Clean With Me! Cleaning And Decluttering For New Carpet

Join me in cleaning and decluttering for a new carpet! Every room, bin, and piece of furniture in our minimal home is being piled in the dining room and decluttered. Clean and tidy with me!

This is a really exciting week because we finally got a new carpet. Some of you may know that we had a leak in our condo about 90 days ago. 90 days! I had no idea that it was going to take this long to finally get new floors. There are still parts of our home where we’re walking on plywood.

Well, they just installed the new carpet and I’m going to get to show you how that process went. In a couple of weeks, they’re actually going to be doing the wood flooring as well. So, I’ll do an updated video on the whole renovation at that point.

Today, you’ll get some sneak peeks of our new carpet. More importantly, you’ll get to come along for the cleaning, decluttering, and donating as I go through our belongings from the carpeted rooms. We relocated everything to the dining room.

Day #1: Cleaning And Relocating For New Carpet

Day #1 was really just about getting things out of the rooms and relocating to the dining room. The majority of day 1 was spent cleaning and relocating items from the bedroom. A great resource on how to declutter your bedroom is my post- Declutter Your Bedroom In 10 Easy Steps. We left the big furniture- the beds, the chairs, the tables, etc., but we were responsible for removing any technology and lamps and making sure that drawers were all emptied and surfaces cleared—empty rooms with empty furniture.

We didn’t get started quite as early as I would have hoped. So, Day #1 was pretty short-lived, and that’s because, on a whim, we decided to spend the weekend at the beach and come back the day before all of this had to be done. We still did pretty well and got everything out of their locations and into the new zone.

Day #2: Decluttering For New Carpet And Grocery

Day 2 is when the magic started happening! The guys pulled the carpet up out of the living room, and it was exciting to see things move forward.

A grocery break

Because of all of the stuff we had going on, I decided to give online grocery shopping another go.

We haven’t had great luck with online grocery shopping using Safeway- they’ve messed it up every time. So, this time, I thought I would give Amazon Fresh a try. I have to say, I was really pleasantly surprised! No mistakes, and everything was fresh and good to go. Part of my day was bringing in the groceries and putting everything away, which, luckily, was right next to the area where we had all of our stuff piled up to go through.

Testing the carpet for the first time!

About mid-day, I was finally able to walk in my bare feet on the brand-new carpet and soak it all in. It’s so soft and padded. 

The day went by a lot quicker than I anticipated. I was able to make it through some of the stuff in the dining room. My goal was to declutter as much as possible to move things back into their home location.

I was able to at least clear off the dining table by dinner. I’m not always the chef over here; we each have our rotation, even the kids. But today, I was really excited to try this new recipe and in the Instant Pot. It was easy since I was already working on the stuff in the dining room right next to me. I tried a new recipe for Instant Pot lasagna (I’m always looking for new Instant Pot recipes).

On Day #2, they were able to complete the living room and master bedroom carpets.

Day #3: Making Donations And Discards

They were originally going to work on the girls’ carpet, the stairs, and the hallway—which would have been all that was left. It turns out that they did have to roll the stairs onto an additional day, but I still could have some wiggling room around the house to actually put things back in their spots and make piles for donations.

I discarded the shoes I’ve had for about eight years now (and I’ve loved them every winter!). They were finally starting to fall apart, so I took the opportunity to trash them. Here’s a general list I go through when deciding what to declutter. We donated plenty of clothes, books, games, and other miscellaneous items.

In addition, moving the couch out of the living room and going through all of the living room bins made me realize that we did not need all of our throw pillows. My youngest daughter was really excited for me to get rid of the pink throw pillows with feathers that poke through, so I finally took this opportunity to donate some.

Day #4: Getting Things Out And Putting Things Back

For the carpet guys, day #4 was all about just finishing up the stairs. They could do the girls’ bedroom (which ended up taking longer than was expected because of the Ikea bunk bed) on day #3. They changed the stairs up a bit from how they initially were. It was just waterfall stairs previously, and they bull-nosed all of the edges, which was really cool.

For me, today was about getting the rest of the stuff out the door. This was a great opportunity to get the clutter out and go through some things that we haven’t gone through since we first moved in. I bagged everything up and took stuff to the donation center. We cleared out space inside the dining room.

If you catch glimpses of the floor, you’ll notice that part of it is like the old style and vinyl, and part of it is a jagged wood floor. That’s because, to date, we’ve only ripped up half of the wood floor. We need to do the rest of it by next week when the guys come in to lay down the new hard flooring.

We also have chunks of plywood removed and sections where we’re just walking on plywood directly, so that’s been fun.

Overall, Take On The Progress

Overall, I’m really excited! I love the finished product with the carpet and am glad that we could get everything done before the wedding (in a couple of weeks!). That’s been one of the biggest stressors- trying to get this done before the wedding day. My mom will be staying here for a week and a half with the kids while Matt and I are on our honeymoon, and I just wanted this project to be finished.

I guess it was a blessing in disguise because A.) we got new flooring, which is great, even though it’s taken a long time, but B.) we’re going through all of our belongings. This whole process of decluttering for a new carpet was a great way to re-evaluate all of our belongings.

Everything is going to be extremely fresh when we come back from our honeymoon because there won’t be a space in this condo that hasn’t been touched. All of the flooring will have been changed, which means that all of the furniture will have been emptied, and our hands will have pretty much been on everything that we own by that point.

I’m glad you’re here to share this whole process with us! If you’re interested in topics related to your home (decluttering, minimalism and clutter-free living, and home space and optimization), be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel above!