Then the Clutter Went Away
Posted on January 16, 2020 by dragonspitapothecary
When you begin to use more natural products in your life you for some reason also become more conscious of waste and clutter. You look to extend the life of what you have and up-cycle what is used for new purposes. There’s interest in seeing what you don’t need or what can be done differently to not only reduce cost but what you end up throwing out or storing and having to organize. It sort of happens just naturally it seems.
I didn’t set out to become this ultimate DIY up-cycle mom who reuses everything and is intently interested in things that don’t come with a lot of packaging. Ok well that last part isn’t true as I really hate trying to open some of the hard plastic wrappings and containers like for make-up or my son’s toys. I also am not a fan of all the peanuts that come in shipping boxes and end up all over the floor as you work to get your items out of a box. Meanwhile the dog is thinking those peanuts are toys and treats so you’re having to pull those out their mouth. That aside, I didn’t intentionally go about looking to change these things either, it just sort of happened.
.For well over two years now we have been changing out what we use at home to more natural options. If you’re new to reading this blog I encourage you to scroll back on this blog to see our journey. In the course of these changes I realized our cabinets like the one in our bathroom that used to be crammed with cleaners on the top shelf is much less cluttered these days. That’s pretty interesting to me. We have lived in our home for almost 15 years and we have decent sized cabinets and closets. Over time though they have become filled and at times there will be these big projects to take everything out of them and organize it all. More than once in those types of activities my husband and I have said we simply have too much stuff!
In general I think most of us can say we have too much stuff. Our shelves, closets, cabinets are full and sometimes we even buy extra cabinets and storage items to store and organize our things. There are piles we stash away when we know someone is coming over. We have to spend weekends organizing and sorting to make sense of what we have periodically. Some of the thinking behind it is we just never know when we’ll need something and yet when we need that thing we usually can’t find it. Or that just might be the case in my house which happens quite a bit.
When you add in the fact that most of feel we pay good money for the things we have there is some angst about just getting rid of it even if we’re not using it. I totally get that and trust me our house has it’s fair share of things that falls in this category too.
When I changed our home to natural cleaners I stopped buying multiple bottles of things that were on sale or that were handy to have a spare on hand. I stopped needing several cleaners all together because I found ones that worked in multiple areas. I also stopped needing several bottles, cans, and sprays. Through just the normal course of swapping out these products the areas where I keep cleaners looks drastically different now. Like that bathroom cabinet top shelf