10 Jan

52 Weeks of Organising #1 – under the bed

So the task for this week was to pull everything out from under the bed in the spare room and organise it. When I was writing the list we’d just bought a new bed frame for us, so our current one was to go in the spare room and the current spare bed was to be turfed — are you following this? Well don’t worry because when the new frame arrived on Wednesday it was such poor quality that Dave made them take it back. Damn you, Dare Gallery, I liked that bed.

Anyway, I was expecting everything to be in giant piles all over the place and getting it squashed under the new spare bed (which is quite a bit lower) was a priority, but now the urgency had gone and I kind of didn’t really want to. The spare room’s a pigsty, it’s our current dumping ground and I thought what’s the point of decluttering under the bed when everything else in there is such a mess? Maybe I should do something else. But that felt like cheating. It was the first thing I wrote down, I shouldn’t start off by procrastinating.

Then I didn’t think I’d get a chance to do it. Sunday morning I was all excited about doing some housework (I know!) so when Bianca went down for her morning nap I got ready for some serious pottering. Then she would not sleep. Dave (who was conveniently absent) swears she’s been having 2-hour morning naps like clockwork but not for me, not on Sunday when the only time I had was during that nap. It was pretty frustrating. But when Dave came home I figured I might as well make a start. There were about half a dozen of these sorts of bags from Ikea, and in them I found:

  • 2 spare queensized winter-weight doonas, one foam, one feather and down
  • 1 spare queensized summer-weight feather and down doona
  • double-bed mattress protector (for the air bed)
  • small fabric stash for sewing
  • bag of winter clothes and clothes I nearly fit into
  • a larger bag of clothes that I don’t nearly fit into
A couple of the doonas smelt damp and musty. That room’s pretty chilly in winter, so my guess is there wasn’t enough airflow under the bed. I’ve decided to get some of those space bags you vacuum flat instead – everything will squash down smaller and be protected.

I’ve also decided to get rid of the two feather doonas. This was a big thing for me. I don’t like them, they’re too floppy and never go in the doona covers properly, plus I originally got them with my destructive ex. But they were expensive and I keep thinking, what if I need them One Day? It’s wasteful to throw them out. But I don’t like them and we only have two beds and the air mattress, so three doonas are plenty. So they’re going out, and I feel… relieved. Lighter. Yay! (I should also get rid of the too-thin clothes but I’m not quite ready for that yet.)

Now everything’s all neat under there, and I’ve ended up with a couple of spare bags which I can now use to keep Bianca’s blankets in under her cot, fixing another dilemma. And then I kept going and tidied up the piles of stuff on the desk and the bed and the floor, putting some stuff away that’s been hanging around for months without a home. Not everything got put away, there’s some shelves in there with ornaments and spare jars and things that need to be culled another week, so things like that went over there. But I got a lot more done than I thought.

I’m really pleased because it took a lot less time than I expected it to, and if it wasn’t for this challenge I wouldn’t have done it at all. Instead I would have sulked about my plans being foiled and given up on the day. But now there’s FLOOR in the spare room! I can’t stop going down to have a look, and I’m all excited about the next task now!

(No photos, sorry. I didn’t take a before one because how do you take a photo of under the bed? And um, I’m not sure where the camera is. I guess I’ll find it around about week 6.)

One thought on “52 Weeks of Organising #1 – under the bed

  1. 52 Weeks of Organising #1 – under the bed Not My Mother That is very good to take into consideration, you gave me something to consider on bus ride to house from my grandmothers. Will you be writing a lot more about this topic? FYI I tried your rss button and it didnt work. I will try again in a few hours.

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