4 bags of clothing and shoes cleared out in the past week or two, things that don’t fit me or don’t work with my current pair of orthotics - Mom was just saying she needs some new shirts, and now she doesn’t need to go shopping. And some will go to Grandmom too, but I still have 2 - 3 bags to donate. Plus I need to help Mom find somewhere to donate nice work stuff that she no longer has any use for (suits and dresses in a size she hasn’t worn in probably 15-20 years, for a career she no longer has). She has finally decided to clear out the spare bedroom! Hurrah!
My garage mess continues to improve. The “extra bay” that was completely awash in junk about waist high, has been greatly reduced. There’s now a 5x5’ empty space in the front and a 1’ path through the rest.
I was able to access and open the garage door for the first time in 7 years! (Thank goodness it still works!) Ultimate goal is to park a car in there, so we’re about halfway there.
Unfortunately I’ve let the rest of the house backslide a bit. Laundry backlog, generally a bit cluttered. I’m going to catch up today. And now that I’ve announced my intentions publicly here, well, I have no choice but to follow through, am I right?
Moving deadline gave us some serious motivation and I’m really happy with the lack of junk left in the old house when we moved. Last set of boxes packed were definitely not labeled, inventoried and cleaned like the first few weeks of packing but we had all the boxes except christmas decorations placed in a central spot on either the first or second floor and we’re down to a single layer in both locations.
Lucky part about the new development is that since the roads have not yet been assumed by the city there is no garbage pickup so the developer has supplied a bin where we deliver all our garbage to - truckloads of it 
All the packing materials have been going straight there. Since the boxes we used had already been through 3 moves before ours I’m not feeling bad at all about throwing them away (recycling) rather than reusing them (ie, holding them for a year until someone else needs them). In addition we’ve managed to get rid of even more stuff while unpacking now that we can actually see the places where things will go and have an idea of what we need here.
My office is in the worst shape, 10 boxes to be unpacked and since I did no file purging while packing I actually need to handle each piece of paper. Laundry is a bit of an issue as I used towels and sheets for packing materials so I’m washing them all before putting them away and just as I think I’ve got all of it done I find another box of fragile things with more laundry to be done.
My goal is to complete the rest of the house this week and my office by the end of June. Those deadlines mean all boxes emptied and either disposed of or put away. The only thing that might leave me with a couple of boxes left is the lack of an appropriately sized shelf for the cupboard in my island. I’ve been shopping for 2 weeks now and can’t find one the right size with 2 shelves and I have a couple of boxes of small appliances that need to go on those (non-existant) shelves. They are at least out of the way however as the boxes are stacked in the space where the shelf will sometime exist.
Tomorrow they’re pouring out garage floor so worst case scenario in a week I can set up the saw and build my own damn shelf.
The car made it into the garage! Yes!!
It’s a tight squeeze, and it can’t be denied that we still need to do a lot of work in there, but dammit the car is in the garage!
Congratulations!
I’ve just been shopping. Two pairs of pants, two l/s t-shirts, a jumper and a cardigan. All of which I don’t really need. This doesn’t augur well for my decluttering intentions.
Redeemable if you get rid of six similar items. One in, one out.
As a testament to my clutterbuggery, I’m ashamed, so ashamed. Know what I found in the garage? Four brand new camp chairs, never used, bought on sale a couple years ago, to replace those old yucky ones. Then I forgot about them.
Good thing I haven’t stumbled on any attractive camp chairs on sale lately or I’d have probably spaced out and bought some new ones.
That’s what I do with books. “Oh, look, junipa - a book by (current favourite author)! That looks like a good read.” So I buy it, take it home and put it on the ever-growing pile. Only to discover some considerable time later that I already own said volume but haven’t got around to reading it yet. :smack:
My teenage son shamed me into tackling a bunch of long-overdue projects today. He wanted to wash his clothes, and was just so done with the messy laundry room that he started cleaning and organizing. With him running around being so productive, I couldn’t very well sit on my butt, planning (procrastinating) my next job! Between the two of us, we managed to clean the utility room, fix a pantry shelf that the 4-year-old had broken (it doesn’t make a good ladder for the goodies on the top shelf, incidentally,) sort and organize tools, hardware, leftover painting supplies, etc. that were strewn all over the house, and make a good start on getting the office in shape. The girls (mostly the teenager, but the 4-year-old was surprisingly helpful, and the 2-year-old didn’t get in the way too much,) got all of the non-toys out of the playroom, and put all of the toys into boxes. Tomorrow’s to-do list is: finish organizing office and playroom, and haul off trash. The big kids will be gone all weekend, but Monday, the Boy and I plan to transform the big truck toolbox (the kind that goes all the way across a truck bed, but Tony doesn’t want to use it like that, and planned to get rid of it,) into a bench and storage for the back porch.
And the grass finally got cut over the weekend, so we’re beginning to look respectable instead of like Ma and Pa Kettle moved in next door!
Hooray - progress!
Double hooray - I finally found the gifts I received for Christmas! (We moved in January, so I just packed things up and moved them, then couldn’t find them. Two books I’d been dying to read, plus a nice set of insulated acrylic glasses from my in-laws. Naturally, I finally gave up and bought new glasses last week. I guess the new ones coaxed the old ones out of hiding!)
