have a black set that is a harder plastic and has half measurements marked (like 1/8 cup). We also have a set from my dorm days, which we plan on replacing with a steel set in the future since the measurements are almost rubbed off.
For measuring spoons, we have two sets as well. One is double sided, so it really feels like three sets! Our wet measuring cups are stored elsewhere due to their height, but we get by great with just two of those. A great perk to downsizing your kitchen tools is it doesn’t take long to find what you’re looking for!
Entryway closet
The main motivation with decluttering our entry closet was mainly to make it look neater (there are no doors, just open shelving). However, one major plus is it helped us see what storage we’d actually need in our new house mudroom. We obviously need room for coats and shoes, but outside of that, our main needs are hats/gloves, sunscreen, and bug spray.
We were also able to see that the majority of our hooks are used by sweatshirts/hats, so we plan on having hooks in the kids’ bedrooms to help store those less regularly used items there.
Books
When Brandon and I get on a reading roll, we get through a lot of books. We’re so lucky to live within walking distance to a library, but it’s got a pretty small selection compared to bigger city libraries. To keep our bookshelf tame, we try to keep our our own collection pared down to what we’d like to reread, loan out, or just keep if the book has any meaning. Books we bought but didn’t like or read once with no plans to reread, we’re trying (as in the books are in my trunk) to donate or resell. I love the idea of our bookshelf being a curated collection of books we’d recommend to a friend.
Future Projects
Cleaning supplies
We have so many cleaning products we don’t use! In the kitchen, we’re extremely basic with just Dawn dish soap for our dishes, countertops, and table. This works for us, and I know our future marble will require a gentler cleaner.
We’ll keep lysol wipes and paper towels on hand for toilets/litterboxes, as well as a mirror cleaner. Besides that, I’d love to reduce the number of surface cleaners we have. Ideally all of our cleaning products could be in one central location or cabinet, instead of each bathroom or kitchen requiring its own cleaning product storage.
Washcloths/towels
We have so many random towels, and this is the one area where I struggle with ‘but what if we need it!’. My goal for the new house would be to have 2-3 hand towels designated for each bathroom, 2-3 bath towels per person, 2-3 each of hand towels/wash clothes/drying towels for the kitchen, and then a stash of rags/towels for cleaning. As long as you’re staying on top of your laundry, you don’t really need a whole lot of towels. Plus, it’s annoying to go through the work of doing the laundry, folding it, and then you have to squeeze them into a drawer or pile them like a leaning tower!
Having kids responsible for their own bath towels will also help reduce the chance of one child always grabbing a fresh towel so there’s none left for the others!
Tupperware/storage
We dread washing our plastic storage containers/tupperware because you have to work harder to make them feel clean! I’d love for us to consolidate our large collection of medium sized plastic tupperware into a variety of glass storage containers. A lot of the time we need multiple tupperware containers for leftovers because we don’t have a big enough size. That means more plastic to wash, which we do not like! Plus, I’d love to not have to devote an entire cabinet to storing storage containers!
Do you have any decluttering projects you recommend or ones you need to tackle yourself? Let me know!
Thanks for reading!
Davien
fluted wood & marble 
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