The De-Clutter and Clean Up Support Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
481

I’m not doing well in my fight against the clutter, either.

I’m behind on laundry, the garage has begun the descent back into the next level of hell, my kids are constantly making new problems - a broken drawer here, a stopped toilet there, and I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole. Fix this, two more things break. Clean that, three more things are dirty.

I need a swift kick in the rear again.

The one bright spot is that my minivan is still nice and clean, no easy feat with four small children. It gets a vacuum, the dashboard dusted, the seats wiped down, and a trip through the wash if it’s dusty, every week. I said I’d keep it nice, and at least I haven’t failed at that.

Yet.

482

It is a constant struggle to fight against entropy.

Problems with my building’s maintenance and repair (landlord has limited funds) and a raccoon invasion has not helped.

Even so, I celebrate just getting the garbage out on a regular basis. If I can toss some extra stuff or donate it so much better.

483

Bought a new house and moving out of the one I’ve lived in for 13 years. I’ve moved house twice before in my life, but this one is ten times more work and ten times more stress.

Why? Well, to back up a,little, my mom is a very organized person. I know I’ll never obtain her level of keeping clutter under control, but for most of my life, I’ve been close.

Every year I’ve always done a major purge. Having no children and living with fairly clean people always made this a fairly stress free endeavor.

Now, I have a 4 1/2 year old son, a grueling job, an aging body and I haven’t purged a thing since I was pregnant. Now add on baby clothes, toys, books, bottles, preschool projects, sentimental trinkets and all my non- purged stuff. UGH!

I closed on a new house on September 12 and stupidly estimated I’d be ready to put my old house on the market in just a couple weeks from then.

It’s now approaching Halloween and the past 5 weeks, I’ve been sifting and de-cluttering, donating and giving away, repairing and re-organizing. I can’t believe how much crap I’ve accumulated and it took a long time until I finally felt like I’d made a dent in it.

Well tonight, I finished the one project I was really regretting. Going through my own clothes. I have my regular stuff, stuff thats too worn to keep, stuff that kinda ugly and why did I ever buy it?, all my skinny clothes, then my really skinny clothes that I fear getting rid of because that says that I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never be really thin again. Summer clothes, winter clothes…etc. I have 3 full garbage bags of clothes and shoes going to Good Will. A bunch tossed and the rest nicely organized. Whew! ~patting myself on the back~

I just have a small section of my basement work room to organize, then I’m fully cleaned out and re-organized!

484

I ran across an blog entry on de-cluttering today. This excerpt seemed like a good thing to share:

485

Well done, MissSwitac! I took a leaf out of your book and did the same thing with my wardrobe a couple of weekends ago with a similar yield for Goodwill. As I did so, I put together work outfits, noted down the pieces I need for each, including jewelry & shoes, and snapped photos. I compiled it all into one front & back sheet that I consult every morning as I get ready or evening when I lay out my clothes. Makes it so much easier to pull a good-looking outfit together - all I need to know is what pieces are clean and what the weather’s going to be. Plus I can actually see the individual pieces since there’s not so much clutter in the way!

Next I need to thin out my jewelry - easy enough since it’s almost all the cheap stuff anyhow.

486

I cleaned out my fridge today! And, I have all the dishes done, the whole downstairs is clean, mopped and vacuumed.

But the laundry. Dear Og, the laundry.

487

Well, we did it, we moved. We moved out of a >2400 sf house with a full basement to a <1600 sf condo with four closets. Oh, the fun we had.

We gifted and donated and discarded, and still we moved about 125 boxes. Most (but only most) of which we have unpacked.

Decisions that worked for me:

If I started to cry when I thought about throwing something out, I kept it. I can deal with it next move, or leave it for my heirs.

I got rid of 75% of my clothes, including my mother’s sweater. I kept all the clothes that fit me and that I got married in. Clothes that I really could not bear to get rid of I gave to my grand-daughters, nieces, and nephews. Professional clothes I cheerfully donated. Those durable comfortable paint stained clothes, too good to throw out and too shabby to donate? I kept most of them; my bureau is still emptier than it’s been in decades.

I also got rid of at least 75% of my fabric; oddly, that was not as painful as I expected. If I really loved the material, or if I had specific plans, I kept it; otherwise, I decide it deserved better than being ignored and disrespected in some bin.

I kept all the china and linen and glassware and flatware; it’s nice, and somethings aren’t supposed to be used every day.

