There are limitations to this method. My MIL has tons of stuff she picked up for pocket change at yard sales.
Most counties have a county landfill, and in most jurisdictions any county resident can dump stuff there. Check your county website for location, cost, hours.
My county charges 67¢ per 20 lbs. for residents hauling stuff to the dump in our cars and whatnot. Last weekend I took a load down there in the trunk of my car. I’d dismantled a bunch of worn-out particleboard furniture: two old computer hutches, one stereo cabinet, one 6’ bookshelf, and a few other odds and ends.
At my county landfill, they weigh your car on the way in, then do so again on the way out, and charge you the difference. My car was 400 lbs. lighter on the way out, but the guy just waved me through. I’d have been happy to pay the $13 to get rid of all that crap, but free was even better.
We’re trying to clear out our unfinished basement because we’d like to get a contractor in and turn it into a rec room, but the basement had accumulated so much shit over the years - everything that we couldn’t see throwing away just yet, but that we didn’t have a place for upstairs. Now we’re being fuckin’ ruthless. A sofa bed that was made at my late grandfather’s furniture manufacturing plant goes out on the curb for special trash pickup next Thursday. Habitat for Humanity has a nationwide chain of ReStores that takes furniture that’s in condition that it can be sold straight away, and next week they’re taking an office desk, a student desk, a credenza, a night table, and a dresser. We’ve made a number of trips to the local thrift store, and anything that the county recycling center will take, we’ve taken there, including ancient file cabinets, computers left over from the 1990s, and a bunch of other stuff. If we can’t find a place to store it, and we can’t give it away, we’re throwing it away. If we can’t throw it away as is, we’ll demolish it into tiny pieces that can be stuffed in the garbage. We’re taking no prisoners here.
So true.
And when they’re more like 4 or older and are old enough to grasp the concept, you can lay down a rule that any time they get a new toy, an old toy (or toys) of comparable size have to go. Especially in early childhood, there is usually something that they’ve outgrown their interest in that they’re willing to part with to make room for something new and exciting.
I’m certainly in no position to give advice but I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed by stuff.
For many reasons I form attachments to stuff. I anthropomorphize inanimate objects. My mom threw away a lot of my favorite toys when I was around 9 or 10 so I find I want to cling to stuff more. I have plans for most of my stuff and getting rid of it means admitting failure, that I will never follow through with my plans. I was very sick for a few years and barely had the energy to go to work let alone do household projects and organizing and things piled up. I also can’t just throw away stuff if it can be repurposed, recycled or used by someone else, I feel too guilty. The mess does not compare to the people on the show Hoarders but I am embarrassed by it and don’t want anyone else in my house right now. I’ve gone through spurts of cleaning and organizing and accomplished a lot, only to get sick again or have to put in extra hours at work and things get out of hand again.
I think I tend to be a little ADD when it comes to cleaning. I have trouble deciding where to start and get distracted by other things while cleaning. I’ve looked at the FlyLady site and I can tell that’s not for me. If I have the time, energy and motivation to work I am not going to be okay just shining my sink and I hate wearing shoes in the house so I’m not getting fully dressed to work around the house.
I’ve tried lists and it feels good to be able to check things off but sometimes my perfectionist kicks in and I get too absorbed in making the list. So I started doing a “Done” list instead of a “To Do” because it’s nice to be able to look at a list of accomplishments and this way it only shows what has been done and not what I need to do. I make a point to sort recycling and take it often, at least weekly, so I can get that stuff cleaned out and I feel good about not adding to the pile in the landfill.
I look for places to take other things for recycling and found that there are options for electronics and appliances and batteries and chemicals so I set those things aside for that. Our local sanitation department has a collection site for some things and several times a year they have a mobile collection for this stuff. It’s free for residents. I also found by googling a place that collects electronics year round and has several collection areas, one which is very near me. So there may be many options available for free recycling, you just have to do a lot of looking.
What helps most is doing things to make you feel better about yourself. If you do manage to clean a section of a room, organized a drawer or cabinet, put away a load of laundry, recycled some stuff or whatever go ahead and pat yourself on the back about it and don’t concentrate on what you haven’t done. You accomplished something, you can reward yourself for it, too. A piece of good chocolate or some other special treat or allowing yourself some “goof off” time can be good rewards.
Another thing you can do is do something for someone else. Help out someone on the neighborhood or a friend. I have a co-worked diagnosed with cervical cancer and it’s pretty advanced, she can’t work right now. I plan on taking her some Vitamin Water that I know she likes and some food. I can’t afford much bit I think putting some energy toward helping someone else will make me feel better, too.
This thread did motivate me to try the “throw away 28 things”. I went to my bathroom and threw out all my old makeup and expired medication. I never wear the makeup and I know it’s older than 6 months and you’re not supposed to keep it that long anyway. I made sure to take the bag out to the trash can instead of leaving it inside for me to reconsider throwing it away.