Always a sure-fire way to find a missing object - replace it. 
Good work on all the cleaning/organizing!
Bumping this so I can find it later for udating. I rented a storage pod earlier this month. I have started moving stuff to it. My plan is to empty as much as I can in my house, preferably room by room but I may mix it up. Then I am going to get some work done on the house room by room, some repairs, repainting, updating flooring and such. Then I want to organize and sort through stuff as I bring it back in.
I realize I may be storing stuff I will eventually get rid of but I decided this will be the easiest way for me to be able to decide on what to keep and what to get rid of once I have an organized system in place before I bring it back in. I wanted onsite storage so I can try to get a little done every day. Although it really is too hot to get much done right now, I have managed to move a bunch of stuff so far. The idea of carting stuff to offsite storage and then carting it back in this heat was too daunting. And I know if I try to sort as I go it will take me too long.
I also bought a special scanner for documents and will be whittling down papers by scanning stuff I want to keep, then shredding the originals.
So this thread hasn’t been posted in for a couple months. How’s it going for everyone else?
Glad you bumped, else I would have had to start a separate thread, “How my scanner saved my life.” I really dithered about buying it, because I already own a quality flatbed scanner, but that’s useless for large quantities. Like many people, I have a history of buying things that were supposed to solve problems, only to themselves become clutter, so I hesitated.
Well.
First I scanned all the obvious stuff - bank statements, tax records, insurance paperwork. Then I scanned most of my yearbooks (I only left intact one from the year I graduated from college, and one for the school’s sequicentennial). Pound for pound, the yearbooks weighed more/occupied more space than the scanner, so that was “worth” it right there. Then I got into family stuff - cards, letters, genealogy research, programs, announcements, school projects, my mother’s project stuff, and on and on and on, including Dad’s English homework from 1968. I’ve been able to get rid of so much paper that I was able to get rid of a two-drawer filing cabinet as well. I have about three boxes of paper to go. The end goal is to: 1) have almost everything digital, backed up to external hard drives and Dropbox 2) have a small quantity of daily operating paperwork in a small, tabletop storage file 3) keep anything that is really important to have as hard copy in a fireproof/water resistant safe.
Then I will go back to the flatbed scanner and work on the 3000+ photos.
My friends find it ironic and a little weird that now that I live in a bigger home than I’ve ever had, that I am putting so much effort into decluttering. The thing is, I have always wanted to deal with this, but, as you are experiencing, you kind of need space to make space. (I’m doing non-paperwork stuff, too, making things/fixing things/refinishing things)
I figure if I ever move again, it will be to someplace smaller, and I cannot/will not lug all this to a new place, or else I will live here the rest of my life, so why have it filled with things I don’t look at or use?
Between getting a new job and some summer stuff outside I have not made further de-clutter progress.
I have, however, maintained the progress I’ve made. Since the long-term goal is to stay uncluttered I still view that as a victory.
I anticipate that with fall and winter I’ll resume making inroads on The Stuff.
Congratulations! My car’s space in the garage has been taken over by boxes of stuff we moved over from my late in-laws’ house. But the year and change that I spent clearing the darn house out has left me unable to cope with the task of decluttering my own. My kitchen table is covered with paperwork regarding their estate/trust and has been for months. My shiny new car must sit in the driveway instead of safely in the garage. 
Reading this thread has given me a little hope and inspiration - I will tackle the clutter, soon-ish. Thanks everyone!
Well, I moved house over the summer and brought most[1] of my clutter with me.
However, the urge to keep my new place nice and tidy has had me being ruthless when sorting through my daughter’s toys, my clothes, books, old baby clothes, kitchen shit etc, and I’ve lost count of the bags that have gone to the tip, to the charity shop, and have five crates of stuff neatly stacked in an under stairs cupboard that are selling on ebay. I will keep it up, I don’t want my house to end up like my mothers.
[1] Not all - I had made an attempt to go through it, and ebayed/charitied/gave to friends a pile of stuff. But not nearly enough!
So after my car got rear ended this spring, we wound up buying a minivan. And like I say every time I get a new car; this one’s going to stay clean! Well this one really HAS stayed clean! No kidding!
It might seem like overkill, but I take it to the local $3 car wash every Tuesday and wash and vacuum it. It looks so good, and I FEEL so good every time I get in it. No shuffling stuff around if I have a surprise passenger. It looks like it just drove off the showroom floor, even though it was purchased used.
Maybe not such a big deal for most people but a major triumph for me!
I’ve been on a roll lately. Being off work for two weeks has certainly helped. I have sorted, decluttered and cleaned practically everything. Now I think I’ve run out of steam and I’ve left the three worst jobs till last. Typical. The garage, photos and my work-related stuff which needs to be put into a folder (or, more likely, several folders) will have to wait. Again.
100 free ebayUK listings till Sunday - time to go dig through all thoe under-bed barely-ever-opened storage boxes and get more shit sold, yay!
Yeah - that didn’t go so well Damn you ebay!