^Yup, “Anything is progress.” Inch by inch, paper by paper, bit by bit … should eventually work, or at least get things going in the right direction.
Plus, I imagine, when I bring bags to Goodwill, etc., that the weight of those bags is weight lost from my house. (As if my house were my “other body” on a weight loss diet!)
Bringing things home is like adding pounds to the house weight rather than losing.
I find myself reluctant to bring anything other than food into my house – have a disinclination to shop other than for what we truly need to sustain ourselves.
The only books I allow in are library books.
My process is taking entirely too long but I am not allowing myself and hubbie a significant trip we hope to do until we have the house significantly decluttered. I think it will take us at least a year.
Oh goodness @URochmom - it’s like I wrote your post (well except for the prehoarder’s part - nothing pre around here!). My husband was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer (esophageal) in 2011 and I remember having the same thoughts about if I needed a hospital bed (he had a low survival chance so I thought Hospice was in the cards). Kudos to you for actually doing something at the time - I didn’t do anything about it at the time - we were driving 600 miles each way back and forth to M D Anderson every couple of weeks plus lived spent a couple of weeks a couple of times and 6 weeks for chemo radiation (the weird thing about that 6 weeks was that we rented an apartment - blissfully clutter free - and I really enjoyed living there despite the reason we were there!). He also came through ok but definitely has had more health problems since and is not able to do much around the house. Our neighbor’s boy even started mowing our lawn for us last year. And he is 11 years older than me and I also have those exact thoughts about being left to deal with the house in the state it is in (a likely scenario).
Yes - anything removed is progress. I am probably failing this week - just too many long hours at work and I am exhausted. Maybe I can garner the strength to fill a a bag by Tuesday. We can do this!
swimcatsmom, you do taxes for a living, right?? Don’t put ridiculous expectations on yourself right now. Just do what you can. Tax day is coming very soon, and then you can focus much better.
Yes - and this has been a horrid tax season. We changed software and the conversion has been a nightmare. We are so far behind - tax season will never be over this year! But I probably will back off the decluttering for the next couple of weeks. I’m way too tired right now to do anything but go home and have a drink and relax and watch an hour of TV then go to bed. Talking of which, think I’ll close down and go home now (early night!)
I’m back. Life had been so clutter-free … until I ventured into the closet of ds1’s old room. Dh had just relocated a bunch of the garage junk to there. Grrrrr. I am going to make him purge with me tonight. And I’m feeling ruthless. We have company coming this weekend, and there’s no place for her to hang her clothes!
@URochmom ,let’s put my attic of H’s unfinished furniture together with yours and let’s have a garage sale and get rid of it all!
We are a great group to cheer you on!
I had trouble going to sleep last night and one of the things on my mind among other things was my H’s ebay business that is taking over our basement, attic, garage. Minimal stuff in the main living area but I am seriously heading towards anxiety attacks over how much he is buying to sell. He refuses to stop buying. He IS selling, but this is not how I envisioned his retirement - filling up our house with stuff. We spent good money to refinish our basement to be decent and now I practically have to close my eyes everytime I go down the stairs to not look at all the stuff.
I don’t know what to do because he just is going to do what he wants! Argh! Getting anxious just thinking about it - gotta go for a walk!!
OK, I pulled some stuff out of the closet for Goodwill, rearranged the two big shelves so now there’s space to put some stuff up there. I pulled everything off the floor on one side and will tell him nothing goes back in on the floor. It’s either the new shelf space or gone. Tomorrow I will work on the other side of the floor so that out guest will have a place to hang clothes. (right now there’s a dresser on the other side that prevents things from hanging)
I tackled two dresser drawers today. I tossed all the old tank tops that are stained and stretched out. Have a bag for the thrift shop and a bag for a friend to look through. I even braved trying on my swimsuits and rash sun guard shirts. Tossed those that the elastic was gone. I now have a cleaner idea what I have and what I want to replace.
Dh had no resistance to my closet purge, though some stuff just got relocated to another closet. Still, it looks amazing, and our guest will have space to hang clothes and a dress top for other stuff. I immediately loaded the stuff up and took it to Goodwill just before closing time. I’m happy with how that room now looks in terms of clutter. It’s become a guest room/workout room. We have the inversion board in there, dh’s yoga stuff and my weights.
Back again - some progress to report! Have to remove old insulation from basement ceiling, it’s starting to come down after many years of itinerant mice scampering thru during winter months, etc. So since we had to take down some of plastic under it for a repair, I started in, and decided if I got 1-2 bags a week to dump, it would get it done over a few months. At this pace it’s manageable. So 1 contractor bag last week, 2 today. Hurray! Once this is all gone, I can work on cleaning up/cleaning out more from basement. Much of the stuff that will never get sold is down there, thus my wish to put a dent in it now.
@“Youdon’tsay” a rash sun guard shirt is my hybrid term for tops that were originally designed to protect surfers from getting a rash from the surfboard but have now morphed into tops that protect your body from the sun.
Today, got 1 more bag of insulation to dump, and about a bag’s worth of old, now-musty magazines thrown out to the paper recycling section of dump. These have been accumulating for years, but I finally made my point that these cannot be sold if there’s a risk of mold on them - and if they smell musty I’m not taking the chance. So will keep at it, a bag or two at a time, hope to get rid of more next week.
I stayed home from work today and I have been so productive. I have at least a couple of bags of clothes to donate, have thrown some out, and am getting other random chores accomplished too.
Took a bunch of stuff to Goodwill on Saturday. Things from boxes that were sitting in the library that I started opening, plus 2 chairs that were quite nice but we did not need.
We have a bag full of foreign coins. What do I do with them? Every time my mother-in-law came back from trip abroad, she gave my young D coins as souvenir. (What a nice grandmotherly way of getting rid of useless foreign coins!) They are money so I don’t want to throw them away in a trash. Please give me ideas!
Take the coins to a bank that converts money. A national bank chain will do at least some countries, local banks may as well. They may be able to tell you who will convert what you have if they can not. You may want to call ahead first to see what the process is for your bank. I know when my D was going to some South American country and wanted to convert money before she went (the conversion rates were better through our bank) she had to go in and tell them how much she wanted in US money, then they had to order it. It took 2-3 days for them to get the money in. Not sure how the reverse transactions work.
I like those storage containers! But I would hide them in a cabinet.
Right now, my kitchen looks like a mechanic’s bench - tools are everywhere! Mr. is preparing to attach some moulding around the vent hood. And it makes me itchy to throw out stuff! I found a CD with file backups from 1997. Out in the garbage it went (after shredding it a bit). Tossed some old B-school folders and a bunch of glossy chichi real estate flyers which I kept for home improvement ideas. Need to find more!!!
I found a wonderful king bed headboard from Amazon for $155. We are replacing our 23 year old in fabulous condition natural cherry headboard. It would be perfect in a cabin. We absolutely can not donate it and the dump actually confirmed this. We drove to two places that told us on the phone that they would take it but then it turned out that they only want a full frame and not a headboard.
On our Nextdoor these linger. Not wanting to deal with Freecycle or Craigslist this time around. Off to the dump in the morning and the silver lining is that H agreed to add some stuff as this will be $28 to dump.
The amazing news is that the cheap Amazon headboard is an A to the Crate and Barrel $1000 A+ headboard.
However!!! the best news of all is that H is finally getting that no one wants the things he thinks
that they should want. Now this is a guy who has never purchased anything used in his life…