Whole Home Organization: Taming the Attic

January has been a majorly productive month, y’all! And had I not taken the time to map out and schedule my main area of organization, the month would have passed without making it happen!

At the beginning of the year, I introduced you to my plan for Whole Home Organization – a completely do-able and realistic plan to tame the clutter and organize my whole home. I invited you to join me by printing off some worksheets and planning sheets and tackling one big area, or several small areas, each month.

My January area of focus was the attic. Just the sound of the word “attic” gives me a sense of dread. I can practically hear the dramatic “DUN – DUN – DUN!!!” ringing in the background. That’s one of the reasons I chose to work on this area first. Eat the frog! That’s what I always say!

I know attics are just prime locations for clutter, right? We throw stuff up there, close the door, and never think about it again. Until we need some of that crap and can’t find it for all the other crap in the way! (Story of my life.)

We actually have 2 attics – one in the garage, which is our main attic, and one upstairs. The hubster and I decided to only work on the main attic above the garage for now because the other attic is tiny and there isn’t much that can be done without removing insulation, which we kinda need.

I figured right after Christmas was the best time to organize the attic, since the majority of the contents are Christmas decor anyway, and they weren’t up there at the time. So this is what our attic looked like before we organized it:

Ok, for the sake of transparency, it actually looked way worse than this, but my husband forgot that he’s married to a blogger who has to take pictures of everything, and he just dove into this project. I came home one afternoon to see him up there working and had to make him stop long enough for me to get up there with my camera!

The man is determined, for sure!

So let’s play “I-Spy” for a minute. I spy with my little eye….2 sets of crutches, a creepy wolf figurine/statue thing, a couple of wooden pieces my family members made, a ginormous box of Polyfil, and some old artwork collecting dust.

Alright, the logical first step was to remove all the crap and sort through it. While I was sorting, trashing, and cleaning, hubby was busy adding flooring to the attic. We were making progress!

So much room for activities!!

I decided to divide and conquer. We have a bunch of Christmas decor, so one part of the attic become Santa-land, while everything else was neatly organized on the opposite side of the attic, in order by season.

I got rid of quite a bit of crap, y’all. Now, all the seasonal decor is in order, and closest to the entryway. The stuff we use less often, like keepsakes and financial files, are in bins in the very back of the attic.

Do you know what I see in that picture up there? I see room for more decor! WOOT!

Now that all of our Christmas decor is on one side of the attic, it’s easy to keep it all organized. I love that I now have room to leave my topiaries standing upright, and I even added nails to hang my wreaths. (I couldn’t get pictures of that because there were weird shadows from that angle.)

My little 4-foot artificial tree can remain standing, too, and my Snoopy mailbox for the yard. YAY! No toppling over, no crazy digging through Easter to get to Christmas. It’s all in one place, organized and easy to find.

By the way, I picked up those clear bins after Christmas last year and showed you how I store and organize all of my Christmas stuff, complete with your own printable labels, right HERE.

Let me tell you, pulling those bins down for Christmas with handy labels telling me exactly what was in each bin made decorating so much easier! And I have notes inside each bin with ideas to decorate next year. Love this system!

So, did you get one area organized this month? What was it? It’s never too late to start your path to Whole Home Organization, so head over to this post to download your printables and get started!