Since we’re living out of three bedrooms and one bathroom right now, I’ve been focusing on things that are in the bedrooms and the bathroom in our decluttering efforts. I could spend weeks, I tell you, WEEKS on The Girl’s bedroom, but I’ll tackle that later.
So far I’ve been blogging about rooms/drawers/cabinets/stuff pretty much at random, but the – hey look, squirrel! – style of blogging will settle down when I can focus on one room at a time. The work on the house is supposed to be completely done next Friday.
“Ask Kristen” Is My New Favorite Saying
My sorority sister is an interior designer and, with her residential construction husband, owner of a design and remodel business. I called her in to finish our house. She’s been nothing short of a big bowl of awesome. We’ve had so much going on with all of our health stuff that I’ve been able to say – Kristen, please take over. And she has. It’s gone something like this:
Subcontractor 1: “Ma’am, what do you want to do with ____?”
Me: “Ask Kristen.”
Subcontractor 2: “Ma’am, what color do you want ____?”
Me: “Ask Kristen.”
Subcontractor 3: “Ma’am, what size do you want ___?”
Me: “Ask Kristen.”
I’ve got them trained. They don’t bother asking me anything anymore.
I’m not good at picking colors to go with stuff and there’s no point in fighting my natural tendencies to suck in all things interior design. I second guess myself, tie myself up in knots and then live in fear that the real estate agent will say, “Well that was an interesting choice. Have you considered changing it before it goes on the market to appeal to a wider range of buyers?” which will really mean, “What the hell were you thinking?”
Which is why my go-to response is, “Ask Kristen.”
And this Sunday? While we are out of the house, she’s going to place all of the furniture where she thinks it should go. We’ll come home and see what she has done. The only instructions we gave her were that we’d like as little furniture as possible to go back in. We need to have a reasonable amount of furniture for house staging purposes.
Since we’ll be moving to a much smaller space, our larger scale furniture won’t be going with us. And I’m totally fine with that.
The Declutter Thing for Today
While we’ve been holed up in the bedrooms, we’ve had time to focus on these four rooms. In my bathroom I have a large drawer in which I store all of my flat irons, curling irons and hair dryer. Now, keep in mind that right now my go-to hair style is what I call The-I-Work-From-Home-And-Rarely-Go-Out-Why-Do-My-Hair-Special.
This is how you do it:
1. Wash Hair
2. Brush Hair
3. Throw back in a haphazard one ponytail holder loop bun thing.
4. Go about your day.
I won’t be winning any competitions with this ‘do, but it works for me. I actually put effort into my hair like maybe once a week. And that’s being generous. So given all that, really, do I need these?:
I mean, WTF? I’m not a hair stylist. I rarely even do my hair. Oh, how far I have fallen.
I kept one flat iron, one curling iron and my hair dryer. I donated the rest. Now that drawer has a looooot of empty space in it.
Booyah!
Even as a hairdresser I only owned 3 curling irons, guess I was always meant to live minimally. When I did my big purge I was wearing my hair short, and liked it, so I got rid of everything including the blow dryer. Now that my hair is growing out I’m being lazy, wash and air dry. I won’t waste my time doing my hair any more.
hope you are going to share pictures of your professionally designed living room.
I rarely “do” my hair anymore. But if I air dry, it’s a ball of frizz, so if I need it to look nice, I have to blow dry and either flat iron or curl it with a curling iron. And yes, I’ll share pictures.
I must run upstairs and do the same thing. I recently purged most of my hair (it’s naturally curly and we live by the ocean where the summers are generally humid/damp and windy so why even try to style it?) It dries in about 10 minutes and is so short I couldn’t even use any appliance on it.
And why does someone with naturally curly hair even need two curling irons?
I always wanted curly hair. I guess you want what you don’t have?
OOOooooh. I too am of the “less is more” hair style. I actually buzz mine. For the first three decades of my life I had hair past my not inconsiderable rump and spent hours each day simply washing and brushing it out. Now the 30 seconds it takes me in the shower to scrub the fuzz with bar soap seems like an indispensible luxury.
I DO have a hair brush though… after all that time with long hair I can still remember how desperate I might be after a windy car ride to borrow someones brush so I hang onto it as one of my few just in case items…. Hmmm. I can probably rethink that myself. 😀
Wow – I’m not brave enough to buzz mine, but it does sound freeing!
Wow I’ve never had a curling iron or a flat iron, but I’m pretty tom boy esque! I shaved it all off in Nov to support a friend with cancer, which suits my laziness to a tee! But good work rationalizing your collection, every bit counts. Did you sell or donate them?
Wow, that’s amazing that you shaved your head for support! Go you! I donated the extra ones to a charity that helps women who’ve left abusive relationships.
I’ll bet your drawers don’t even know what hit them!!
Ha! No, they don’t. 🙂
Sometimes being forced to live in a smaller space, helps with the decluttering once you regain access to your entire house.
The hair toys made me laugh! I, too, used to have lots of hair stuff. Now, I have a nice, collapsible blow dryer, and that’s it. I would love to own a straightening iron once again, since my old one bit the dust.
A collapsible hair dryer is a great idea. Once the one I have dies, I’ll look into that!
I got rid of my hair dryer, curling iron, and flat iron. I cut my hair short and just air dry it! Love it. I did keep a set of curlers for when it grows out because I love it curly, but then it gets cut off again and I start over. I love your decluttering saga!
Thanks! I air dry my hair most days, but admittedly, it gets frizzy if I don’t blow it out. I couldn’t go cold turkey, but six plus a hair dryer is flat out lunacy. 🙂
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Just wait until you clear out the make-up drawer! As a former performer, I was loathe to get rid of my make up that I only wore for performances(maybe once a year), but the health aspect behind it, and just a little clarity in general, was enough for me to toss it all. I plan to start over with much more natural products than I’d been using.
Anyway, especially since you’re a bun person, if you haven’t tried Spin Pins, I totally recommend them. Before I cut my hair last year, I used them daily. I’d just toss my hair up after coming out of the shower, and be good to go. (It hit me one day, that I always was wearing my hair up, just to get it out of the way, but not actually doing anything with it. That’s what made me to decide to cut it. A year+ later, I finally found the style that fits my life right now, and that I may stick with. Although, long hair is easy for it’s wash and go status, short hair isn’t so much for me.)
I’m sorry for being such an enabler! That’s two posts in a row that I’m recommending things to get, not discard!