Summer holiday declutter, clean and decorate!

[Pennyres]

Think I’m being optimistic that I will achieve everything but I have 5 weeks to sort my entire house out and am posting for accountability.

Live in a fairly small 3 bed, 1 ddog, older dc that don’t require constant supervision but my house is an absolute disaster. Not unhygienic or even on the surface untidy (although it can get very messy 🥴) but the whole house just needs a good declutter and clean, even the garden is just, I don’t know, unloved and uncared for.

Our biggest issue seems to be ‘things’, ‘things’ just in places with no real home, clothes everywhere, and bulging wardrobes, drawers, bookcases, kitchen cupboards ….. rather than buy more storage I’d rather tackle the issue head on and just have a good declutter. Sounds easy enough - pick a problem area, get a bin bag and start then clean that area - except it’s so overwhelming that I’m struggling to even think about finding the bin bags 🙄

So, today I’m going to …? What? What shall I start with to get me on a roll?

How to keep the momentum? How do you reward yourselves after achieving to get stuff out of the house?

For me, it's knowing that my time is very limited, so if I don't get on with it now it will not get done again for a long time. Knowing that I have x days until general waste is collected means I know when decluttering needs to be done by. If paper is collected the following week, then I need to have sorted my paperwork by then. Knowing that I will go into town on y day means that I can get charity bags ready.

I'm also in the process of losing weight and the gardening declutter that needs doing is especially useful for that. I've just done an hour and have probably burnt a fair few calories doing that.