Both of these are huge things as they involved lots of time and too much budget. I’m very thankful for the young, strong, willing friend who has been helping me with all this. For the rest of the winter though, it will just be me and boxes of crap with a few treasures to sort. Mentally, I’m in a much better place to handle the sorting. Now, it’s all about available time and motivation.
Another step. We cleaned out the glassware and coffee mugs. We removed 16 kg (35 pounds) of glassware/mugs from our home.
Also went through the cookbooks and travel guides and managed to remove 10 kg (20 lbs) of hardback books.
Also got rid of a ½ Ikea bag’s worth of pans and assorted metal tins which we don’t use or need.
Used the opportunity to clean the upper shelves in the kitchen, and also rearrange the contents. Definitely an improvement.
This thread is full of such good examples! Thank you all.
Now you’ve got me thinking. I really only wear two pairs of shoes all winter (outdoor: waterproof Keens and indoor: Rockports) and a different two all summer. I could toss all my other shoes and only miss them a day or two per year.
Then I extrapolated… I wear maybe 15% of my clothes 85% of the time. Might be a good excuse to mercilessly gut my closet.
Oh! I know! If I take ten shirts to St. Vinnie’s, I get to bring home two “new” ones (well, new to me…).
Hmm, I could donate shirts that aren’t thick enough for living here in the tundra, and buy a couple of he-man lumberjack shirts!
I’ve been doing a closet purge at least once a year for a couple years now. It’s a lot easier to find what I’m looking for as I remove stuff too worn to wear anymore (as it happens, I recycle my old clothes into craft projects. Other people donate them to charity. Some just toss them. There are multiple ways to clean things out.)
That’s an excellent idea. But don’t get rid of all the thin shirts; if you do, you’ll bring on a heat wave so that you will regret it.
According to kondo, you pile up all your clothes in one pile. Then take out each article and decide if it sparks joy. I have found that if I pick up a shirt and it makes me smile, that is sparkling joy.
Of course there are things that don’t make you smile, but you need them for a purpose. And there are items that don’t fit or the colour is not good for you.
As you go along you will get more ruthless.
I have done this with clothes and shoes. It does work.
Last fall I was looking for a turquoise hand towel for my bathroom, because I wanted a pop of color. Didn’t find one.
Last week I went to the gym twice, and had to use my back-up gym towel (I have two, but normally only use one and wash it in between visits). It’s turquoise.
So I just switched my bath towel for my back-up gym towel and I now have a pop of color in my bathroom and a towel which is more suitable for the gym. Didn’t cost me a cent.
In addition to that improvement, we drank 3 bottles of wine in the last 3 months, and recycled the bottles. We had bought 12 bottles at the beginning of COVID, to support the local specialty shop, which I thought we would use for parties at work. Never thought things would change so much that the parties at work are history. So we’re working through the backlog and should have that cleared out by the end of 2024.
Besides taking the cans and bottles to the recyling, I got rid of a bag of clothes, which means my closet it a bit more organized. This is the first winter that I’ve had to go to the office every day since 2019-2020, so I’m using a lot more wool socks, sweaters, etc. Tempted to buy more sweaters, but I’m resisting. Really don’t need more stuff.
I did something this week that I have been meaning to do for nine years – clean all of my old work/office clothes out of my closet. I folded up and packed for donation 65 or so shirts (I got the number by counting the empty hangers). I had already gotten rid of most of the slacks, a much smaller number. What is left is about a dozen shirts that I have bought in Hawaii over the years, and another half dozen assorted shirts, including only 2 long-sleeve shirts. I have also done a lot of cleaning out of knit shirts and pants that were folded away in drawers, but there is still more to do there. I have a whole drawer full of old socks that I will never wear again, and I suppose charity shops don’t want used socks, so I guess they’ll be recycled.
It feels great to go into my closet now and see all that empty space. I found some clothes that I had forgotten I had, and possibly never even wore before they got hidden in the clutter.
Check with homeless services–they might take clean, used socks.
