Under the sink

After all the theory, I thought I’d go with a little more practical for once. If this works, I might just do more of those little projects for you to marvel at. Yes, indeed, these are very small projects that take no more than maybe 15 minutes, but each of those may just make a huge difference to you.

Last week, I opened the cupboard under my kitchen sink to take out a measuring tape from the DIY bucket and thought to myself that this space could need a bit of updating. Quite apart from the fact that I have a DIY bucket, that is!

Today I realised that I needed some content for my blog and so the two items merged in my brain: an ‘under the sink blog entry’.
Whenever I start a decluttering project, I try to remember to take a series of ‘before’ pictures, just in case the change is so tremendously superb that I want to show the world or I just want to keep it to remind myself just how bad things had gotten before I got around to clear it up. So here is the ‘before picture’ from right under my sink.

It didn’t look all that bad, but I found that it had become a bit of a challenge to find what I was looking for, and I had not sorted out the stuff in about three years. This meant that there was a lot of stuff there that was really not useful any more. Over all that time, things had been moved and shoved into places they did fit but not belong, like the bags and the spray can on the upper shelf.

First step, as always: taking everything out and discarding of the stuff that looks crummy, unused, old, non-functional or otherwise superfluous. I did that and organised the rest roughly on the floor to get a sense of what was there.

I ended up with stuff for cleaning in the green bucket, the white DIY bucket, bicycle stuff in a small plastic tray, and miscellaneous stuff on the right side.

I tackled each of those separately: the cleaning bucket got sorted out: all the old rags went, the brush was taken out and now the bucket only holds the cleaning products, the squeegee and the dusting things. I found a second plastic tray for the microfiber fabrics and the sponges, so things can properly be separated and easier to access.

I then took everything out of the DIY bucket, chucked out a lot of bits and bobs that I had kept for a long time and am unlikely to ever use, like strange screws, little tools and miscellaneous stickers, etc. I then realised that the white plastic bucket was broken and went to find a replacement. Coincidence? I had been looking for a new use of my mother’s giant metal biscuit tin, and it fit the bill perfectly. So I arranged all the large tools in the tin, then added the tapes and insulation strips on top of it. It was a perfect fit.

That left me with the bicycle stuff tray. It contained a spray can to treat plants against pests (that went to the plant box somewhere else), leaving me with only a small amount of things in that plastic tray.

When I placed everything back under the sink I found that everything was looking much cleaner and organised. Exactly what I had set out to do, of course. As a matter of fact, I find that there is even empty space in there that could be used for something new that arrives in my kitchen.

When I placed everything back under the sink I found that everything was looking much cleaner and organised. Exactly what I had set out to do, of course. As a matter of fact, I find that there is even empty space in there that could be used for something new that arrives in my kitchen.

Hopefully, this has inspired you to pick your own little project: that may be under the sink, like this project, or a single drawer, a box sitting somewhere, a windowsill, a table surface,… anything really. The important thing is: you want to get started somewhere!

If you have enjoyed reading this, you may find these other articles interesting:

• Make decluttering a habit
• Decluttering is a frame of mind
  
• Speed declutter your desk (video)