Spice and Booze...

So I got motivated before I thought to take a picture. Oops. Okay, that might have been sorta kinda on purpose. I filled a tall kitchen bag with expired spices. Ew.

But here's the after. This is our spice/daily meds/alcoholic glassware cabinet.



And the winner of the oldest medication? Generic Target Robitussin. July 2007. Niiice.



I can now serve martinis for at least 10. And wine for...well, a lot. There are at least 14 other wineglasses in other cabinets in this house.

Who wants a drink?

Hangers

About three weeks ago, I cleaned out closets and the laundry room of vigilante hangers. T has a bad habit of taking things off the hanger and then putting the hanger back in. This drives me insane, because, as the laundry-doer in the house, I have to go and search through his half of the closet for the missing hangers. We're working on it.

So I cleaned them out. We've also been working on a big clothing purge (mostly him, as he has about 14 times as many clothes as I do and I do a seasonal clean-out twice a year - I have about 5 outfits right now. It's kind of pathetic.)

Before:



After (all packed up for Goodwill - my donation pile in the back of my car is getting big!):



If it wasn't wood or a specialty suit hanger, it went. I did keep a few plain white plastic hangers until I can restock the wood ones (we have some but not enough). I also have a lone wire hanger (my hatred of wire hangers is not quite as bad as Mommie Dearest, but it's close) to give back to the dry cleaner.

The Built-In

When we bought our home, one of the things we really, really liked about it was the copious amount of drawers, cabinets, and other built-in storage features.

Of course, when two people (and five pets) live in a home, those very cabinets, drawers, etc. start to fill up with the most random assortment of items. I present to you - the living room built-in (pre-purge, of course):







So I enlisted the help of my husband and we started clearing out. I took pictures of the piles to show you just how bad it truly was:



We couldn't even fit all the mess on the kitchen table. It spilled over onto the kitchen counter:



Then, of course, I made myself a drink to steel up for the purge and organization fiesta to come (ok, I also just wanted one - it's been raining and gloomy all day and I had some fun Bloody Mary mix to try).



BUT, after about an hour (ok, 90 minutes) of sorting, purging, categorizing and alphabetizing (NERD ALERT), we have this:









I have two bags of books and sundries to take to Goodwill, a full "tall kitchen" size bag of pure garbage, a box of DVD cases (we store all DVDs in those folder things - makes it so easy to find them when they are in alphabetical order) to put in the closet, and have moved all the tools and various mechanical things to the garage, where they belong.

Alisa 1, Clutter 0.