EXTREME DECLUTTERING

There's something about moving everything out of the closet and seeing everything that just makes you realize how much crap you actually had. Hey guys, welcome back to my channel or welcome here. If you're new, if you follow me on Instagram, last week I shared with you guys how I had let my cupboards and some closets and some drawers get insanely out of order and how I was going to share the process of deep cleaning with you. So today I'll be sharing the closets, cupboards and drawers that are by far the worst in my home. These are the ones I've been avoiding and I keep putting off because I just do not want to spend the time going through every single thing. But the problem is by avoiding it, I end up putting more clutter in those closets because they are already full of clutter. What's one more thing, you know what I mean? So today we are going to tackle every single problem area in my house. What I like to do before I start any big deep cleaning project is first have a clean surface to bring everything to. I also like to bring every item out at once and go through it together. And my goal here for the hallway closet was to eliminate 80% of what was in this closet. These are some bins I picked up at Dollar Tree, but I didn't really love the color. I couldn't find any neutral colors. So I just use some spray paint that I had already lying around. To finish off this organization, I am using my label maker. I'm hoping that this will help my entire family stay more organized. And when they open up the cover, they know exactly which bin to grab if they're looking for something specific. So here on the bottom shelf, these are the things that we use the very most. So we have our medicine in one of them. We have band-aids and hand sanitizer. I know some of these are kind of random. And then we have baby medicine and our allergy medicine lotion that we use on a daily basis. And then we have our batteries and cords. On the next shelf up are things that we don't use as often. These are some holiday soaps and lotions. And then I have light bulbs and then just like cotton swabs and Q-tips. And then we have our baby soap and sunscreen. I also keep my cleaning caddy up here. So it's easy to grab anything. I'm cleaning in the house. I just grabbed this and I have everything ready on the top shelf. We have some of our files, some of our board games. This is also where I keep hair dye. And then we have our lanterns and flashlights and some of my facial things that I don't use every single day. And I also have my kids Christmas decor that I keep in their room because this closet is right next to their room. Moving on to this junk drawer. For some reason, this is the drawer that ends up getting junky the very first. So I like to have this as our electronic drawer. So that is all I'm keeping here. Typically after cleaning this drawer out, there's still way too much in there. And I know that every single time. So I was really focused this time as I was cleaning. If we do not absolutely need it or use it, I either threw it away or I donated it. The next thing I'm cleaning is actually the whole breakfast nook. So I got everything out of all the cupboards. I was going to only tackle like two of the drawers, one of the cupboards that was the worst, but I ended up deciding I'll just do everything. As I was cleaning this out, I found my waffle maker that I had been searching for for so long to the point I went and bought another one because I thought maybe somebody threw it out. And what do you know? It was hidden in one of these cupboards. This is my biggest thing when it comes to decluttering and minimizing and why I thrive so much more when my house is simplified is I love when I open a drawer and I can see everything that's inside. I don't have to shuffle things around. I don't have to pick things up and look behind certain things. I love to open a cupboard and you know exactly what is inside. And so that is really my goal this year is to not let any of my space get cluttered again. All right, this is trash just from a few cupboards. I still have quite a few to go through in the kitchen. So majority kitchen, one of them is from the cupboards in the hallway, but the rest are from the kitchen. How insane. It's amazing how much extra stuff you can have without even realizing. So this cabinet has always kind of been designated to the kids art. That's like their number one favorite hobby. So I have like little books of each of my kids with all the different art things that they've done in each of these. There's literally like a hundred pages of just like their little Disney characters or whatever they've drawn. So anyway, they each keep their little coloring pages in here. And again, they each have their own book and then I just keep plain pages. What it was before was just pure chaos because unless I'm keeping up with this, they just throw their pages in here when they're done. So I just try to organize them all and put them in their protective sheets like they're supposed to do. But this is literally all they need. They have their bin of all of their crayons and they have their favorite coloring books. I can't remember what this is called. It's not clay. Colin, what's this called? No, it's not clay. Well, it's not clay. I can't remember. It's something a lot softer, but they love playing with this stuff. So we have