The Decluttering Begins

Another drippy, rainy, humid day.  Everything feels like a wet sponge, including me.  But at least the heat is at bay for now --- 70°'s instead of high 80°s.  So I decided it was time to start weeding out.

I tackled something relatively easy and painless --- Kitchen drawer #1. And this wasn't even the junk drawer!

Before

I had a bit of a battle to take the drawer out as you might imagine, so things got a little more disorganized, but you get the general idea.  Don't know where to put something?  Need to clear a counter fast?  Put it in the closest drawer.

Here are the after pictures:

This is the collection of stuff to clean up if possible, and either put in the yard sale (yet to be scheduled), or give away.

Here is the trash:

For some reason, each battery package was either empty or had only one battery in it.  I also tossed some plastic cards with info regarding a car we haven't owned for over 10 years, some broken crayons, some beyond hope serving utensils, a bunch of sketchy bamboo chopsticks, unidentified appliance cords, some ear buds for defunct media players (CD player that is long gone!)  WHY oh WHY do we keep this stuff?

And here's the result of my work:

Now I have 8 more kitchen drawers to go through.  I am sure that the final result of all the organizing will result in discovering items that can be consolidated even further.  Just what do you do with a vintage brass whistle that belonged to my father-in-law?  Or the wooden dreidel my husband played with?  And the sugar spoon that belonged to your grandmother?  And the multitude of screws, washers, nuts, and keys?   For now, I have a jar of the hardware, and the keys will all be tested to see what they might fit.  

This isn't even a drop in the bucket of decluttering that has to happen, but I'm at least I've turned the faucet on!