In preparation for the bathroom renovation I emptied the vanity unit tonight.  I did not think it was too bad as I had gone through the contents fairly recently, however I proved the rule that you do really need to empty a drawer/cupboard/room completely when you a decluttering.  Otherwise it is easy to just ‘tidy it up’ and not really get serious about the worth of the contents.

Here are some ‘before’ photos.

The drawers

Drawer 2

Drawer 3

I systematically went through everything and ended up with 4 piles – rubbish, recycling, rehoming and keeping.

Here is the rubbish pile – even I could not seriously keep 3 tubes of sunscreen that expired at least 5 years ago!

The recycling – although it is not a lot, I did salvage what I could to be recycled.

The rehoming pile is pretty small – extra deodorant which should be in the stockpile box, exercise band which is going with the other exercise equipment and a medicine glass (I do not need 3) which Belle may want.

The rest is packed in a crate which will probably live in the office for the duration of the renovation.

When the new vanity is installed I will look critically at the storage of some items and revamp it.  Some of the small white baskets are cracked so I will look for alternatives.  I will wait until I see the exact dimensions of the drawers.

It does not need to be as radical as renovating a bathroom but when you are decluttering it is definitely worth removing everything from its location so that you can look at it all with fresh eyes rather than just seeing each item. where it is normally stored.