I managed to throw out maybe 2%, the most decrepit, of the holiday ornaments. That’s a lot.

I kept every financial and legal record; I burned most of the rest of my papers.

I kept all the photographs.

I got rid of most of my books, in response to unrelenting harassment from my spouse. I am not happy about that. I never will be.

488

Between working retail during the holidays and spending a couple weeks sick had not made any further progress on the Big Clean Up since before Thanksgiving.

Today we got back to the middle room, two contractor bags of garbage going out.

Meanwhile, I’ve largely kept up with the dishes, laundry, and other maintenance. Mostly. And haven’t brought anything new into the home (other than a couple Christmas gifts) for a couple years now, yay me. So at least progress made has been maintained.

So very s…l…o…w… but still progress.

Here’s hoping we can get a little momentum.

489

OK, we’re having another family crisis, and it was family crisis that led to my house getting out of control in the first place. This really has me concerned that it will derail my already slow progress, I’ll lose what time I have to work on the mess to traveling out of state to help my sister take care of my dad, the emotional crap will get in the way, and I’ll backslide to a point I’ll have to start all over again.

Can I get some “rah-rah-you can to it anyway, girl”?

490

Go Broomstick! I’m sorry about your dad and all the junk that’s happening.

Sure, rah rah you can do it! I have the same struggles with housekeeping, so I know where you’re coming from.

491

Wow - my spouse threw out a bunch of stuff on his own today. That helps, too.

492

True! :D:p

Keeping up with chores is really important since I live in a 700-sf apartment. Any mess makes it look awful. Paper is my nemesis…The damned stuff tends to multiply when you aren’t looking.

I’ve gone through a bunch of papers, shredded and binned what I don’t need, put in storage boxes what little I do.

I also moved the bookcases from the bedroom to the living room. Then I sorted and moved all of my books. The ones I didn’t keep were donated to a local charity.

This weekend I’m going to finally put away my holiday decorations. When I had the flu/asthma combo, I simply didn’t have the energy to do it! So hey, I had an extra couple of weeks of decorations. :smiley:

I have to also decide what to do with my extra sets of dishes. I have some Christmas ones I love, and I have a set of plain white stoneware. I’m thinking of getting rid of my very 90’s everyday set and going back to the plain stoneware, for simplicity.

493

I am almost ashamed to come post in this thread, I’ve been doing so poorly in my Battle Against the Clutter. I need a swift kick in the rear to help nudge things back in the right direction.

494

**Rah rah!

You can do it anyway, girl! **

495

Ah, foolishly I mentioned my cleaning issues at the laundromat yesterday (the laundromat regulars do function somewhat as a support group). Most were sympathetic, but one busy-body immediately jumped in with the “take a vacation and have your family/friends throw everything out so you can start fresh!” and a list of “goals” and such… honestly, it’s like telling someone morbidly obese to “just eat less and drink grapefruit juice once a day” to solve the problem.

Why do people do that? Do they honestly think that solves the problem? (not just the cleaning advice, the dieting stuff, too) I guess so - my point that changing the bad habits that got me into the mess in the first place is more important than a fast “clean up” just didn’t make any headway.

496

My wife has OCD. As a result we can’t throw anything away. Old, ugly dish in the back of a cupboard we never use? Nope. Books we’ve had for 25 years that we never read? Nope. Old clothes we no longer wear? Nope. If I even suggest throwing this stuff out, she goes ballistic.

497

Isn’t that why we have the thread? Don’t worry about what you didn’t do yesterday, or last month or whatever. Just pick something you can do today.

I had planned to have my house ready for company by 12/31 last year. Nope. But forward is the only way to go.

498

Has your wife ever considered professional help?

Sure, I have issues, but once I figured out that I could much more easily give things to charities than simply toss them in a dumpster a whole lot of crap left my house. It’s a silly trick, in a way, but it’s one that works for me.

My condolences, by the way - living with OCD, yours or someone else’s, is not easy.

499

Can you think of what is holding you back? Time? Too much attachment? Overwhelmed by the amount? Can’t get started?

500

After a local’s big barn burned last week, we’ve been mildly decluttering our barn/shop- the person is a major hoarder, and she had a big ol’ barn filled with cars and farm equipment and then just boxes and boxes of STUFF piled to the rafters. It burned for almost two days, though 8 FD got it under control the first day.
I’ve been getting rid of books, too, thanks to this thread. We have shelves about everywhere there can be- and there might actually be spaces for them all!