This got me started on another project in the corner of my living room. I had a box overflowing with stuff to shred, it was half spilling out so I dumped in all in an empty kitty litter bucket with a top. I put another batch of papers in another bucket to sort and then I had a third bucket of stuff to scan and then toss. It sounds like I just moved stuff around, which I did, but I managed to decrease some of the clutter and make it more manageable. I cleaned off the desk on which this stuff was piled. I recently bought a shredder so I can start tackling the shred pile and then I will have to work on my sort pile because that bucket is full and I won’t allow it to overflow again. So not a lot in the scheme of things but when I wrote down my accomplishments I managed to do eight different things.
I had thought about starting another thread here for Declutters, sort of like the monthly weight loss threads except it would be for “stuff” loss. We’ve done it before and it feels good to be able to post about accomplishments. Anyone interested in a thread like that? Or we could just use this thread if you want, since we’re also talking about coping methods.
I think this describes me as well. I actually function better when I’m doing four or five tasks at a time. I certainly get bored and look for reasons not to do a job if I’ve committed myself to a big task. I’ve never been diagnosed ADD (I’m not sure it had been invented when I was a child) but my son has and I see many, many of his traits in myself.
If I do get up in a mood to do some serious cleaning, I will quite often not get dressed at all (ie stay in my pyjamas, not clean in the nude!) because I know I’ll get sweaty and grotty. Then I have a shower and get changed when the cleaning is done. Fly Lady would hate me.
I have been looking at the Fly Lady website.
I keep thinking - why the hell do I even care if I have a shiny sink or not? Seriously, waxing the sink? And she claims she’s not a perfectionist? Putting dirty dishes under the sink? There isn’t room under my sink - and not because of clutter. Because of plumbing.
Get up and get dressed, including shoes, first thing? What? I hate shoes. I never wear shoes in my own home.
This stuff about “negative words you hear in your head”? WTF? My problem isn’t hearing little voices criticizing me, it’s because I hate housework and there are so many other more interesting things to do.
You know, I just don’t think I’m her intended audience. The first week it’s all about either something I honestly can’t give two hoots about, something that can’t be done with the space under my sink, doing something I can’t stand first every morning, and listening to imaginary voices I just don’t hear.
I didn’t bother reading further.
I can sort of see the point of getting all the accumulated junk out of the sink, at least long enough to give it a good scrub. But I don’t give a shit about whether it’s shined or not.
And I’ve said it before, I think that FlyLady (and her mentors, the Sidetracked Home Executives) think that all, or at least most, women want to be Happy Housewives, content to be homemakers and only reluctantly will they have outside jobs. And I think that very, very few women actually DO want to fit into that 50s housewife mold…and even fewer men want to do it. I read the first S.H.E. book, and the authors found it necessary to burst into anecdotes and even poetry on a regular basis. The basic ideas for housekeeping were sound, but apparently they needed some filler for their book.
I’ve adapted some of the ideas to my own life…for instance, I clean out the fridge twice a week, on the evening before trash pickup. I have morning and evening chores. I refuse to do a weekly house blessing, and I’m sure not signing up for constant email reminders of just what little household task I should be doing RIGHT NOW. FlyLady and the S.H.E.s just rub me the wrong way, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
Heck, I don’t normally stay in my jammies for cleaning, but I use “housecleaning clothes” which aren’t even good enough to go to the supermarket. And shoes are for going outside, d’oooooh 
(I make exceptions for ‘exiting the shower’ and ‘it’s too bloody cold for words’).
I can see her point though when I think about the threads on working from home. Some people can’t, they need the water cooler; some people can but must get “dressed for work” and have a very clearly delimited work space, little to no noise…; for some people, one of the best parts of working from home is lounge-around-clothes, the cat and Metallica on 11. I don’t have a cat, but I’m the third type: FlyLady is writing for the second type.
As for having the stuff that needs to be handwashed out of sight: HELL NO! If I don’t see it it doesn’t exist! Are you NUTS woman? The way to get the handwashing out of the sink is by washing it!
I think the FlyLady’s method of the shiny sink is intended to appeal to the seriously depressed who want to focus on slow steps to reduce their squalor and improve their living environment. She’s as much as said she used to be like that herself, and her advice about doing just one small thing and taking deep pride in it pretty much mirrors a lot of advice I’ve seen for fighting depression. So if that’s not your hangup about cleaning, it might just leave you confused and annoyed.
I don’t recall if anyone posted this site, a lot of the tips have been posted but I like having them all in one place. I also think the “declutter for 15 minutes” more useful than “shine your sink”.
I managed to clean half my kitchen, it took most of Saturday and some of Sunday. I cleaned off my pantry shelves of old expired stuff. I still have the other half to go and cleaning all the floors but I’m saving that for last. I am making a point to keep the section of counter that I cleaned, clean. I wipe it down after making coffee or a meal so it doesn’t get out of hand again.
Haven’t heard any more from the OP, I wonder if she decided not to stick around?