Apparently, both.

I started going through my cluttered pantry last night. Here’s what we started with:

It seems I feel the need to save every paper or plastic bag that comes into this house. By cleaning out just the bottom section of the pantry, I was able to remove this:

Oh, I also re-attached the bag holder/dispenser that had fallen off months ago. That was also shoved into the floor area of the pantry.

I still have a long way to go. But at least now stuff won’t fall on me every time I open the door!

I organized my basket.

Well, not completely. But I got rid of a lot of junk.

When you last saw my dresser, it looked like this:

Note the position of the first basket on the left.

The other night I went through this basket, throwing out old receipts and prescription labels, tossing some old broken sunglasses, and putting away two random socks.

See how this semi-organized basket is actually smaller than the one in the middle? That’s how much stuff was shoved behind it. I tend to put things there that I need to save for some reason.

There were quite a few receipts from online orders where I’ve made returns. Do I ever go back and check the statement to make sure it’s on there? Not usually.

There were a lot of prescription labels, saved for ease of refill. But does the whole bag need to stay there? Of course not.

This is still very much a junk basket, and it will probably stay pretty random. But it’s better than having all that stuff all over my dresser!

It looks like there’s been an explosion in my home office.

Most of it is paperwork. At one point I started to reorganize my filing cabinet, but just ended up with piles all over the room. Part of the reason I have trouble filing promptly in the first place is because there is way too much stuff shoved in our small filing cabinet!

So when I started this reorganization (months ago!), I cleared out the bottom drawer so I could start fresh. And I wound up with this.

I sat down and started going through some of the files. Car insurance records from 2004 — from a provider I no longer use? Bank statements from 2001? (Remember when banks sent back checks in your statements? It was also pretty easy to tell when I started using online banking — no more large stack of checks!)

I still have a pile to shred but got through quite a bit. Very little actually needed to be saved.

I still have a long way to go, and it doesn’t make a big visual impact. But I’m moving in the right direction!

We’ve already established my problem putting things away. Of course I have a problem with my laundry as well.

Here you see a combination of clothes I neglected to hang up / put in drawers, clothes that needs to be washed separately, and running clothes I’ve started pulling out of storage for the cooler temperatures.

I started using a separate hamper for my running clothes years ago. I used to throw items with special washing instructions in there as well, to keep them separate from the main laundry … but that wasn’t working out. So I purchased a third hamper. Hopefully this will help keep some of the mess from coming back!

It didn’t take long to put away what was clean and toss what was dirty into the new hamper.

You could barely see the clock in the “before” picture.

All that’s left are two pairs of my husband’s shorts that need button repairs. They’ve been waiting for a while!

The same thing seems to happen each season. I start pulling shoes out of storage before packing away the past season’s shoes.

Resulting in this:

I pulled everything out, stored the spring/summer shoes in an under-the-bed box, got rid of several pairs I wasn’t wearing or had replaced, and reorganized.

I don’t actually expect it to stay this way. It’s hard to manage all these boots in such a small space!