some of it downstairs and yeah, that's basically it. I love how empty it is and hopefully it stays like this forever while I'm right here. I just want to show you guys this next cupboard. This is where we always have kept wipes and diapers. So we will continue to have this as like our little station just because it's easy to grab. We're always out here in the kitchen or living room. So with our next baby, we will line this up again with diapers and wipes. This is where we keep our blender bottles and then protein goes down here. I just want to walk you guys through the kitchen now that I have completely cleaned everything out. But I wanted to first show you guys this drawer. If you can remember, I could barely even open it before. Now it is completely empty and I love that. I love when I have empty cupboards and empty space. This cupboard is designated to smoothies. So we have our Ninja. We have all the things that we use in our smoothies. Then we have some supplements and straws and just some extra random things up there. This drawer is designated to stationary and this cupboard is where we keep our cereal chips and any of our goodies or snacks. I've never had a designated space to put all of my yummy smells. So here I have all of my candles, my room sprays, all my smelly good things. And then on this bottom shelf I have my craft paints and some of the boys computer toys. I didn't show it before in this cupboard. It was actually pretty bad, but once I started going, I just was motivated to do the entire kitchen. So here in this cupboard, we have these pullout drawers, which I love. You can just see everything that's here. I don't really need to explain anything in the bottom pullout. This is where I keep my kids pancake art. Um, but we also have our Mickey Mouse waffle maker, just all the things for the kids. All right, this is the closet. I have been avoiding like the plague since we've moved in. This is an Ezra's room, but since all of his clothes fit inside of his drawers, it's kind of like a random storage place for everyone's like winter clothes and clothes he will soon grow into. But there's also all this crap on the ground that I don't even know what the heck is down here. So I'll be spending the next little while going through every single thing, getting rid of what we don't need. These are funny. Yeah. Do you see how funny these are? So these are from our ugly sweaters this year. I was, grandma got run over by a reindeer. So those were like reindeer prints. This one was my husband's. That's just great. There's something about moving everything out of the closet and seeing everything that just makes you realize how much crap you actually had. So this will take a while, but basically the things in the crib will probably be staying. A lot of this stuff will be donated. This is not going to be donated. This is my son Milo's, um, pillow that went with his quilt. So these are some of his baby clothes and this is his quilt. Look how dang cute. It's a little tiny quilt. This was one of my favorite shirts he had. I have so many memories in that one, but anyway, this I'll hold on to that. I'll hold on to, but a lot of the things will be going in the donation pile. Something I wanted to share while I'm sitting here cleaning is I've noticed for the past couple of months I have had a lot more anxiety and I've noticed in my life that that usually comes when I feel really cluttered and I just personally cannot handle that. But I like to avoid it and just pretend it's not there, right? Just close the cupboard, close the drawer, close the closet and then just ignore it. But the thing is, every single day I open these drawers, every single day I open these cupboards and usually it's multiple times a day and usually it's cause I'm searching for something and I don't know if it's just me, but like there's something that happens when you're trying to find something and you can't and you open the drawer 20 different times shuffling things around and you still can't find that one thing that you're looking for. And so what I'm hoping you guys take from this video is some kind of inspiration to do this in your homes because I can't even tell you the world of difference. I already feel my entire family feels it. They love when they open something, they know exactly what's in there. The whole thing is just keeping up on it. That's really all it is. If you can stay up on this weekly, then you will never have this problem. And I didn't for years. I think I went two whole years without having to designate an entire day to do cluttering because normally I stay up on this and if I just do five minutes here, five minutes there, then this problem never happens. I'm going to end this video with some more before and after shots because I personally love those really bad befores compared to how they look afterwards. I hope you guys enjoy this video and I hope that it inspires you to really simplify the stuff in your life and only hold onto those things that you absolutely need and that you use every single day. If you're not following me on Instagram, I update every single day, sometimes multiple times a day in my stories. My Instagram name is Ashley Hughes and I spell it A-S-H-L-E-Y-H-U-Z-E. Thanks again so much for watching you guys and if you're not subscribed, please also hit that subscribe button. We'll see you guys in the next video.