A De-Cluttering Success

I got a wild hair this weekend to do some de-cluttering and childproofing, and realized that the vortex of clutter in my house has been a pass-through from the playroom/office to the kitchen, where I've been arranging all the things I've taken out of the changing table as the kids have gotten more able to reach them. Thus, I had an empty changing table (which was also less stable, since there wasn't anything on the shelves to weigh it down) next to a crammed pass-through windowsill covered in wipes boxes, sticker books, an ugly Huggies box full of shoes, various toiletries, usually a half-package of nighttime disposable diapers... and all of that visible from both of the rooms we use most in the house. I would post a "before" picture, but (I think understandably) I never took any.

You can get some idea of the cluttery mess here:

Empty shelves that they can climb on, random stuff shoved down behind it in hopes that they wouldn't get into it, diapers thrown on the floor whenever they could reach, basket liners untied because they can't keep their hands off of them...

And what I realized was that we had another changing table upstairs, with drawers that close, completely empty because we'd moved most of our changing activities downstairs.

We switched the tables, clearing up some nice space in the nursery since the open table is much smaller, and my sweet dad put child-locks and a wall tether on the drawer unit.

He did have some help.

Now, everything is contained.

The playroom looks so much neater, as does the kitchen - I can't remember seeing the passthrough this clear since the kids were born, and that black-hole corner is empty and vacuumed for once.

Diapers, pajamas, trash, and shoes are all stashed away in drawers where little hands can't reach them, and wipes and toiletries are easy to reach for me but harder for the kids to try to kick over. And I can have a Scentsy warmer set up where they can't pull it down (the cord is far enough behind the table) but I can actually use it - there wasn't room with the old table.

Such a huge improvement! I was a little nervous to wrestle this beast down the stairs, in case it wasn't worth it, but it really was.