"Your home should serve you well, you shouldn't be serving your home." I'm paraphrasing it, but I think I've got the gist of it. When I read that a few years ago, it really resonated with me. I'm a dedicated homebody, but I don't want to be a slave to my home even though I don't mind hard work.  As you most likely know, I've already decluttered, and now I'm going room to room deep cleaning. I am mindful that Pinterest and Instagram has raised our expectations for what our pantries, closets and cupboards should look like, but to me, those pantries not only look unreal and unattainable, but must be impossible to maintain and super expensive to create. I use free organizers such as shoe boxes and also some purchased items, but nothing is Pinterest worthy because my end goal is to have a functional home; a home that we love to be in, that only has things that we use and love, and where every one of these things has a place to go at the end of the day. Lastly, everything must be easily accessible. Does this seem doable to you? Yes? Me too! I've already started and I'm so happy with my progress. My first rooms to clean were the master bedroom, our closets and bathroom. That took several weeks to complete because I got sidetracked, had a few mishaps, and found a world of spiders. 

Master Bedroom Day One: I took down the drapes and pictures and moved all the furniture to the center of the room to dust down the walls (I used a dry microfiber cloth attached to a long handled mop), wipe baseboards, etc. I then took everything out of the drawer cabinets including the drawers and washed down the insides, outsides and underside of the drawers with a microfiber cloth and hot soapy water. I then practically crawled inside the cabinet shell and wiped down every surface. I've never done that before and it was dirty in there. Next I turned it upside down and shrieked. Maybe you heard me? Friends, there were spiders; live spiders, spider carcasses, dusty webs, and spider cocoons. It was terrifying, but what else can one do but vacuum them up and wipe it down and go on the the next piece of furniture.  Sadly, same spider story. That was enough for my first day but that horrifying experience made me resolve to disembowel every piece of furniture in my house. Spiders be gone is my mantra. FYI, the cleaning solution I use for almost everything is hot water, a splash of Mr. Clean and several drops of Dawn. It's very diluted but with a microfiber cloth it will really get the grime off.

Now for something nice: During the pandemic I became obsessed with nail polish.  Some people made sourdough, I perfected my manicure skills. My daughter introduced me to Static Nail Lacquer and I'm hooked. I love the colors and the application brush and love that my manicure will last for minimum one week. It outlasts every polish I've tried so I invested in my favorite nudes. I keep the nail polish in a drawer in my bedside table. I paint my nails in bed, right before bedtime. On manicure night, I fall asleep with my fingers interlaced across my chest and by the time I'm asleep (and probably tossing and turning) my nails are dry and I wake up with no smudges. Until recently I kept my collection in a shoebox but couldn't easily find what I wanted. I treated myself to this lucite nail polish organizer. Love it and don't know why I waited so long to have it in my life!

The manicure above is five days old, still looking good, and I'm hard on my nails! One last thing I want to share is that I take collagen every day. I started two years ago and my nails and hair have become so much stronger. My hair stylist cannot believe the change in my hair saying she has never seen it so healthy. My nails used to split and peel, but now they are flexible, strong and don't peel. I can only attribute it to collagen. I use Vital Proteins and recommend it to all my friends. It is odorless and tasteless and I put one heaping spoon in my morning coffee.

Now let's go on to the drawers in the bedroom. After lining with white kraft paper it was time to prune a bit before replacing the items. I'd love to always follow the rule, if you have to buy stuff to organize your stuff then you have too much stuff, but this is my real life, and I have stuff so I still treated myself to these organizers meant just for lingerie. Left to right, 16 cell organizer, bra organizer, 24 cell organizer. Love them and would have bought them sooner but never knew they existed.

Bathroom: In the bathroom I have a little trick to help me from overbuying. I store shampoo, lotion, contact solution, etc., in plastic bins in drawers--no backups hidden elsewhere. I cannot purchase another item until there is room to store it in its designated place. This helps to keep me from loading up at Costco or getting excited over a sale at the drugstore. If it won't fit into the bin then I can't bring it home. As for make-up, I've finally realized that I don't enjoy experimenting. By looking at my nail polish collection you'd think I have a lot of makeup too, but no, I have one lipstick, one powder, one blush, one brow color, one eye shadow and one mascara and I love them. My makeup routine is pretty simple and when I have introduced something new to my routine I end up tossing it and regretting the money spent. Makeup and facial lotions spoil with bacteria growth in a matter of months after opening, and keeping that nugget of information in the back of my mind is another deterrent to having too much product in the bathroom. At first this kind of thing takes will power, but as with every good habit, it gets easier with time. 