Today I posted a bunch of purses and some shoes that I don’t use anymore on Poshmark. All are in very good to like-new condition from good brands, so I may get a few bucks for them. I already have an offer on one pair of shoes. (Between prescription orthotics and eyeglasses, a lot of shoes and purses I bought a while ago are in great shape but no longer meet my needs.)
I have run out of steam for that for today, but next up will be some nice spring dresses that I don’t wear anymore. Used to wear them to work but haven’t set foot in the office for more than a few days total since the beginning of the pandemic, and it doesn’t look like I will anytime soon. Also plan to post a couple of more formal dresses and interview that aren’t my size anymore, but have only been worn a handful of times.
Update: since that post, I have sold a purse, a pair of shoes, and 2 dresses! Woohoo! My Poshmark closet is now up to 57 listings and 581 followers. At this rate, in a few months I will have gotten some nice clothes, shoes, and purses out into the ecosystem at reasonable prices and earned some cash, all while decluttering my closet. Win-win. Still some more things to post as I continue decluttering and swap out the warm-weather clothes. (And wash a few things and make a few minor repairs like sewing on buttons.)
It’s really empty now. All that stuff I removed from the hangers was still in the closet, in boxes. Last week we took all of my stuff and a bunch of my husband’s stuff to the charity shop.
On top of that, I cleaned a huge amount of stuff (a lot of wood cutoffs from my shop and assorted detritus, both in those big contractor black plastic bags, and loose) out of the basement, brought it upstairs to the street level, and then took it out to the front. This all took a couple of days worth of work, spread out over 4 or 5 days. Once it was all out there, we hired someone to come by and take it away. It’s a great feeling to have all that out of the house.
Now to get philosophical. I have two primary motivations for doing this kind of clearing out of things that I will never use again. One is that it makes life easier. The other, and I cannot emphasize this enough, is that it makes me feel easier about the prospect of dying one day, as a part of getting my affairs in order. No matter how you slice it, dying leaves a lot of work for someone else to do, especially if you die in a house you have lived in for a while. I am my mother’s son in that the prospect of leaving a mess behind me makes me cringe.
On the other hand, my husband suddenly got very depressed, and as near as I can make out, it was because clearing out made him feel like he was preparing to die soon. I sort of understand it, but I can’t connect to that feeling emotionally. We’ve been together almost 32 years, and I am still finding these cultural and personality gaps between us.
I’m sorry to hear that your “death cleaning” (that’s the Swedish name for it) has depressed your husband. Sit down with him and be clear that this is not a premonition you had, but a fear you had - that someone else would be stuck cleaning up all the stuff you no longer use and that if it waited another 20-30 years in your closet, it would be no good to anybody, but giving it away now while it still has useful wear in it for someone else makes you feel good as does the fact that it’s done. Repeat that you are your mother’s child and she would approve of this. Some of this stuff is programmed in us before we know it and the programming runs deep.
Last year, I lost my home and therefore, a whole lotta stuff. Much of it was stuff I didn’t want to lose. C’est la vie. I still have more to sort out but I feel much lighter and free-er for being rid of so much that was truly unnecessary for me to keep. And not that spring is here, I’m starting to sort though some of the rest of it.
I recycled the first computer I owned this Saturday along with some other electronics. My combo Birthday & Xmas present of a TI99/4A computer had come back to me about 20 years ago and I did fire it up about 15 years ago. But why I was hanging onto it I don’t really know.
I taught myself to program in Basic on it and somehow ended up a Programmer for my professional life when I had set out to be an Electrical Engineer. But I’ve been retired effectively since COVID started and officially for over a year. So I finally decided to get this machine out of my house.
Also did a little bit more reorg of my garage and I am breaking down some picket fence pieces into spare lumber instead as all my fencing has been plastic for well over a year now. It is nice to actually have some empty space on the high shelves in the garage.
I need to do another round of book disposal. I’ve gotten rid of so many thousands over the last 10 years and now need to lose a few hundred more. It is getting tougher though with each round.
