declutter with me: the collection spot

If I were to ask you where you least want to clean up, the spot where everything just collections, what do you think about? I know you have a spot; the closet that everything gets shoved into, the ottoman in the living room that is a black hole, or the shelf in the garage that nothing comes back from.

For me that is a drawer in the bedroom. It is meant to be a spot to store papers and other important items, but it has become a dumping ground. Every time I needed to tidy up something would get shoved in there and the papers that really all had a spot to go were piling up.

I knew that this area was my problem area and that it really wouldn’t take that long if I just set my mind to it and actually got started.

Like any area I think it helps to remove everything and start fresh. When doing this I started putting things aside that I knew didn’t belong in this drawer and would be heading to a different room.

I then started tackling the things that would be remaining the drawers; putting the papers in the right sections of our folders (I will be tackling papers at a later date), going through all the wedding decor that has made its way into the drawer and deciding what I wanted to keep and organizing the rest.

In the end I was able to remove a lot of the random crap. I was even able to create an area for present wrapping in the middle, placing the paper I use to wrap with some tissue paper. I can actually see the bottom of the drawer which is amazing.

Top Tips for Organizing “that space”

• Start by removing all the things that belong in different rooms – personally I had some heat bags and tealight candles I moved to the bathroom where I actually use them
• It is okay to have a space for different types of things, but try to avoid placing all your clutter there – as soon as you do it once it easier to do it again and again
• If you have baskets or folders that can contain things you can keep things separate and from spilling into each other
• Don’t bring immediate garbage into the space – it was amazing the amount of envelopes I had to recycle and stuff that should have never made it past the garbage can

It is amazing how quickly a space like this can clutter up and it easily becomes “out of sight, out of mind”, but the real goal is to not let is get started in the first place. If a task takes less than two minutes to do now, do it, whether that is putting the piece of paper in the right place or making sure the items are in the right room.

I can sleep better at night knowing that that drawer isn’t hiding in my room and I am going to try to make sure it doesn’t become that catch all place in the future.

Where is your “catch all” area? Do you need to clean that out?

Let me know what you would like me to tackle next in the comments below.