Not quite a horder - decluttering
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Mrs. M--Love the gift wrap room! I'm thinking some Command hooks, some cheap dowels or curtain rods and all the wraps can be mounted on the wall for easy access, same with bags of bows and ribbons, with a basket for scissors, tape, tags. Then a narrow table on one side, and you are all set to go!I've seen some small bathrooms, but that one was TINY! Still, if it met the need at the time, all was good. The storage room looks great! You can see where everything is. And being able to get 2 cars in the garage--that's impressive!
Wren--it's a start! Get those mags out ASAP, then find the next item to work on!
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NativeMainer, maybe its been mentioned on this thread before, but there are a lot of people who store everything in their garage except their cars! And cars are such a big expense. People usually spend much more money on their car than the entire accumulation of things they have stuffed in the garage. My step son is one of those people. He has two beautiful new vehicles -cha-ching- but they sit outside in all the weather elements all year long while his garage stores basically a bunch of junk. Honestly, it doesn't make sense.
Having space to store things has its downfall. It's so easy to set stuff aside for “later", not having to make a decision what to do with it. It can make life stagnant. When we moved my mother in law out of her house of 67 years to an apt across the street from us, we realized how she'd surrounded herself with “ghosts of the past", so many miscellaneous things that belonged to relatives long past, or items from decades and decades ago that she would not part with. Her life had been at a stand still for many years, and that was a big reason why.
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Love the gift wrap room! Gift wrap supplies take up a ot of space! I prefer to wrap instead of bagging gifts. My DD always says my presents are to pretty to open.
I'm on a roll! I got my kitchen spotless and organized. I ended up with 2 full bags of trash and a box for the thrift store. I did that yesterday and I worked on the living room today. Another bag of trash and stuffed a few more thinHS in the box for the thrift store. All the things that ended up in the trash were in drawers or baskets. DH is in Naples on a business trip (other words golf excursion) and I'm taking full advantage of not cooking and letting some everyday house work go while I "really clean house"!
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So much easier to do without interference.
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So true, Wren! Vargadoll, have at it!!!
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Added the bathroom closet to the clean out list after I posted! There was a bottle of baby oil in the back of that closet that must have been 10+ years old! I'm not sure why it even made the move to this house 5 years ago! Oh the things we hang to! Time for stuff to GO!!!!
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I hear you about the "ghosts of the past" and life becoming stagnant. I've got my share of ghosts, and have just begun thinking about letting them go. I'm finding that thinking and moving forward is more challenging than I thought it would be. Part of me is still afraid to make any future plans due to the "what if" syndrome. What if the beast comes back? What if I can't make it on part time work? And the biggy--What if I need that someday? In that I hear echoes of my mother and grandmothers. Some things I see in my kitchen cupboards and shelves are things I used to use regularly, but time and tastes have changed, but What If I want to make that dish again? I struggle to put away things I use almost every day among things that I'm going to use someday or will want to use again someday, usually someday when I get organized. Then there is the ages old Maine habit of storing all old kitchen items "To have when we get a camp someday" or "for when the children start their own homes." Well, I've got no children and am not going to at this point in my life. I may still someday get a camp, but unless I build it from scratch it will probably already have most of what is needed to when I get it. Hmmm. Seems like I need to take some time to think and decide what I really want from my life at this point and focus on making that happen.
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I think that reflection on 'what I really want' is important and needed by everyone from time to time. I decided to learn to paint (watercolor) in my old age and I'm really enjoying it. I have a lot of past hobbies that I could get rid of and haven't yet. I used to knit while I watched TV but I don't watch any more and knitting is so boring by itself. I used to sew a lot but it hurts my neck now so I can only do it for a few minutes at a time. That fabric could go somewhere else. As you see, I'm trying to motivate myself to dig in.
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nm - I hear ya about the kitchen stuff. Sort of like the black & white dot roaster pan that will cook a 30+ pound turkey. Never in my life will I cook something that size again. I think you've inspired me to let it go when I get home from vacation.
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That's my child! She loves gift bags, boxes, laundry baskets, etc.
Took me a couple weeks but ...
Three bags of trash. Seven bags of stuff, a box of household goods to schools yardsale. I'm still not finished but it needs to go now. Tired of it cluttering up but my children don't notice toys underneath the piles.
