31 Days to a Minimalist Lifestyle Day 7

I am writing every day in October--taking on the challenge set forth by The Nester for bloggers to write a "31 Days to..." blog series. I'm tackling Minimalist Living and you can click here to read Day 6's post.

Have you noticed that I've been tackling simple spaces that don't exactly tug at the heartstrings?

We've looked at email, magazines, kitchen tools, junk drawer, bathroom counters. Not exactly spaces where you're keeping that treasure from Auntie Sally!!! (well, unless Auntie Sally gave you junk that you put in your junk drawer!!)

We're taking baby steps to eliminate the extras in our homes by starting with the mundane. Making a quick decision to donate 9 of your 10 wooden spoons or unsubscribing to emails is not hard. It's part of the process of teaching yourself to live with less. Done purposefully, we can slowly tackle problem areas in our homes and retrain our brains to believe that less IS more.

Today's space is under your kitchen sink. Depending on what type of home you have, the space under the kitchen sink might be valuable real estate (like if you live in a small apartment) or it might be a cavernous wasteland (if you live in my house where all the space is completely unusable & unreachable.) But it is a space that can accumulate extra stuff that we really don't need!

Get down on your hands and knees and check out under your sink. If it's just dish soap and the like--YAY!!! If you've been cramming anything and everything under the kitchen sink to hide it or because you don't know what to do with it, well, this post is for you!

My sink cabinet is pentagon-shaped and I cannot even reach the back of it. (I'm 5'11" and have a heck of a wingspan!) It's a HUGE waste of space and we can really only use the tiny part in front of the pipes/disposer. That usable area is about 18 inches deep and two feet wide, but the cabinet extends another 2 feet behind the pipes. Let me apologize in advance for my terrible photos. Here's the best shot I took, but you really can't see much:

I pulled everything out and gave that area a good scrub. Even if you're not doing today's task because you have very little under your sink, I would suggest you get under there and at least wipe it all down.

So I found a lot of traps and poisons for mice (we have a crawlspace AND a basement AND a slab so it's like mouse heaven in our 70+ year old house). I am re-homing those items to the basement. Ammonia is going somewhere else, too.

I also found 2 pots that belong out in the shed. I'm pretty sure I had a good reason to put them under the sink, but I'm darned if I can remember it now. Those are going back out to the shed. 

the hanger in this photo? I didn't even see it until I uploaded these pictures. My youngest got dressed in the kitchen today and evidently didn't put it away. Darn kids!

I put back the trash bags and the wash basin which holds the dishwasher detergent, dish soap, and a few scrubbing tools. I keep it in that blue dishpan because that cabinet base is so deep it's easy to lose things in there. 

Whatcha think? This should be a nice easy task to tackle on a Fall day.

Day 1 email

Day 2 magazines

Day 3 kitchen tools 

Day 4 junk drawer

Day 5 bathroom counter

Day 6 first aid & medicines