Why moving house is great! Being forced to declutter

Posted by: Sacha on: 09/05/2011

• In: Moving House
• 3 Comments

First the bad news.  In spite of 8 or 9 viewings, our house is still considered to be too small.

This is in spite of removing a dining table, and dismantling a bunk bed, not forgetting the massive decluttering session prior to putting the house on the market.  In fact, an estate agent touting for business told me we were on at a very reasonable price. (How nice.  Now go away.)

It wasn't quite this bad prior to putting the house on the market, but it wasn't far off

This weekend, therefore, we tackled the study (currently also smallest one’s bedroom) and removed my ‘teaching’ shelves.

As a student antenatal teacher, I have absolutely masses of, for want of a better term, stuff.  We are expected to provide numerous visual aids during classes as they tend to liven up the atmosphere and bring a bit of reality into it.  After all, can you imagine going to an antenatal class to have someone drone on at you with the help of a Powerpoint presentation?  Naturally, my shelves are full to the brim of babies, birth balls, handouts, study texts, files, and there’s even an electric breast pump hiding in there somewhere.  And, if I’m honest, there’s plenty more in the garage waiting for my next course, not to mention heaps of dolls currently being borrowed for a friend’s class.

But loved one and I agreed last week that they would just have to go.  We didn’t know how, since I need the stuff, and we didn’t know where.  But then, in an anti-essay-writing-procrastination brainwave, I realised that half of my shelves might just work in the living room without causing another room-being-too-small issue.

Mentioning it to loved one was like setting an enthusiastic match to very dry touch-paper.  No sooner had the words left my lips than he began gleefully carting all my paraphernalia downstairs. Come Sunday morning, it was impossible to move in the lounge for all the journals, lever arch files, boxes of babygrows and the like.

On Sunday afternoon, with the choice of getting on with it, or having nowhere to sit and veg in front of the TV, I got down to business.  Helped by smallest one, I cruised through mountains of journals and annihilated all the horribly out-of-date ones.  I streamlined my filing and removed the mountains of articles I’d already read and had made notes on.  I turfed out heaps of public-access documents I can now access online any time I like.  I found all the things I’d lost prior to smallest one’s birth.  I even have a spare lever arch file and four empty ring binders.

So, after carting a car-load of recyclable material to the dump this morning, and a very stiff neck from all yesterday’s sorting, this is the result:

My re-vamped spangly teaching shelves

I’m feeling quite pleased with myself.  I almost feel – dare I say it – organised.  I am particularly impressed with my ability to more than halve my storage requirements; I even brought some non-teaching stuff in to fill some space. Needless to say, upstairs suddenly looks cavernous.  People might finally believe that we happily had a super-king bed in there for a while.

And who knows? Maybe my shelves will stay looking this good.  Heaven forbid, maybe someone will start to think the house is big enough now.

Naahh, that’s surely asking too much…

Tags: antenatal teacher, birth ball, breast pump, files, journals, lever arch files, recycling, ring binders, shelves, student, teaching