A decluttered home

I got married when I was 23. I was still living like a teenager. There were piles of clothes and handbags on my bedroom floor. I was studying for my chartered accountancy exams and had piles of paper, files and textbooks scattered about. My husband had a massive house fire the year before and had lost everything he owned, apart from the clothes on his back and a few things preserved by the tumble dryer drum. When I (and my many piles of 'stuff') moved in to his two up two down, the house was full and honestly, 90% of it was mine. 

That's embarrassing. What's more embarrassing is that I allowed myself to continue living like this and moved box after box from that small house to our next home, most of it unopened in the 15 months I lived there. 

So I started reading homekeeping blogs and have managed to change my approach to homekeeping and no longer hoard new items but the backlog is still there. I've thrown out piles of newspapers and magazines, CDs, lots of clothes but there is still so much stuff. I have tried 10 minutes of decluttering a day. I have tried emptying a drawer and  sorting it. Nothing has really made any impact despite many full black bags leaving the house to find a new home in a charity shop or the dump.

Then I decided after reading another blog about the KonMari method that maybe I needed to take a look. So I bought the beatselling book, 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying' by Marie Kondo. It has already changed my life. I'm not exaggerating. 

This blog will be about all the ways I find happiness in my home; cooking, cleaning, my family, interior design, even menu planning but right now it's all about this book. As I start to sort each category I'm going to blog to keep myself motivated. Expect lots of 'before and after' shots. And the 'before' is technically already an 'after' shot as I've been making a real effort to declutter for the last 4 years!