Check-Up On My To-Dos for 2019

Already this month I've been successful in completing two of the tasks on my to-do list. I re-organized our pantry and I cleaned out my shoe closet.

And I did it all without the help of Marie Kondo's Netflix series Tidying Up!

I don't know about you, but that show doesn't seem to provide much in the way of concrete tips. I don't need to "wake books" or thank my clothing before deciding to discard it.

I. JUST. NEED. STUFF. CLEAN. OR. OUT. OF. MY. HOUSE.

But it's great that the show exists, I guess, as inspiration for people to get into a decluttering mindset. (Although, you could argue that you spend more time bingewatching the show than actually cleaning.)

My decluttering and cleaning tips came from the book Decluttering at the Speed of Light, as well as reading minimalist-themed books, such as The Cozy Minimalist and Hygge. I would highly recommend reading those books. Let me know of any books that you really liked in the comments!

But I didn't really need any of the tips from those books to do my pantry and shoes. I just needed some good old-fashioned willpower and free time to get the jobs done.

For the pantry, I threw out anything expired. The last time I had organized my pantry, I used painter's tape as a label for all of the containers, and I wrote the expiration dates on the labels. That came in handy when throwing out the contents of my pantry this month. Just about EVERYTHING was expired. At first, it looked like we had no food in there, but then I realized that we've been using a cabinet in the kitchen as a "pantry extension", so I was able to move some of that food into the real pantry.

I would still like to find a home for the things on the very top shelf of the pantry (probably the basement or the trash) because that would free up space for more food. But at this time, I wasn't feeling like standing on a stepstool to reach that high thanks to a back injury. Once I'm feeling better.

The shoes were easy since 90 percent of my shoes I haven't worn in a LONG time. I just needed to figure out the quality of the shoes to see if they could be donated or if they were just trash. Only four pairs went in the donate pile. Everything else was in pretty bad shape due to me wearing them a bunch back when my flat feet could tolerate just about any type of shoe.

So now my shoes all fit in one hanging sweater organizer, and that frees up more room in my closet for clothes. Not that I have any money to go clothes shopping, but...

Sort of related, but I also donated a huge bag of clothes that had been sitting on my closet floor right next to my shoes. I initially was going to sell the clothes on a Facebook garage sale site, but a year later, it hadn't been done. So I just hauled the bag to the Salvation Army store. I'm not making money from it, but I'm at least helping others.

How are you doing on your 2019 to-do lists? Let's keep each other accountable!