I helped a friend clean out her house. It was a serious situation, and really needed to be done.
I didn’t think any less of her. I knew she was a good person and the state of her house was not a reflection of her character.
I’d say let your friends help you out. I know how much an untidy apartment can affect my mood, and I’m only moderately messy. Order in some lunch, crank up some music, thank them profusely, and have a good time.
Whew, glad I’m not the only one. I keep re-reading it and the quoted phrase and… :throws hands in air:
I’d take them up on the offer to Clean Sweep your apartment, but you should stay there and make sure they don’t throw away anything truly valueable to you, and do it just like the show.
Make three piles; “Throw Away,” “Keep” and “Sell.”
Be ruthless, though.
Start the “Throw Away” pile with that 10-year-old make-up, please.
Go through the books CDs and see if you have any duplicates. Get rid of those that are duplicates or that you know deep down inside that you didn’t like or that you just aren’t ever going to read again, and put the others out on the shelves. There’s no sense having a bunch of books and CDs packed away that you can’t get to.
The dragons from high school… Why do you still have them? They meant something to you at one time. Should you put them in a display case and put them out in the bedroom or living room, or would you hate looking at them? If you’d like seeing them all the time, then display them neatly. If the thought of seeing them out embarrasses you, get rid of them.
Go through the clothes and make sure they’re all in good repair and fit you. If you haven’t worn it in over a year, or it’s stained or torn, get rid of it.
If it fits and you wear it regularly, hang it up or put it in a drawer.
Go through your socks and underwear. Do you need 15 pairs of white socks? Do you really ever wear the novelty socks with Santa or kitties or whatever on them? No? Get rid of them. (Just examples, I have no idea what you really have)
Watch out, she’s channeling Peter!
Just a suggestion but how about a half-way house? Rent yourself a self-storage thingy for 3 or 6 months. Anything that’s still in the self-storage at the end of that time gets chucked, donated, or sold.
Biggest problem I have with this system when I try it is that I just can’t throw away stuff I think is useful and somebody might want. I don’t know where I get it form, I’m not Great Depression era or anything. I think part of it is western civilization guilt. Same thing if I try the storage solution qts suggests. I have boxes of books and old video tapes I haven’t opened in two moves and I know I wont’ miss anything in there but can’t bring myself to get rid of the stuff without looking. And then I think a nice apt fire woudl just take care of it all. 
Hello Again has some great suggestions. I think I just need to resign myself to just donating a lot and not worrying about selling stuff. I should just take the write-off this one time.
I talked to one of my friends and she’s so excited, she wants to start the weekend. So we’ll see how it goes. If I can get everything pared down, I’m gonna reward myself with a trip to IKEA…
You use the construct neither X nor Y but without the neither, so it’s just “you nor anyone else” instead of “neither you nor anyone else.” I hadn’t specifically noticed anyone use it here before (except possibly me).
i’m clean sweeping the chair house. so far i’ve had to throw out 2 broken rocking chairs!
for books, videos, cd, tapes etc. may i suggest operation paperback. military personnel around the world would be very, very, happy to have the diversion. you will be on cloud nine after you read the thank you notes online. sometimes you even get hand written thank you notes.
sometimes rehab hospitals will take books, puzzles, games, etc.
perhaps we will have another white elephant exchange, then you could really have fun sending stuff out. i’m sure the little plastic dragons would find a welcoming doper home.
Over a year ago, a thread on this board introduced me to flylady.net. I was a clutterbug, too, and her system has worked wonders for me and my house! Admittedly, she’s not every one’s cup of tea, but she has over 20,000 members who are very much like you (and me), and it might be just what you need. Perhaps you should check it out.
If you want to know more about my experiences with that site, feel free to email me.
Kiminy and Hello Again, thank you for the great suggestions. I think at least one of them is going to work out fine for me. Haven’t figured out yet how to best use CraigsList, but I had no idea there was such a site. And renting a table at the flea market might be just the ticket!
O I C
I wasn’t sure if you were mocking me because of my extra ‘r’ in there, or if I was missing the point. Glad to see I was missing the point. As a matter of interest, you’re not the first person to tell me I talk funny. 
tremorviolet, you sound just like me! I was a terrible, AWFUL, “clutterbug” (cute word) and our 3-bedroom apartment was a wreck because of it. Then, last year, we got a 30-day notice to vacate (the city bought our block to build a school. The landlord had known for 6 months, but hadn’t told us!) and we had to do some serious culling work. I knew that no matter where we moved, it’d be smaller (it was) and I couldn’t possibly take everything.
I spent the first week in a depressed, angry funk, casting around asking if anyone needed some of the stuff I had. I too had a lot of stuff that I could probably get rid of, but I didn’t want to throw away. There wasn’t any time for e-bay, but I went there and found a forum and posted my problem. There are people who sell stuff for other people, but I didn’t have time for that. Luckily, someone saw my post, passed it on to a woman in another state, who had a sister living just outside the city. The woman, and her sister, contacted me. We made arrangements where the sister would come over and get stuff.
