Posting to subscribe, as well. I’ve begun a huge clean out of our house trying to prepare for future renovations.
In the past month I have removed enough stuff, via Goodwill, Freecycle, or Craigslist, to furnish a small apartment, decorate it with knickknacks and pictures, and clothe the inhabitants.
I feel pretty good about it, too! The best part is knowing that I’ve not brought much of anything back into the house. I’ve even got my husband on board, and he’s been cleaning out the cellar and backyard storage. The biggest haul-away was turning my youngest’s room from an elementary school kid’s room to a middle school kid’s room. My two oldest are officially out of the house, so a lot of their junk is now either gone with them or sorted/sent to deep storage.
I’ve worked really hard at repurposing things, too. An old, very solid wooden toy box has been refashioned into a storage bench for the back patio. Mismatched wooden chairs painted bright colors and sealed for the patio, too. My style is a bit quirky and eclectic, so it works for us!
As usual, I always hope to get more done over a weekend and wind up disappointing myself. I am trying to make my expectations of myself more realistic.
This weekend I cleaned out the piled up laundry in the back hallway. It’s where we keep the baskets/hampers but, like so many other things, at some point it careened out of control. I have one basket left and about a half-dozen pillows back there still but the 4 blankets, backlogged laundry, and cleaning rags got taken to the laundromat today (my car only holds so much, so when it was full the rest got left in the hallway). Also, what was left in the linen closet, which leaked last week during our torrential rains and high winds. It’s all clean now, and will be sorted into keep, donate, and use-for-rags. So, step forward this week.
Discovered a used book store near where I work. Yes, they still exist! I asked the owner if he’d be interested in books. He said not at the moment, but when he was ready to start acquiring more he didn’t deal in store credit or anything of the sort, he buys books. Cool! Maybe I can unload my Dark Shadows books and a few others I no longer want. Either that, or the library when I get to the point I can purge a few more.
I feel like I’m winning the clutter battle over here, lately… it’s hard to keep things moving in the right direction, but I’m working on it every day.
*Only a few day’s worth of laundry backlog
*One day’s dishes in sink
*Whole of downstairs, including the laundry room of despair, are neat and orderly.
*Upstairs is looking pretty good - all bathrooms are clean, kid’s rooms are in reasonable shape.
Only the garage and my husband’s office are still notably cluttered.
One time at my apartment the maintenance had to come into my apartment for an emergency water leak, and I was really, really embarrassed because of the clutter. I have a rule now, that I will keep my apt. clean enough (not perfect) so that if maintenance had to come in unexpectly it would look OK.
Thanks for this idea; I think it will help me to photograph or otherwise commemorate stuff that I got from people over the years, and then throw out the stuff I never use. One of my friends is coming to town in about a month to help me get rid of stuff. I’d like to get rid of some of it on my own before he arrives. Otherwise it seems just too overwhelming (he will only be in town for one weekend).
Just finished a clean-up re-org of my home office. Finally got rid of serial cables, power sources for computers I don’t own anymore, chargers for cell phones that I don’t carry, paper that won’t go through a laser writer, kids craft crap and scrapbooking stuff we don’t need, etc.
Put together a box to give to the elementary school this Fall, another box for the electronics recycling folks, a ton in our recycling bin and some in the garbage.
I stumbled upon a new way to defeat the ever-encroaching clutter: Don’t have any extra money to spend on non-essentials.
The probable age of retirement is getting close enough that we’re finally taking the idea seriously, to the point of taking some actions to getting our financial house in order. When our income drops with retirement, we don’t want to have to worry about making installment payments or facing credit card balances. One of the decisions we made last summer was that every penny except what we had to spend on essentials would go to paying off all our debts. No new books/videos/games/gadgets/hobby stuff. No new clothing except replacing worn out undies/socks, things like that. No paid for entertainment. Brown bagging instead of bought lunches. All the usual cutbacks.
Sounds dire, doesn’t it? But just about everything is now paid off! Even the mortgage should be gone within another six months.
But what it also meant is that for an entire year I haven’t brought anything new into this house except for stuff – food, laundry soap, toilet paper – that is immediately going to be eaten/used up.
The nice side effect is that even though I haven’t been as diligent about decluttering as I should, what I did resulted in visible, permanent improvements. As in, those 3 boxes of books I donated to the library sale gave me enough empty shelf space that ALL those books that used to be stacked on top of the shelves, and on the floor beside them, and squirreled away in corners now are properly shelved. I can now vacuum without having to shift piles of books! This is great!
And replacement piles aren’t breeding because, Hey, the library wants their books/mags/vids back.
So there you have it: the got no money to spend method of keeping your house decluttered.
Yesterday my cluttering prevented my son from getting his learner’s permit. I have one drawer of files that I’ve managed to keep relatively organized. I went over teh DMV website to see what documents we’d need. I was able to grab his birth certificate and SS card, and off we went.
It wasn’t until very far into the process the third person who looked at it noticed that it wasn’t a certified copy, but an informational one.
I know that I have a certified copy. I’ve had to present it in some court dealings with his father, and a few other times. I’d been doing so well with that one drawer I was sure I’d put it back. Now I can’t remember what the last time I had it out was. But I’m having a vague notion that it might be in a green folder.