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Zills- you are making progress. Congrats on the trash and things for the yard sale. I hope things feel freeing for you in the process.
I have been working on paper work and filing things this weekend (along with finishing some closet stuff and more bags for donations going soon). I keep a notebook with business cards which is something I began back in my early career days. I now have them for all kinds of things, professional connections, for contractors, businesses I patronize, etc. With the advent of social media like Facebook (where you can like business pages like stores, restaurants, etc.) and Linked In for professional connections (I have like 600 plus currently), there is less need to keep a lot of cards anymore. Although I have found not everyone uses social media.
Today I purge hundreds of old cards (who are these people anyways, I sometimes wondered?) and reorganized to have the ones I need to refer to regularly for my business, home, medical care handy and up front. It was a little tour back through time, but some of this stuff goes back decades (as we know it does when de-cluttering). Another task done!
Happy belated Mothers Day to all the moms and mothering types out there. Hope your day was special!
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Hi all:
I've been lurking on this thread for a long while, time to speak up: hubby and I will shortly be moving and downsizing from a house of about 2800 sq ft to a condo of about half of that amount...honestly I can't wait! We will have a garage, but much smaller, and we want space for both cars in it.
When we started looking for a retirement home I really wanted something that was small, but big enough for two of us and occasional guests, with low maintenance. Amazingly, hubby agreed, and we found and bought a great condo, in a town where I have family I want to be closer to, about four hours drive from here.
There is lots to go through, sort, get rid of, and deal with...even though we've only lived in this house for about nine years. As was mentioned by someone earlier, we have boxes in the garage packed and never looked at from our move nine years ago! We also have more furniture than will ever fit into the new place. Some of it is high quality, so hoping I can sell those items. Anything I can't sell with be given or thrown away. Both of my adult children live a long distance away and don't want anything big for their homes right now (the highest quality stuff will go with us and they will inherit it someday).
So, I hope you all will help keep me honest and on track. We'd like to finish this process of emptying this house, moving in to our new place, and putting the big house on the market to sell by August 15th or so at the latest..AND it gets hot here in the summer so the sooner we can get stuff done, the better.
Will check back in with my progress! We are going up to the new condo this weekend and having the interior painted there next week, so after that we can get serious about moving furniture. In the meantime, we will take both cars filled with boxes of dishware and winter clothes that we really do want to keep. If we haven't used it in six months, it isn't coming along.
Wish me luck!
Octogirl
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All i can say, octogirl, is START NOW. It takes longer than you think it will. We did our downsizing in two stages. First stage involved making decisions about what things we DEFINITELY wanted to keep. I secured a 10'x10' storage unit and whatever we wanted to keep had to fit in there, no exceptions. Movers took the big stuff and about 25 boxes to the storage unit right off the bat. That freed up a lot of floor space at the house. Second stage was consolidating rooms--emptying one room at a time and moving stuff to another staging area. From there we made decisions to trash, thift, or keep. Still, the process took several weeks-to-months.
The thing that really helped us the most was getting all the rooms empty in anticipation of putting the house on the market. We kept only the minimum required to live in the space, so we really had an open feel, and deep we cleaned EVERYTHING. Took all the pictures down, filled in the holes, and repainted. It was so preeeeetty! Must have worked because the house sold within 2 weeks. Then we had the movers come back and get the remaining stuff. They were really experts at packing it all in there--I bet you couldn't slide a piece of paper into that storage unit now!
My plan is to keep the storage unit for 2 years. At the moment we are living in our RV and totally happy with that. But I wasn't ready to get rid of everything, just in case we decide we want to come off the road and live in a house again. Not likely, but you never know. We have just about enough stuff in the storage unit to outfit a 1Br apartment/condo.
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I totally agree with start now. We haven't moved in a long long time and I dread going through everything and deciding where it should go. It's too expensive here to stay and we're looking around for somewhere to go. DD lives in the next town and DS lives in Oregon. He has the little kids and is likely to stay put for 6 years until the youngest finishes high school. We've agreed that neither of us wants to live in the house without the other, so it would make sense to find a condo now.
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Octogirl, congratulations on making that step towards moving into a condo. You have started and that is great!
Mustlovepoodles, you had such a terrificly thought out plan of attack! And even tho it was quote time consuming, the plan no doubt made things a little less hectic!