The one thing sister said to me, that I took to heart, was “DON’T throw ANYTHING away!”
I didn’t. Well, hardly anything. I had everything from old pots and pans, to 10-year old videotapes (stuff like the first several seasons of ER), to literally thousands of magazines, to an entire bag full of Princess Diana stuff (I know, weird), to clothes I hadn’t worn for ages. Lots of those clothes were stained and torn, so not useful for wearing, but pieces cut from them would have made at least 50 nice quilts, or tons of children’s craft projects. (Btw, I offered those clothes for crafts here at SDMB, and someone said they wanted them, but never came and got them. A missed opportunity for crafts-people…ah well.)
I put everything into kitchen garbage bags, and she and her husband came to get them. Luckily they had a van. When it had completely filled up, I told her I had more, if she wanted to come back, and her eyes glowed! They came back TWICE MORE and packed their van. I could have filled it up again, but her husband was about ready to kill her I think, so she said no. I felt really good though, all my things were going to someone who actually wanted them, who could at least try and do something with them. I can’t say 90% of it didn’t go to the dump from her place, but that was not for me to know, and I never do want to know. At least I didn’t throw any of it away. Knowing these things weren’t going into the trash (at least, not immediately, and not by my hand) made it much much easier to toss items into her bags.
We still had a lot of stuff (it took an entire moving van to move us a block and a half, thank you City of Chicago for paying for it) and if we move again it’ll have to be done again. It’s nice having an apartment that isn’t overrun with, um, as much, junk.
I can’t magically give these two women to you, but it does pay to ask around when you’re trying to get rid of stuff.
Oh, I also found, online, someone who took a few hundred cassette tapes and all my Time and Newsweek magazines (I subscribed for several years), another person who took a couple hundred skating and Olympic tapes (shipped to California!), and someone who came and got a piano that I gave away.
GOOD LUCK!
(Btw, the city did in fact knock down all but one of the buildings on our old block, but work has not started on building anything there, and I hear it might be several years before that happens. GRRRRRR! We loved that apartment, even if it was a wreck. We like our current apartment very much, thank goodness.)
Man, I say “stuff” way too much. I didn’t realize until after I’d posted. I hate that.
The other cleaning thread was just bumped which reminds me to update this one.
My friends came over this past weekend and we decluttered for 9 hours. I can’t believe my friends did this for me; I’m gonna be grateful forever. It was really hard in some cases, I couldn’t look when Rachel threw away all my old toiletries and cosmetics but I’m glad they’re gone. And Melissa made me hang up all my clothes :eek: so they’re not sitting in stacks on the floor anymore. Plus, they made me throw out all my boxes. What will I do if I need a box? (truthfully, I’m a box hoarder, this was one of the hardest things for me to do) We had five or six big bags o’crap plus six trips to the dumpster for the boxes.
Another couple of friends are throwing a garage sale soon so I have a big pile o’stuff for that. I need to keep going, I still have too much stuff. Despite weeding out more than twenty pairs of shoes I don’t wear, I still have over 45 pairs. And about a million t-shirts. And we didn’t get anywhere near doing anything with my estimated 3500 books.
Anyway, I was embarrassed about having them see my mess but they were incredibly cool about it. They also said it was fun going through someone else’s stuff and I wound up passing on some possessions that they liked and I didn’t feel the need to hang onto. So I’m really glad I swallowed my pride enough to accept help…
Congratulations, Tremorviolet! It’s good that you were able to get such a big start. Hopefully the impetus will keep you going at it. Don’t stop, or you’ll never start again.
StG
Thanks for the words of encouragement. You’re absolutely right, I’ve gotta keep it up. I was busy on Sunday and didn’t do anything and on my way out this morning, I noticed stuff building up again in the same places I always let it. Tonight when I get home from class, I’m gonna set a timer and do a good hour or so of decluttering and cleaning.
Let me second norinew’s Flylady.net suggestion if you are looking for a way to learn the habits that will keep your house clean. It seriously has changed my life. My e-mail’s in my profile, too.
Yay! So, tremorviolet, how do you feel? When you enter your place, do you feel happier than you used to? Keep it up!
To be truthful, it makes me kinda anxious. It’s nice having the wide open expanses of floor (and the kitties like lounging there) but I think I kinda used the mess as a security blanket. Like I can’t even worry about dating or possibly throwing a party because I can’t invite people in. I gotta get past this or I’ll just let it pile up again.
Podkayne, I’ve looked at Flylady before but I was totally oerwhelmed by all the emails. I’ll have to look at the site again. Maybe there’s a lower volume email reminder system or something…