The old bathtub sat on its side in my friend’s driveway. It was white and chipped, with a rust ring around the drain.
She is 69, and we go to the same church. After more than thirty years of climbing over the side of that tub, she was getting a walk-in shower.
She looked at the tub, and then she looked at me. “It took them one morning to get that out,” she said. “It took me three weeks to empty my hall closet.”
She had started early, and I’m so glad she did. That closet was on the crew’s path to the bathroom. It was full of things she hadn’t touched in years.
Everything in the way had to be moved anyway. So she decided that very little of it was coming back.
We haven’t remodeled our house, but I learned a lot from watching her.
Do you have new floors, a new shower or a kitchen refresh coming up? This is a good time to clear out. You only have to move it once, and it can go out the door instead of into a box.
Decluttering before a remodel takes some planning, but it doesn’t take a lot of lifting. You can do the deciding, and someone else can do the carrying.
Why a Remodel Is the Best Time to Declutter
Most of us don’t remodel to make a house look like a magazine. We do it because the tub is getting hard to climb over, or the old carpet catches our feet.
We want to stay put. According to AARP, three out of four adults 50 and older want to stay in their homes as they age.
A remodel helps with that. But it also forces every single thing in the room to move.
Each thing you keep is one more thing to pack, store somewhere and carry back. Each thing you let go i