Decluttering for the Stay-at-Home Daughter

Fake flowers for St. Therese's costume...

 Oh boy... where to start?  That's exactly how I felt about deep cleaning and decluttering my bedroom of 9 years.    I've lived at home my whole life and my family has only ever lived in two houses.  The first one housed my childhood until I was 13 and the second one has seen me grow up into a young adult.  I've never gone to college or moved out for any reason, so my room is the only place in the entire world that contains all my belongings since I was small.  I've never gone through any real personality changes or dramatic phases so my room hasn't seen any drastic changes either.  I'm actually quite happy with my room and I don't think it's too "little girlish" for the most part.  It's pink and dainty with everything that expresses who I am.  But after 9 years in a house and 20 some years of living, I've accumulated a lot of stuff and the room needed a (not so little) tidy up. 

I actually started this process more than a year ago when I sold my childhood bookshelves.  They were these cute dollhouse units but they just didn't provide enough space for my growing collection.  So I sold them without actually having a replacement.  I sadly packed my beloved books away in storage only keeping out a few important ones such as my Bible and my current Catholic reads.  

But bringing our focus to the present day, I started the room declutter with my dresser.  It had become a catch-all for receipts, papers, and any other small random items that may or may not have had a place.  I started by clearing out all the receipts because if I'm not looking at them on my boombox, I'll never need to look at them.  I put all the random little items away that I could and then I set to decluttering my pens.  I had two mugs of pens, markers, and other utensils but I knew some needed to go.  I tested all my pens to make sure they were still working and threw out any that weren't.  I said goodbye to the bunches of fake flowers I had from my St. Therese costume years ago and put them in a giveaway bag.  I finally returned the larger of the two mugs to the kitchen and kept one small mug for my working writing supplies.  I'm so happy with a clean dresser that is useful and displays the things I love.

Before

After

You see, in my quest to declutter my room, I looked up plenty of ideas and guides on Pinterest (therefore spending more time on my phone than cleaning my room 😅🙄) and I came across the popular KonMari method of decluttering.  But this method isn't appropriate for Catholics because it's based on pagan ideals and you're instructed to keep only the things that "spark joy" while thanking the items that you're discarding for the service they did you.  But this isn't practical for a Catholic so I had to come up with a better method.  

Thankfully, I found this wonderful blog post from Joyfully Domestic that provides a Catholic alternative to KonMari and explains why that method isn't suitable. 

But for myself and other stay-at-home daughters, I decided we needed something a little more specific to us.  We're not getting rid of long-ago childhood possessions but things that are near and dear to our hearts.  We're also not decluttering a whole house but just our own small domain, our bedrooms.  So here are some tips I discovered for myself.

After

Before

First, make a time when you won't be interrupted very much if it's possible.  If you're like me, you work better when you have a significant amount of time to devote to the task at hand.

Put away any and all laundry in your room, the clean, the dirty, and the forgotten.  Set aside anything that's too small or you don't wear anymore for giveaway and...

Grab a few bags for trash, recycling, and giveaway.  It doesn't matter if there's a recycle bin in the kitchen or the garage, you'll thank me later that you made your own recycling out of a paper bag just for this project.  (Especially if you're a paper hoarder like me.🙃)

Also, grab a dust cloth.  You'll probably need it.  Dust books, statues, and surfaces as you go!

Speaking of paper, clean up any papers lying around your room willy-nilly.  (Don't start with the big stacks at first.  Leave them where they are and tackle them later.)  Just take care of the random ones on top of things such as receipts.

Put away odds and ends around the room first that you know have homes.  These can be items you dumped out of your purse in a rush or threw in your room to be put away later when cleaning the house.

Now that your room is relatively tidy, you can get into the decluttering part.

They say it's easiest to start with your closet but I was overwhelmed by decluttering my closet, so I put that off.  Instead, I started with my books, journals, notebooks, and papers.  Thankfully, we do have a retired schoolroom that houses all my homeschooling history but all of my personal papers are in my room so materials from retreats, hobbies, and gifts take up a lot of space.  Go through all the papers and recycle any extras, scrap paper, old bulletins, magazines, etc.  If you like to keep childhood drawings and papers, keep them in a specific folder so they won't fall all over your shelves.  

Separate out all of your holy cards and religious papers so you can keep them somewhere you can easily access them for prayer.

Set any books you know you won't read in the giveaway bag and return any that belong to your family out to their proper shelves.

If you keep gift or package wrapping supplies in your room but have a place for them in your house, return them there.  It's so much easier to look for them all in one place when you need them.  Also, return craft supplies to their rightful home if it's not in your room. 

After all of this decluttering (which only made a small dent), it was time to move my dresser because...

I finally got a bookshelf!!!    

I lit it with a strand of fairy lights from Amazon and... voila!!

And now here it is in all of its glory with my most favorite books.  I still have a ton of books in boxes in the garage.  (Spot my knitting basket on the side.)  There is still some organizing to do because you see the stack of books laying down are actually from a Catholic YA book giveaway I won and I have yet to read them.  They were just sitting in a box on my floor before, though, so I figured I should put them on my shelf so I'll be motivated to read them.  We'll see if they make the cut for favorites.

Did you find this decluttering adventure helpful?  If so, please do let me know if you'd like me to do another post as I have yet to declutter much more of my room.  Will I be a minimalist by the end of all this?  Definitely no.  Will a clean and tidy room aid peace of mind, yep.  When we keep a clean house and room, we have more room for God in our thoughts.

In the hearts of Jesus and Mary,

Sarah