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Sacrificing Spoons for Sanity

Well, it’s Wednesday, so it’ time to bring you up to date with my decluttering and organising. You may remember last week I made a beginning in the big cupboard (closet for my American friends). I intended to go through this one shelf at a time which was fine last week. Yesterday I realised I had a bigger job to do. I have to do the work on a Tuesday because I wouldn’t be able to write a blog post on the same day. I am a spoonie remember!

If you saw the somewhat embarrassing “before” image in the featured picture at the top of last weeks post, you will see that the next shelf down is inaccessible due to the clutter in front of the cupboard. There was nothing else I could do spend time sacrificing spoons and get to grips with that mess. Naturally, I am taking you on the journey with me. But first here is a quick reminder of what I was facing:

Living Creatively with Fibro | An image of my hallway cupboard where the shelves are cluttered and things are spilling out onto the floor

Why does this happen

Considering it is in my nature to be a bit of a perfectionist those of you that know me are probably wondering how on earth this happened. Well, thanks to The Clutterbug YouTube channel organising series I have an answer. Because I want to store things “perfectly” I put off doing that until I have the chance to set up a system I will be happy to use. In addition, I struggled with sacrificing spoons to organise the place. In the meantime, things just get dropped in the space. As time goes on, the shelves become full, so you place items in front, and you can see the result. I am still not in a position to create a perfect storage system, but I can improve things.

Bags Galore

Some of the most significant offenders in the floor space were shopping bags. These things breed! Our main shopping, ordered online, gets brought to the house without carriers, but every time Michael stops off after work to pick up any items he ends up getting another bag. I did make a suggestion to Tesco which customer service said was a great idea; sadly they have not done anything about it though.

The proposal was simple when you receive your online shopping the driver could scan and collect any damaged bags for life. They could then award you “a credit” so when you pop into a shop and don’t have a bag with you, they don’t need to charge you because you are replacing bags. As it is we are swamped with bags because we very rarely plan a visit to a shop to exchange the damaged ones and we are continually paying more bag tax. Come on Tesco help make this happen, in the meantime; I may have a solution for dealing with this problem:

Living Creatively with Fibro | An image of two bags for life stuffed completely full with other bags for life

Sacrificing Spoons and finding Buried Treasure

Once I had been busy sacrificing spoons and battled through the chaos of bags I discovered that many of the items on the next shelf to be organised belonged in other places. Some things were able to be moved to under the cupboard under the sink. I won’t lie, some items were broken and should have been put in the bin ages ago. I even found a spare waste bin that we didn’t need in the living room. As luck would have it the plastic bin by the bedroom sink was cracked and needed replacing so I immediately re-homed this.

Living Creatively with Fibro | Buried Treasure after sacrificing spoons an image of the silver peddle bin I found hidden.

Hidden storage solution

Once I had dealt with the shelf I had planned to clear I noticed that other than the peddle bin I had by now moved into the bedroom the only other items on the bottom of the cupboard were a couple of paint cans and an EMPTY storage box.  My plan was clear. As an interim measure, I decided to use this storage box to hold all the smaller attachments for the steamer which were left loose on the shelf above as well as various small tools.

Tidying all the small parts into the container meant there was space on the upper level for the Steamer, Karcher Window Vac and Michael’s Drill alongside our bulk purchase of white Vinegar for cleaning (which was all stored on the floor under those blinking carrier bags!). If you are wondering why we need all that vinegar I will refer you to the cleaning recipes in this book:

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 I love Melissa’s YouTube channel (by the same name), so it was a no-brainer to get the book. As someone with Fibromyalgia, when I do get the chance to clean I appreciate being able to do it with natural products. I also love the fact that, as an entrepreneur, Melissa created a whole business out of the fact she hated cleaning and wanted to make it a more streamlined process. I was also able to move some of the small tool cases onto the bottom shelf next to the storage container. Check out how the cupboard looked then:

Living Creatively with Fibro | A picture of the three clear shelves with organised storage and some empty space
Living Creatively with Fibro | The bags full of bags temporarily blocking the bottom shelf of the cupboard

I’m happy with my progress

I have not completed the task. I still have to work on the shelf above these and the tall, thin space to the right which holds things like broom handles.I hope you agree though that the progress I have made it pretty darn good. I have had to temporarily house the bag collection at the bottom of the space:But I think I have a plan to resolve this problem. I’ll let you know next week when I tackle the last parts of this space. I’ll admit doing all of this has meant sacrificing spoons, and I am feeling the pain today, BUT mentally I feel good.  Every time I pass from the bedroom to the living room I look at that little space and have a small victory smile. I think the effort was worth it and I have until next Tuesday to recover before tacking more. As always when I have made a hefty withdrawal at the spoon bank I have to hope I haven’t triggered a flare-up, you can read more about flare-ups on this post.

Have I motivated you to sacrifice spoons and do some decluttering? Let me know in the comments below. Do you like my idea for dealing with bags for life? I don’t see why it has just to be Tesco would it not be great if all the supermarkets which make deliveries work like this? I will use #TescoDeliveries on Twitter why not join me with the name of your supermarket?

On Friday I will be back with more Fibromyalgia news, if you are new here, you can see some of my recent posts on this subject here.  Mondays are my time for sharing my hobbies. It is still a toss-up whether I will be sharing some card making or genealogy, the family history bug is biting me quite hard at the moment, and the subject has been neglected for a long time on here (until this week) let’s see how the weekend goes.

Until next time,
Gentle Hugs,
Susan

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3 Comments Text
  • The title of this post got me and i just had to read it. Before I became struck down with this dreaded Fibro I use to love to have neat cupboards and rooms. Now I am happy that the rooms have clear floors that I can move around in without tripping over. how things change!
    In Australia they are phasing out plastic bags in some of the shops completely and we now have can collection for money in our own suburb which my children love as they get extra cash for recycling (which we did anyway)
    Glad you are making progress with your decluttering and that you have a system in mind. Feels great to be more organised, doesn’t it?

    • I wish I was making even more headway than I am! When I was writing a decluttering post each week as well as a Fibro one and a crafting blog it all got a bit much. The Fibro post was just researching and writing but of course, the other two needed me to actually do the decluttering and crafting post. I find this ad-hoc approach but keeping to the set days is working so much better for me!

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