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Octo - welcome. Glad to see you here. Yes, this group will listen to your woes & try to help keep you on track.
I'm so jealous of the way Poodles was able to do her move. It really would make it easier.
Wren, I agree - great time to move to a condo. My family was from the SF Bay area & I could never afford that now, so I understand the prices in Washington. I had such a good visit on the Olympic Peninsula last year.
This week I've been working on clothes. Unfortunately I have truncal & Breast LE since the last surgery & wear a compression bra 24/7. Most of my tops are wide or boat neck & I won't wear them with the ugly bra straps showing. Well to be honest - I'm old enough that I wouldn't want any kind of bra straps showing. But each top has a corresponding jacket - perfectly matched. Sigh. Probably time to get rid of all of it since it's unlikely I'll be working back in an office that requires jackets again. Just snatching a half hour or so every day before I get dressed to try things on and the pile on the guest bed is growing.
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Octgirl- welcome to the thread. You can do this!
My suggestion to folks when cleaning out is always this:
A dumpster
Bin for paper recycling
Bin for paper shredding of sensitive documents (take to Staples or the like and it is inexpensive by pound)
Places you know you want to donate to up front (causes/orgs you like)- do ask if they do pick up in case you have a lot or bigger items you need to have taken. Many have trucks and happy to do pick up
Consignment places (I live in a place with many consignment stores and do well with bringing some clothing, or household items)
Decide if you want to deal with a tag sale/yard sale/garage sale and be sure to have plenty of help if you doOne quick idea, if you have things that have been packed away for 9 years you have not opened, start there. If you have not used those in 9 years, chances are you can take those right to some place to donate. But if they contain family mementos, heirlooms, etc., definitely take time to sort through them. I went through some boxes we moved from our mom's home last year after 15 years and kept a few more items and donated the rest.
Good luck, let us know as you go along any stumbling blocks you have so we can help you through
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thanks all! Great tips so far....I started today with a bit of packing of things I know I want to take (to go up with us tomorrow). It was exhausting just to pack a few boxes. I can see this will all be good exercise!
We did buy a few pieces of furniture that are up there because we didn't have exactly what we wanted, so why pay to move it if we don't like it? Specifically, we bought a new bedroom set because our old bed is getting well, old, and a new (used) dining table and chairs because the old set was too big and heavy for the smaller space. A new small kitchen table for the same reason. So, we can feel more or less comfortable going back and forth as we move, once the painting is done.
I live in a college town now, so while I may try a garage sale later on I've been told that some of the student classified items listserves (there are at least two) are a good way to sell furniture. Faculty and staff buy from them too...
I did already throw out/recycle the contents of a small desk I want to take. Yay. and I like the idea of not even looking in the boxes from nine years ago, but I will take a quick peak to be sure there aren't any heirlooms, as was suggested. Many are filled with books. We have a ridiculous number of books. Our old house has lots of built in bookshelves, all full (apparently the house before that had even more bookshelf space!). Any best ideas for where to donate books? We will have to very picky about what we take, given the space limitations....and I think we have at least 1000 or more (I do plan to toss all of hubby's old software/computer books. I don't care if they are old enough to qualify as museum pieces!)
Thanks again.
Octogirl
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Octgirl- I find thrift shops are the best place for old book donations these days. Some of the ones I go to here to donate have whole rooms of them and book lovers will go spend hours there looking for new books, especially retired folks that may not have bigger libraries in their locations.
I do suggesting calling to ask what books they won't take as many won't take old textbooks or computer training books. I just threw mine out.
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I like to take used books to the local library. What they want, they put on their shelves. What they can't use, they sell in their yearly or bi-annual book sales. Any profits go to the library so they can buy books they need or set up new computer centers.
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Books!!! I think they multiply! I was going to have this humongous house with a library that friends and family would come to stay and go into the library to get a book to read at night. Well, that dream is not going to happen, and I don't want it to happen anymore. I am going through my books and will donate them. When I was young I got my books from thrift stores. Now, I try not to buy books anymore, I use the kindle or go to the library.
Good luck with the move Octogirl, you are making it sound so exciting.
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We mostly use the library. Books have become very expensive with paperbacks costing what hardbacks used to cost.
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I have a used book store not too far away. I take in a for 1/2 price credit & get a book for 1/2 price with a small handling fee. And every 5th book is free.
