forever decluttering

  This poor piece of furniture is always used as a dumping ground. I use it for storing anything and everything. As a result the drawers have been stuffed solid and I have ignored it completely.
This room became our 'kitchen' in June and July, it was a sorry state by the end of it. It felt dirty, messy, just awful. It finally feels clean and tidy again, even though the scratches on the floor are a reminder of just how busy the room has been. Once things had more or less gone back to normal, I knew I had to open the scary drawers and go through everything.

It has taken a few weeks, but I've done it. I would not have shown you a photo like this with the doors open before as it was a shocking state. Now I'm happy to show it. This beautiful piece is from 1909, which I know as it was presented to an original Mrs C with an engraving to say so. That Mrs C is remembered, we have her photo on the top shelf, next to a tea pot, milk jug and sugar bowl she was also given. I'm the Mrs C who looks after them for Violet. Or I'm meant to. I've really not done a good job in taking care of it up until now.
I'm such a hoarder of papery things it's shocking. The top and bottom drawers were so hard to open, and it was all just rubbish. Rubbish that I'd ignored for years. The middle drawer was fine, I used it for tablecloths, napkins and candles. It's a little higgledy piggledy still, but I can live with that.

There was no way I wanted to show before photos, it was too shameful. This montage shows the top, middle and bottom drawers post sort out. I'm so happy that both the Christmas crackers and the advent calendar were able to fit in. That would never have happened before, there is so much space now.

Something else I have to re-train myself to do is not hang on to things for years. I was chucking out bank statements from more than ten years ago. Not just one or two, something like fifty or more. Every single correspondance from my bank folded up and ignored, but kept 'just in case'! Some were burnt, some shredded, it took so long to shred them.

The shelves behind the glass doors had had a bit of thinning out when the skip was here. I got rid of quite a few things that I didn't use, but it was still full and untidy. I cleared everything out, put things either in the garage or kitchen where they belonged, and ditched candlesticks I didn't want to keep and about four million jars and bottles that I kept for candles and flowers but never used. All gone.
Then I cleaned it properly, and displayed family treasures and my beloved Royal books: cookbooks and biographies.

When I saw my mum on Tuesday I asked her if she still had our Silver Jubilee mugs from 1977. She did, so I took mine and brought it home.

It was a process! I even went through all the tiny sliding drawers in the top of the bureau, again they were stuffed with papers and photos and JUNK. That's the only way I can describe it, utter junk. I can give myself a break over photos and notes saying 'I love you Mum' that Violet wrote years ago, and I've kept a lot of them, but oh my goodness, some of the stuff I found I would look at and think 'why on earth'? Little scraps of paper, tiny pieces of ribbon, old coins, keys, pots of glitter that I know I will never use. Stuff! Junk! Rubbish! Urgh. That's the thing though isn't it. It's so easy to just jam drawers full, ram them shut, then not look in them because you know it's full of useless tat. Facing up to it and dealing with it is a big deal, it takes time and sometimes the memories that flood you can be hard to deal with.