a few weekends ago my mother-in-law and I cleaned out her attic big time.
Attics or storage spaces are so tough because they begin to become overwhelming. There is SO much in there. Storage, holiday stuff, lots of old junk, old treasures etc. Boxes continue to pile up in the awkward spaces in our homes which makes it harder to get to and more of a reason to just leave it be.
operation clear out:
Step One: Pick a day.
just do it. just decide what day you are going to clean it out. recruit a friend or 2 and write it on the calendar. this will hold you accountable and not let you make an excuse to not do it.
Step Two: Goals and Objectives with the space: write them down, talk about them as a group right before you start.
in the case of my saturday, my mother in law is looking to move out of her house into something of a more managable side. She wanted to purge and get rid of things that she hasn't in years and be realistic about the things that she
needs to keep.
Step Three: We created the following bins:
Goodwill
| Trash
| Keep in the attic
| put somewhere else in the house
since the room was so big and such a large project, the bins would fill up fast.
to keep the job moving, and to not let us loose steam and get bored we would take care of the bins every time they got full.
We put the goodwill stuff in a garbage bag and labeled it with masking tape
We took the trash down to the garbage outside
took the "somewhere else in the house" and put it in that place
this made our day go by so fast and not let us get overwhelmed with the amount of stuff we had coming out of the attic.
Sadly, we were so excited to start that I forgot to take a before picture but to give you the picture, the MOMENT you opened the door there was ... stuff.
here are the after pics, we cleared out so much stuff it was so wonderful
we took the goodwill stuff straight there, vacummed up :)
we were so happy and proud to put storage boxes back in without anything in them
if you're thinking about doing a big organizing/purging project like this, my biggest advice would be to not be overwhelmed to start. keep in mind that it will most likely take one day. it seems crazy and chaotic in the midst of it, but is so so worth it when its over and done
happy purging :)