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Congrats! You've got a plan but yes it takes way longer than expected, even without the cancer fatigue.
You can ask at a nursing home or senior citizens center, donate to a library or sell at half prices books. Your grands might love gift cards to there. They buy all sorts of books, manuals, music, movies.
My weakness is children's books. Our school donates books and pjs at Christmas. Between me and another teacher, we usually have enough books. I'm trying to get my son to donate some of his books to either the public library or any school.
Our local school has a yardsale during the 400 miles yardsale in two weeks. Yikes! I need more to go! It's gets it out of the house without the hassle. There's also school resource that might take household goods. My mom heard of someone that had a fire and she loaded them up with the basics.
Good luck. Keep us posted. We'll cheer you on and prop you up!
My bedroom is a disaster. My youngest had her room stripped for being disrespectful. Today she's being "kindful". I have piles for vacation, piles I can't wear but want too, curtains to hang. Waiting for a big Memorial Day coupon to get four triple rods. But I did get bed rails and a new headboard. That should inspire me.
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I've managed to get 6 more good sized boxes filled with clothes over the weekend & today. Not to mention 10 or 12 good jackets & blouses that I left on hangers. Tomorrow I'll drop them off at for the battered women. Lots more to do but I've made another good sized dent.
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Zills--wow, are you busy! Keep up the good work!
MinusTwo--Yeah! Every dent adds up!
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I forgot to add
Check out Everything But The House or ebth.com
I haven't sold anything but have bought stuff. They are wonderful.
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Hi, everyone. I'm glad I found this thread. All through my breast cancer treatment I was embarrassed to have more than a few close friends over to help because of the state of my place, especially my loving but judgmental brothers. I really feel like the state of my apartment is holding me back in my recovery if that makes sense.
I've lived in my apartment for 30+ years and have always had a problem with packing away too much stuff. Right now 2 of my 6 rooms look like the rooms you see on TV. I'm able to keep the other rooms "normal", but I worry it will grow.
There are a few things I get hung up on in my mind that keep me from getting rid of stuff. Maybe you guys have some suggestions on how to overcome them. A lot are excuses I know, like I don't have a car, listing on Craigslist makes me a little wary since I live alone and don't want random people coming over, my city has strict rules about disposing of electronics, etc.
- I get stuck on how much I originally spent on something. I feel like it's irresponsible to just trash or donate it since I'm in financial straits now because of the breast cancer/not working.
- I have started so many hobbies over the past 30 years I've been here there is a lot of stuff. Some of it is specialized so I feel like just leaving it out on the sidewalk for someone to take makes no sense.
- Pure emotional attachment to things like art books, stuffed animals, perfumes, etc.
- What on earth can I do with tons of open but unused makeup? (i used to get a lot from work). The women's shelters in my city can't take them by health ordinance.
I did find a flyer at my hospital for an organization that accepts used bras and either distributes them to women's shelters of sells them for recycling with the money going to women's causes. That's great because I have a ton of underwire bras and bras that no longer fit.
Also I read the tip about shredding by the pound available at Staples - that's genius! I had no idea; going to check if my local Staples does that. I would love more help and support dealing with this. I'm looking for any support or more tips you guys could give me.
Wow, it feels so good to open up and admit I have this problem.
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Welcome Agatha. Are there consignment stores in your area? A woman who lost weight took her clothes to consignment and then bought a wardrobe that fit with her proceeds. There are also some programs for women returning to work from welfare. I can relate. We've lived in our house for 34 years and have way way too much stuff. I would like to sell the house and find a less expensive city to live in.
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Yes clutter can weigh you down. Emotionally and physically.
Have a big scary friend to be there for transactions? Or borrow a big dog. May be easier just to donate? I've only bought one item that was picked up, everything else came in the mail.
Do you have a pragmatic friend that will not judge and help you go through your clothes?
These specialized hobbies? Maybe someone wants to learn but can't afford the supplies? Nursing homes, shelters, mentoring programs? A social worker might be a good resource.
Do you have a friend that has a booth at a local swap meet or flea market?
I don't have the time or patience so I donate almost everything to the school. The proceeds go back to the school and someone in the community got a great deal.
Baby steps. Kinda like weight loss. It took sometime to get to this place so it will take some time to get clutter free.
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