After the disastrous trip to DMV I tore up the house, trying to get all the stashes of paper into one central location.
Haven’t found it yet. I did find a check made out to me for $68 from 2010 (void after 60 days). I’m so mad at myself and sad for my son and I don’t even know where to start. I made some progress last night, but not enough.
This is as dark as I’ve ever felt about it.
Part of my problem is that I have the problem at my business and at my home, and once in a while I’ll take a box of work papers to the house planning to sort them. And I have a lot of personal things (bank statements and such) mailed to work because of my mail stealing neighbor. So things are a jumbled mess, and sorting papers (except for buried checks) doesn’t yield income so it’s lower on the list.
Uggh.
Back to paper mountain. Thanks for letting me whine.
Partly due to suing a former employer (they decided they didn’t need to pay their employees anymore and can’t understand why anyone is upset over that :rolleyes:) I have to organize some paperwork. So, this morning, I just started hacking away at the piles.
I now have things sorted into broad categories (banking, retirement, medical, employment, etc.) and made extensive use of the shredder and trash can.
I have two garbage bags of discarded shredded documents, envelopes, advertising flyers, and the like. TWO GARBAGE BAGS! Out the door! Out! Out! Begone!
This does not, of course, mean things are perfect but I feel I made a substantial dent in the problem, I can see the top of my kitchen “desk” again, and I now have in one place the documents I need to get to my lawyer for my lawsuit.
I need to post/subscribe to this thread for inspiration and moral support. We are beginning the process of moving, and I’m determined not to move the clutter. Fortunately, I have a good time frame, and can sort and box and move a lot out of the way as I go, and put things away on the other end as it arrives at the new house. My mother is absolutely desperate to “help,” and I’m equally determined that she not. She is (a) far too fond of unloading her own hoard at my house*, and (b) too anxious to do it nownownownownow, and leave me feeling like a stranger in my own home, with unfamiliar boxes piled everywhere.
I will not have anything in my new home that serves no purpose to my family. It’s beyond time, and the only way I can accomplish this is to be a completely ruthless control freak, and probably piss off my mother. Woo.
*True story: my mom has been banned from going into the dumpster area at her local Goodwill. According to her, they throw away too much “good stuff.” And they may, but I’m tired of having that shit dragged to my house!
Over the last six months I’ve been able to whip two disaster areas into shape. They’ve been total messes for the last 10 years! But I finally got tired of not finding things. Yes, I’m talking about the two most used areas: my desk and my workbench/garage.
First was the desk. Cleaned up the top, and then started on the drawers and paper files in the cubby. Took everything out, threw away lots, and organized back into plastic boxes that fit into the desk drawers, or for papers, the file cabinet at the end of the desk.
Then came the garage. Bought bins and two rolling metal shelved carts, and organized/junked the whole place, except for the work bench. Next phase: build a wooden heavy duty work bench with space for a mounted vice, power outlets, and extensions to support long pieces being worked on. Then two new tool multilevel boxes. Sorted tools into 16 different drawers by function, and made a master list that is posted for users to located whatever specific tool is desired.
And the great part is that I’ve been able to maintain the organization! The next challenge is to get my wife to actually use the organization already there, and return items to the correct place. I feel really OCD and proud, and life is much easier when I am working on my frequent projects.
things are a bit derailed, i’m moving items from one storage unit to a smaller one. 12 boxes to go through this weekend. oy! i started sneezing on box #9.
I’ve been sorting, tossing, decluttering and cleaning like a maniac for the past two weeks. This afternoon, I’m going back to work for a rest. I’d like to be able to say that everything on The List has been crossed off but what would I do with my next lot of annual leave if that were the case?
Since this thread is revived, I’ll post something I wanted to post that helps me. There’s a philosophy in manufacturing called “just-in-time”. You’d think that the way to a reliable process is backup and redundancy, right? This philosophy is just the opposite. It strives to keep as little stock at each stage of production as possible. Surprisingly, this reduces waste, saves money, and even leads to higher quality products. Toyota is one of the pioneering companies of this idea.
Since one of my sources of clutter is buying things “in case” I need them, I try to tell myself to buy things only when I need them, even if that means I’ll pay more because they aren’t on sale, etc. Hopefully this will be useful to someone else.
It works! The emailed updates lead me back here and I get inspired to ask myself, what’s the next thing I could be doing right now.
Of course it helps that the inspiration happens while I’m not doing anything but reading email and checking things on the internet. So it comes while there’s opportunity time open.
I’ve been able to maintain most of my progress these last few months.
One night, a friend of mine (who also had laundry backlog) and I loaded up her van with as much laundry as it would hold (a LOT!) and took it over to a laundromat, where we stayed til close, folding and chatting. We just filled up every empty washer in the place. I even brought blankets and comforters and quilts and washed them in the industrial-sized washers. I knocked out 24 loads in a few hours that night, and since then I’ve been able to keep up, more or less.
Now I’m starting to think about my garage. It’s bad. I’m going to tackle it when the weather’s a little cooler. October, maybe. Right now I’m just trying to work out a game plan. It’s going to be a big job, though. Basically we’ve got one car bay full of random junk about knee-to-waist deep.
