Jump Start Jan: Declutter and Organise Day 4
After yesterday’s planning and organising session, we’re now moving on to another speedy, manageable declutter. We’ll be sorting out our mug or tea/coffee shelf or cupboard today.
The place in our kitchen where we make drinks often becomes cluttered up or a bit messy, so it’s nice to get it organised, especially if you like a brew first thing in the morning and need to get ready in a hurry. It’s up to you whether you sort out your cups and mugs, or the drinks themselves such as teas, coffees, hot chocolate and so on.
If you’re sorting out cups and mugs, most of us have a tendency to collect too many of these, sometimes to the point of them being stacked double and falling out of the cupboard, or getting chipped. Remember that less is more.
If you’re sorting out the hot drinks themselves, it’s common to have a bit of a hoard going on in there too. Often there will be packets or pots of things that have been open for years, or that you’ll never finish because you’ve gone off them. You might also have received a few as unwanted gifts.
Let’s do a quick declutter of this cupboard or shelf:
- Get everything out of the cupboard, or off the shelf
- Dust the area, wipe with a slightly dampened cloth and dry well
- Working quickly, go through everything you’ve removed from the cupboard and sort it into 3 piles: ‘throw away/recycle’, ‘keep’, ‘give away/donate to charity’ (for example, a lot of old tea and coffee can be added to council food waste bins or put onto a compost heap, and your local food bank might like unopened and in-date drinks)
- If you feel sentimental about something, but you never use it and know deep down that you never will, take a photo of it – then let it go
- Put your ‘keep’ items back in their place, putting the most commonly used ones at the front of the shelf
- Empty your bin straight away, put the recycling out, or feed the compost heap quickly
- Give any ‘donate’ items away within the week, so they aren’t causing a secondary source of clutter
That’s it, done!
I’m convinced we have at least a couple of boxes of weird flavoured teas lurking at the back of our cupboard. They’ve been opened for years and could probably be dug into our pumpkin patch if the ground isn’t frozen…
Do you own too many mugs or teas or coffees? Could you make those early-morning caffeine hits a little bit easier?
