It is time for me to get back onboard. On my birthday in July I started a chart with 10 spaces per day to check off as I eliminated things. Lol So far I have only checked off to the beginning of September. I guess that I got a bit behind. We are having our bathroom remodeled beginning next week so I have to empty two large closets, the medicine cabinet, and a large space in S’s room for the workman. That should get me up to November.
For anyone who is just starting and has a LOT of clutter, I just joined the Facebook group Declutter 365 and printed off the calendar for January. Today’s task is to set up a staging area where you gather items to be donated or sold. Each day has one area to work on. Since I already had my staging area set up last year because of this thread, I substituted a sub list for today’s task. So far I have thought of a dozen activities to sub for the days when the published task won’t work or doesn’t apply.
If I could just get my hoarding ADHD husband to participate, we could together accomplish so much. Oh well, I guess that I can just do my part and hope that he will see the benefits of simplifying our lives.
Apartment Therapy is one of my favorite blogs. You can subscribe to “The January Cure” - you receive a once a day email with a do-able (so they say) assignment for the day to help get your house organized. I’m going to give it a try.
I’m not sure I’ve posted on this thread, but I’ve been playing along at home. I even kept track of how many bags, boxes or any other container I filled in 2014. My total was 85. I tended to work in spurts, when I had the time (and when my H wasn’t around - he has a hard time getting rid of stuff). When I started this 365 days ago, I figured I could purge my entire house by now. Not even close! I feel good about the progress I’ve made, but I realize this is more like a 3 year project.
I feel like I never get past cleaning the kitchen. DH and S2 leave dishes, food wrappers, etc. all over the kitchen, do not wipe counters or table, and seldom load/unload the DW. I get the “I work full time and you don’t” comment and then he wonders what I spend all day doing! (ummm, how about all the things he takes for granted! If he had to do these things and saw the amount of time involved, he might have a clue. But that’s not happening.
I read today that you can drive yourself crazy trying to keep a kitchen neat, tidy and pristine - so the advice? Don’t. Don’t try to keep it pristine. It’s such a heavily used room - clean it up decent and move on - to another room!
But how do you deal with things that are adding to clutter, and yet are “family heirlooms”? - That can be tough
I was recently able to part with some old tablecloths. In that case I was not even sure which side of the family had given them to us… so no sentimental attachment. Things with very special memories are keepers. Trying to decide how to decide on the other stuff in between.
I cleaned out my bedside table today. I don’t know if I got rid of a bag of stuff, though I did toss or recycle a bunch of stuff. I also found four or five old cell phones. What do you all do with old cell phones? I will probably keep one, in case one we are using gets broken and we don’t want to buy a new right then. I don’t need as many as I found, though.
Can I stuff my H in a bag and call it good? Seriously joking but when he asked for dinner while I am hacking as he gave me his cold…
He weighs enough to be maybe a number of bags…
The cell phone issue is a good one as I want every message/text/numbers cleared so we sit with a bag of them.
If you still have some old “dumb phones” in working conditions, consider keeping them around for the grandparents. I sent some to my Dad when he needed a replacement Verizon was only pushing smartphones.
Yes, we have some older cell phones in a drawer and our 8th grader (who will be getting his first phone this summer) actually wants an older flip phone over a smart phone because he feels it will be less distracting and he really only wants it to be able to call home for a ride after CC practice.
Domestic abuse shelters will take the old cell phones. Apparently they can be activated and used to call 911 even if they don’t have contracts with providers. They give them to women who leave the shelter so they can get assistance quickly even if they can’t afford a phone.
As for tips to getting started, keep it simple and small at first. You’re going to want to take on the world but that can become overwhelming quickly. So pick a room, then pick a drawer or closet in that room and start there. You may end up doing several that day, but you may not! Just get going. Start with the drawer/closet that drives you the most crazy.
I’ve been through the whole upper level of my house at this point so now I’m in the basement. It gets tough down there and I’m struggling with the heirloom types of things also. What I think I’ve decided to do is keep it to ONE large rubbermaid bin of heirloom stuff. Anything that goes in there will also have a note with it about why it is important “Grandma’s war rations stamp book” “Grandma’s Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) bracelet”, “Great Grandma’s engagement ring”, etc. Then my kids will have one bin of things to review and look through. They can decide at that point what to keep or pitch, but it will just be that one bin.
I’ll do the same with a bin of MY sentimental stuff and why I saved it. Now that my nest is empty, I’m starting to have them go through things in their own bedrooms too. I will have bins for them - the things that they need to take with them once they have a place of their own. Then they can decide in a few more years if that Build A Bear or American Girl Doll is really necessary to keep. Maybe it will be, for a while
I dragged D up to her room this morning to clean. We didn’t stay long - but we did get together two big bags of clothes to give away. Several old sweatshirts, jeans, wind pants - most of them look new! Our town has a community yard sale page on facebook - but I can’t bring myself to post there and sell this stuff - too much work. I think I’ll take the bags down to Savers next week.
great idea BarnardMom! I need to label WHY I’m saving heirloom stuff! That makes a lot of difference! And if I don’t know why I’m keeping it–it’s good to go! Not to mention that any history I write down NOW for the kids is much fresher in the mind.
We have so much storage space in our kitchen that I had about 5 empty drawers that I began just throwing stuff into that I wasn’t ready to deal with. Now I’ve got 5 junk drawers. Went through all of them today with a trash bag. Threw away A LOT of Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupons, take out menus, old junk mail, etc. Felt great!
Working the next couple of days, but am trying to psyche myself up to go through my closet next.
Hope you know Bed bath and Beyond coupons never expire…
Nonetheless congrats! I have desk drawer waiting for me next…I dread it. Did go through the boxes and boxes of old checks and sorted that mess out.
Not true. These had expiration dates on them. Also, I get coupons on my cell phone, and if you don’t use by the expiration date, when you try to pull them up, they have gone poof. I’ve spent the past year furnishing two houses, so I try to stay on top of these. Obviously, I failed a few times.
The closet is hardest, followed by books. Start with the bathrooms. Old medicines, old makeups, etc. then move to home files for taxes, beyond seven years.
