(Steph here – I wanted to give a quick happy birthday shout out to my dad! He reads our blog every week and today is his birthday! Happy birthday, Dad! I hope Ohio State gives you a win on your birthday!)
Guess what? We have roughly 17 months left (counting January) before we put a For Sale sign in our yard. And we have 17 rooms in our house. Coincidence? Maybe, but we also see it as a cool opportunity to gamify our move!
If we tackle one room per month, we can have our possessions pared down and be ready to move in May 2026. We did a lot of closet cleaning a few months ago, so this round won’t be such a heavy lift.
Our 17 room list:
Here is our list of rooms and the order we plan to tackle them. In some cases, we are using the word “room” loosely, but we’re trying to identify areas that we need to declutter and break the house into 17 distinct areas.
- Upstairs guest room (the project for January)
- Upstairs bathroom (including the attic, because bathroom decluttering is easy)
- Garage
- Basement storage area
- Basement living area (includes kitchenette and several closets)
- Basement bedroom
- Living room
- Basement garage
- Master bedroom
- Master bathroom
- Laundry room
- Front entry
- Kitchen
- Basement bathroom
- The kid’s bedroom
- The kid’s bathroom
- Steph’s office (this will become the holding area for things we need to keep)
We’ve tried to order these so that there is the least amount of disruption as possible. The rooms at the top of the list are used less often, so easier to empty. The exception is Steph’s office, but that needs to be emptied for two reasons. First, Steph needs to start acclimating to working from a variety of areas on a laptop with an additional extra screen. Second, that room will be the area where we gather things that are going into storage, going to college with Sam, or otherwise need to be stored for a while. We chose that room because it is on the main floor, near the front door, and requires minimal disruption to convert to storage.
**Update, we’ve decided to move the office to last rather than 3rd on the list. It is already pretty much empty except for things we are stashing there for the future move. Steph will eventually get rid of the desk, but it takes up very little space and there is no need to move her office to the kitchen table so early on in the process.**
Our goal is to empty every room as much as possible before we cross it off the list. Closets will be empty, furniture drawers will be empty, and we will re-home as much furniture as possible (we will keep enough furniture to be able to host guests for the next year in each guest room). We will also do any repairs and touch up painting that is needed, so that when that room is done, it is completely done.
January’s room
We spent yesterday working on the first room on our list, the upstairs guest room. This room was our oldest kid’s bedroom for the majority of our time her and also housed our Spanish exchange student for a year. This summer, it will house the cousin of that exchange student so she can spend some time in the United States. We may also have some guests this spring, or over the holidays next year, so we want to have space available for those visits.
To that end, the furniture in that room will stay there, but we cleaned out every closet yesterday. It’s an attic bedroom, so there are three closets, two of which are in the eaves and serve as additional attic space. We’re happy to report that each of these closets is completely empty!
We still need to do a little touch up painting in that room, but we have until January 31st to cross that off the list. Next up will be the guest bathroom, which is pretty uncluttered already, and the main attic. Stay tuned for pictures of an empty attic next month!
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