I can’t be sure about her husband, but some people really do go through a process of either anxiety or grief after a major cleaning. All those rationales you gave are logical, but it isn’t always about logic. How he feels is how he feels and those feelings should be acknowledged. If he found it upsetting or unsettling it’s OK for him to feel that way. Be careful, even as you try to reassure him, that you’re not being dismissive.
I don’t want people to try to rationalize away my feelings about large clean ups which I very much do find upsetting. I want to be able to say “I am unsettled” or “I’m worried I threw something out I shouldn’t have” or “this change is making me anxious” without the other party then going into a frenzy of trying to “fix” me. Don’t tell me how much better things are now that the clutter is gone when, for me, no, it does NOT feel better.
Give me a few days and I’ll be better, meanwhile, it’s something I’ve learned i have to go through. Trying to hurry it along or tell me it’s not that bad or whatever feels a lot like gaslighting. Please be careful you’re not inadvertently doing that to someone who struggles with clutter and clean up.
I’ve not read any of this thread, but Discourse advises me it will take 300 minutes to read the whole thing. That sounds like a great way to put off cleaning by 5 hours.
Things are getting out of control here, and it is two separate, but related, things.
My kid is extremely messy. Their room is an absolute disaster, and they will move into any clean place, and attempt to take it over, only leaving when it is also too messy to work in. Getting them to clean in small bursts is possible, but not sustainable for long enough to make a real difference. All of the real garbage adding to the mess is due to them.
Enforcing strong rules, like all art must stay at the art table, and can’t move to the dining table, window table, bathroom counter, office floor, etc. takes a large amount of energy I just can’t devote to this single goal.
The other problem is my wife, who has been sliding into hoarding over the years. Fortunately it is not smelly garbage, but partially completed projects, things she finds interesting, things she thinks might be useful someday, games we never play, and equipment for hobbies she hasn’t done in a decade. This completely fills the basement, and has taken significant portions of every other room in the house.
Problem is any confrontation about the mess is more likely to initiate a depressive episode than result in any real cleaning. We’re way past the ability to organize out of the clutter,
when i do the archive clear out in work i put on youtube and pull apart files to get them ready to shred. i ended up watching extreme yard and house clean ups. it is fun. like watching the flash clean. then the youtube suggested a video from dana k white.
wow! did that help me out! she has videos that show 5 minute to 1 hour clean ups. her method is not to pull everything out and sort. it is to deal one thing and get it done. start at the first place people see walking into your home and declutter it in place.
that is a big thing for me. the first place you see when you walk in my door is a dumping ground. shoes, jackets, coats, hats. the closet is right there, but i need to clear the shoes to get to the door.
later. i’ll do it later.
she has steps. set timer to a time, max 1 hour.
first, look around for rubbish and put anything in easy reach in the dust bin.
second, anything in easy reach to donate, put it in the box.
third, anything in easy reach that belongs elsewhere, take it there immediately! do not create a pile. if it belongs elsewhere take it there if you see other items take those. only take what you can carry in hands or arms. put it away. do not take it to another room and pile it. for example, take a jacket, put it on a hanger, and hang it up.
fourth, if you are unsure of an item should go, ask where would i first look for this? then take it there, straight away.
fifth, if the item (s) don’t fit, where you think it should, are there things you could donate to make space. example would be a book shelf, is there a book or 2 you could donate so the books you want have room?
i have noticed that now that i am streaming things there aren’t commercial breaks, i don’t have the commercials time to “get stuff done”. i have started setting a 5 minute timer when i take a “necessity break”, i do the necessity thing, then put shoes/clothes away, take something where it should go, sort something, until the timer goes off.
using her method you don’t create more clutter, you clear it, and leave the area better looking. the side trips to “take it there” are less than 2 minutes. i am constantly amazed at how long 5 minute is and how much you can get done.
Decluttering Coaching - Kitchen Cabinets! One Hour Better with Dana K White
there are times you need to do a full move out and back clear up (me having my bathroom declogged on tuesday). the problem is you create piles elsewhere (the bedroom) then you have to go through a secondary pile (which i am using the 5 minute thing to clear way). using ms white’s method you don’t create the secondary pile. things look better straight way.