Bathroom Humiliation

We have one bathroom in our house. It is on the first floor just off the kitchen. That means that regardless of if our guests use it they often see it. Since we have only one bathroom and no storage this shelf in our bathroom gets packed with stuff. The same goes for the shower. When people walked in there I would cringe at the idea of what they would see. Some of my girlfriends like it, they go in there and spray perfume and style their hair.

I didn't do a close up of the shelf, because if I did you may have barfed. There was a significant layer of dust that I cleaned off.







Examples of things I threw out

• empty bottle of Aveeno face scrub
• empty bottle of apricot scrub
• empty bottle of shampoo
• empty bottle of conditioner
• old rusty razor x 2
• six caps from Intuition razor replacements
• old perfume that my high school friend got me, while I was in high school (in 1998)
• foundation I bought for my wedding (in 2003)

Here is the shelf "After." It is still cluttered, but thinned out, clean, and organized.

Here is the shower "Before." See those big orange bottles? Empty. The same goes for the bottles in the hanging thing.

Here is the shower "After." None of these bottles are empty.

Avalanche!!

Our refrigerator and freezer are pretty bad. Surprised? I thought not. You will cringe in the coming weeks when you see what else is in this house. I thought I was done with my 10 things for today but after I went grocery shopping I had a new sense of resolve (in more ways than one). I filled up two huge garbage bags with stuff from our freezer. The below photo is "before." See that puff pastry on the bottom right? I got that for CHRISTMAS EVE. I opened the box just to see what it would look like. It was green. I was afraid.

Here is the door of the fridge, equally alarming. A LOT of this stuff was expired.

This is the freezer. The bag on the bottom right there are bagels. They are from Bagel World in Reading, MA. The BEST bagels I have ever bad. Also, whilst at the grocery store I was searching for fish sticks for Q. We had two boxes hidden in the freezer. A ton of this stuff comes flying out when you open it. That is the avalanche I speak of. Those Trader Joe's bagels did not feel good on my foot!Here is my husband. See this frozen mystery he is holding? It is a calzone which I made so we could have things to eat when we didn't feel like cooking after I had Q. That was in March 2008.Here is the fridge "After."
Do you see my yogurt shelf? Q and I are obsessed. Here's a a close up. Don't buy that Siggi's stuff - awful.


Here is the door "After." It doesn't look much different because the stuff that is on it now was in other places in the fridge. The stuff that was on the door expired in 2006.
Here is the freezer "After." We have lots of frozen spinach I didn't know about. And frozen phyllo dough. I know you can see where this is going. We also have fish sticks, chicken sausage, raviolis, chicken nuggets, and frozen fontina cheese.
My husband felt inspired by this and decided to get rid of one thing today. This hideous orange coat. Q relaxed on it and ate goldfish while I worked.

My name is Kate and I'm a Stuffaholic

I like stuff. I have tons of stuff. I waste my money on more stuff. Then I bitch to my husband that the walls of our 1200 square foot house are closing in on me. After years of saving for a new, bigger house, we got a cruel reality check when a realtor came to our house and proclaimed us upside down on the mortgage. So now we are stuck here - two adults, two dogs, one two year old, and something needs to change.

We're in the midst of a redecorating/decluttering that has to happen before someone goes crazy. We got new living room furniture and a new kitchen table. We are waiting for the table to be delivered so the kitchen is, um, "empty."

My husband doesn't have a lot of stuff that he needs, but he likes junk. You'll see. His biggest bone of contention with my stuff is my shoes. I have too many (but but but, I like them!) and I take them off as soon as I come in the house. That means at any given time there are like... 25 pairs of shoes in our kitchen.

So, my kitchen isn't actually "empty," it is filled with shoes.

Including shoes with heels like this. Heels that cause me to walk lopsided and tilting backwards weirdly.

You know where else there are shoes? In our "guest room." As if anyone would want to sleep in there with shelves upon shelves of dirty old shoes! Since we can't move, and want to have another baby, this room will end up being Q's sooner rather than later so cleaning it out is necessary. Did I mention my tiny house has one closet? I'm serious. It has one closet and it is tiny. So Jackie? I'm way jealous of yours.

So here they are, the shoes I decided to get rid of. Getting rid of the two single sneakers was a given (where are the matches?!). I got those red shoes and wore them once (awful). Those Sketchers, navy and yellow shoes, and Adidas shell tops I haven't worn in at least five years. Those glittery black shoes and those pewter pointy toed shoes I LOVE, but they are beat to crap. The other sneakers have lost their bounce. I know I need to get rid of at least 10 more pairs of shoes, but this is a jumping off point for me.

PS: if anyone likes to throw stuff away, please come over. PLEASE.