Lock down Learning – decluterring is a true therapy

When all this started none of us would have imagined that it would go on for months together. When the jazz of baking banana breads, zoom calls with extended family and friends, binge watching every series on Netflix and Prime faded away, we decided to do a round of de-cluttering/cleanup at home.

To keep the toddler at home entertained indoors, I first started organizing his clothes. We both would put down all his clothes from his cupboard and segregate based on colors, clothes that he has outgrown, etc. It was a good to have him occupied for an hour which is a HUGE success in my scale. Slowly we started doing the same to mine and my husband clothes too. I was excited to find my old clothes (pre-pregnancy clothes) and it was like meeting an old friend after years! You know that feeling when you had been in nursing clothes for an year.

Doing this made me realize how many clothes I already have and I had brought one load with me from India. I gave away the clothes I don’t fit in and decided not to buy anything new. I have become very conscious in buying clothes for my 18 month old son because this guy has got like 7 denim pants and 4-5 winter jackets that was gifted for his birthday. The sad thing is there is nowhere to go!

Considering how good this kept Adhiyan engaged we invaded almost every drawer/shelf and the kitchen cupboards.

I had clay pots, porcelain cookware, terracotta bottles and a few other things which I hadn’t used in the past couple of years. I gave them off to our house help and she was more than happy to take them home.

One place that we have never thought that needed cleaning up was the documents shelf. The paper work that we do here at Kuwait for every civil document is too much and that has resulted in us having a bunch of photocopies, documents are not valid anymore, expired warranty cards of the home appliances and gadgets,etc. My husband and I sat down to sort them and it took more than an hour to segregate them in first place. We had to buy a couple of folders to organize and label them. If not for this lock down and boredom, we wouldn’t have done this. And atleast we know where exactly to look for the documents without digging into all the folders.

Now we have a couple of empty shelves in the cupboards, one chest of drawer that became totally empty (promptly,sold off), and that spare bedroom which was used as a store-room looks spacious than it was!

The challenge is to keep at this and not fill up the empty shelves with things. Hoping that we don’t!

When is the last time, you did a cleanup of your cupboards? It is fun and therapeutic, trust me:)

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