This time of the year is my favourite.
It’s the time of year I get to be ruthless with the cleaning and organising and it’s my preparation to start the annual family hibernation. We love the nights drawing in and the darkness this time of year brings. We start the family movie nights on the sofa and the board games come back out. In fact, we slow life right down and since we are all at home much more we reorganise our space to make sure we don’t feel swamped with our own possessions and ‘stuff’
For the last 14-15 years that Ollie and I have been together, we have had a love-hate relationship with my OCD and neatness and his obsession with keeping everything. That we might need it one day attitude is one of the only things we do disagree on especially holding onto the old pair of trainers…because I am being told that they would be worth a fortune one day…that my dear husband would be illogical since the sole is hanging off and they stopped being viable as shoes about 6 months prior to him stopping wearing them.
However, over the years we have come to an unverbalised agreement. I don’t argue first time round and we store said prized possessions…then the following year they walk out of the door…however, these trainers wouldn’t have enough shoe rubber to do it alone so I will gently help them.
With this new agreement, means I have to be savvy with storage across our house and utilise the space in smart ways.
A few years ago we spent time decking out our attic and sorting and packing things away after having the floor boarded in there, however, space is still at a premium and with no option of being able to put up more secure access ladders and both of us physically suffering with conditions that cause pain we need to be realistic about securing a more accessible storage option
We don’t own a garage but on the same street that we live on there are garages that you can rent from a company. We used to have one but the previous owner let them fall into disrepair however, a few years ago they were sold and a new company took them on and rebuilt them.
We are going to look into taking one in the new year so we can get rid of one of our old sheds in the garden and re-organise our items in a way we can access them safely and easily with better garage storage.
It would also be nice to be able to use it as a bit of a workshop for maintaining the family bikes with some easy-to-clean heavy-duty garage flooring tiles that can be easily laid but still taken up as we would only be renting.
For me, a garage space needs to be able to grow with the family and currently the bikes, scooters and kids kit is reasonably small, but as the boys grow so will their storage needs.
However, if truth be told it would be nice to just have a space where we can store all the football paraphernalia instead of my pantry cupboard, no one needs the soleless trainers and stinking football boots all year round in a pantry.
Are you doing any decluttering and organising before the winter sets in?
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