My closets were next. They were in fairly good shape as I keep them up by following the one-in, one-out rule. I snapped this picture to prove that my closets aren't even close to be insta beautiful, but they are easy to maintain because everything has a place. I have room for these shoes and no more. Having a defined space for like items, and not allowing items to creep into other spaces, keeps me from thinking I need more. To keep boots upright I bought shelf dividers. I initially bought them for sweaters but think the solid lucite dividers would best for that application. 

To maximize space and keep my tees together in one spot, I use a hanging closet rod.

I'm up for any suggestions on how to keep a massive sweater collection tidy and accessible. This is my latest configuration and so far is working out best. I stood plastic boxes on their bottoms and stacked my sweaters inside by style. My summer sweaters are in my mother's cedar hope chest that sits at the foot of our bed. I'll rotate them when the warm weather comes back.

What was keeping my closets from being their best were the things in the closet that didn't belong. I only wanted to have clothes and shoes in my closets. Still, I had plenty of things in there that belonged elsewhere, like two file cabinets filled with unnecessary papers I was too lazy to go through, paintings we no longer hang because we don't like them, a box of photos I was dreading organizing, and more. And this is exactly how I got sidetracked. I vowed to find new homes for these things before I could go on, and this opened up a new can of worms. Getting rid of excess paper was moved to the top of my must-do list. Paper is an expensive and time consuming way to save information. We had 7 messy drawers of paper that we never accessed; could it be we didn't need 90% of it? And how exactly does one sift through a mountain of paper? Well, just like you'd eat an elephant, one bite at a time. There was no easy way out. My husband wheeled the file cabinets into the living room and I spent an hour unloading them, file by file, placing piles all over the living room. What you don't see in the picture below is that behind me are piles on the bar, the dining room table and more piles on the round table. After emptying I donated both cabinets to get them out of the house. My goal was to turn seven file drawers of papers into two. I'm not ready to go paperless yet, but if that is your end goal, there is a lot of information online about that subject.  For the last two weeks, once or twice a day, I set a timer, sometimes for an hour but often 15 minutes was all I could handle. I put a pile on my lap and one by one looked at each paper and decided to either save, recycle, or shred I recycled every user manual, schedule, and menu; you can access all that information online. I recycled anything that was outdated such as warranties and phone lists. I kept tax records for the recent 7 years and shredded the rest. I kept one year of receipts, bank statements, utility and credit card statements and shredded the rest. I shredded outdated wills and estate planning information and kept the most current.  I filled manilla envelopes with sentimental papers, giving each family member their own envelope(s). My own sentimental papers were pruned at this time, but I'm going to hand over the other envelopes to each recipient and let them decide what they want to keep.  I kept diplomas, deeds, birth, death, marriage and divorce records. Medical information was tricky. I made a file for my husband and a file for me. I'm in the process of getting all that in order, shredding any duplicates and unnecessary information, and organizing the rest and figuring out what to save as so much current information is online, including medical. The files are still a work in progress but I've made great headway and I will have no problem keeping our papers to the two file drawers in our desk. Moving forward, I'm going to think twice before I save a piece of paper and vow to maintain my files monthly. Also, most of my monthly bills these days are sent to me electronically avoiding the paper in the first place. As an aside, I fell in love with this Police ID Roller. I've given it as gifts and finally gave one to myself. To avoid future shredding, I roll over the sensitive information and then place in the recycling. I hate owning a shredder and it's expensive to take a stack of papers to a professional for shredding. No more shredding in my future! I hope this post encourages you to take on those big and little jobs that will make your home better serve you. I'd love to hear about what you're tackling at the moment. Any triumphs you'd like to share? As for me, I've done quite a bit more and feel I'm about half done. If this post gets a good response I'll write another post to share what's going on in the rest of the house. This post has some affiliate links. If you purchase something from an affiliate link, I will receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting the blog. If you'd like to make a comment, please click here or scroll down. I reply to each comment and that response will appear directly below your comment. If you would like a personal reply, please know that I use the Blogger platform and they do not give me your contact information when you comment. If you would like a personal reply you can contact me using the contact form on the right side at the very end of my website. If you would like to receive Knitionary posts by email, please subscribe here.