Not quite a horder - decluttering
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I really like the clothes rising to the right as well as the left to right darker to lighter closet organizing method. Last summer, I applied it to our coat closet inside the front door and what a difference! At the same time, I pulled out and donated old coats from the closet we no longer wore (after consulting with dh and ds.) Here's the even nicer part. We were planning a Christmas Eve party and wondered what to do with everyone's coats, where could we toss them without having to take them all upstairs and throw them on the bed. My husband said, we have plenty of room in the coat closet now, let's just hang them there! Well, he's not usually that good at problem solving (ha ha) but there really was lots of room, and it worked perfectly.0
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Oh Teka - that is just perfect. Thanks for posting.
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Teka, that is great.
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Finally finished cleaning out my little storage room off the back porch. Now to get a shelf at Home Depot and a hangar-thingie to hang up the rakes and such,,,, there is floor space in there now!
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We must all be somewhat in sync because yesterday, I started tackling a room in my house I refer to as the "storage room". I don't have an attic where I keep things, so I use this room for storage. Ugh. Lots of crap in there. I'm getting rid of a desk, an old cabinet and taking a plastic shelving unit to the basement. The room contains a lot of sentimental stuff. It really is harder to make decisions on that. I began by rearranging the metal shelving units and a table. I can't believe I have so many old picture frames, pens and pencils and notebooks and miscellaneous toys. Not sure what to keep,what to donate. I pledged to myself to at least sort through a little every day. On my way to start this morning.
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Per the Marie Kondo way, Sort into piles,,, all the picture frames here,, all the pencils, there. Then you will see how much you have of each item. Easier to decide what to keep. With my storage room,, I have TONS of gardening stuff. OMG,, I have so many plant pots, that I could start a store! I put them all out in one place and decided what to keep and what to get rid of. A lot of the old plastic ones can be recycled. Good luck, Mrs M! The sentimental stuff is the hardest for sure.
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Glennie, your storage room sounds nice and tidy. What you describe, putting stuff in piles, that's exactly what I've been doing today, even before reading your post. Told you we were in sync! It's a method I've always used and it's effective. I always taught my son "put like items with like items" when we'd clean up the play area and toss things into baskets. My husband never learned the concept, so I'm often very exasperated finding odds and ends in weird places, and no wonder he's always looking for something instead of knowing where it is.0
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Great minds think alike!!
Now I've found a radio/cassette player in one closet! A cassette player! Holy crap. Well, I thought that might be good for when the power goes out then I noticed that it has a plug outlet in the back for AC power. And I think of all the "unknown" power cords that I took over to the Repurpose Project,,, one of them probably belonged to this player! LOL!! So maybe I'll take the player over there one day and look for the cord. Or maybe I'll just donate the player. Moral to this story,, it does pay to keep things together.
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Marie Kondo says to leave sentimental stuff for last because those decisions are the hardest and can bog you down.
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I've haven't read all of the posts on this thread but lots are so funny. Still, decluttering is something I know we so need to do.
My father passed away in December and my mother in 2006. I am now in the process of cleaning out their home. I'm pretty sure nothing was thrown away or put away for many, many years. I'm finding boxes and bags of mail from 2006 and on, not to mention a shed full of things like broken lamps. It is a total mess because my father apparently became a hoarder in his later years. They had two back bedrooms and a shed I never went into or looked in when I visited. These are basically floor to ceiling with junk- and some good things, family pictures, etc. but OMG what a mess! I've already made I don't know how many trips to the landfill and our local Helping Hands charity with donations, but have barely made a dent.
I told my husband when I finish there we seriously have to work on our house. People should not leave this kind of mess for their children.Seriously! And since my husband's ex-wife is a hoarder extraordinaire (like there are walking paths only throughout her home-it's crazy) my stepkids are surely going to have to deal with one mega-mess someday. They don't deserve two! Not that we are planning to kick off anytime soon, but still. And if all goes as planned we will downsize to a smaller home in a few years. I look around this house and wonder how the heck everything will fit in a smaller place. It WON"T!
Personally, I think we should begin decluttering in the basement where my husband keeps his tools and crap. Less painful for me! LOL. Maybe come spring!
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Labelle, DS says he is grabbing the family photos and tossing a match on his way out after we're gone. His MIL is a hoarder and I don't know who will be doing that. I don't know where you live, but there are some professionals who can be hired. I suspect they charge a lot. One in New York has a website, disposaphobia.com.
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Personal experience shapes perspective. In the 1990's, within 4 years, my 100 year old grandmother passed away, so did both of my parents and a spinster aunt. They each left a home full of stuff (parents were divorced). None were hoarders, it was simply accumulating boatloads of stuff after living in their homes for many, many years. It was a draining process sorting and dispersing so much that was tied to so many memories, my siblings helped. It was insightful because like you, labelle, I thought of my son, only a toddler at the time, but he would be left to go through mine and dh's stuff off in the distant future.
Then five years ago, I'm hit with the bc diagnosis and I look around and see an accumulation of stuff from living a full life. A word I use to describe the decluttering is "editing" what I have. I keep the good stuff. I remember going through the books I'd bought for my son over the years and donating half that meant nothing. What remained made me feel so much better.
My husband never had to go thru any relative's homes like I did. His mom is still living. (She recently downsized from a house to an apartment.) Because our experiences are different, and I'm the one dealing with bc, it is easier for me to simplify. We're in our mid 50s, he still thinks he's got all the time in the world to "take care of things." If I go first, I don't want to leave him saddled with all this stuff. He's never been good at managing it all.
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"Editing" is such a very a good word. Because both my husband and I have our undergraduate degrees in English, perhaps asking him to "edit" the mess in the basement will resonate with him more than asking him to clean it up! LOL.
But yes, having to go through family members' homes after they pass does seem to shape personal perspective-it is certainly shaping mine. What I'm dealing with now is not pretty and even though DH is helping some, it's mostly on me. Both his parents have passed, but since their home was far away, it fell to his sister who lived close to them to deal with the cleaning up and sorting.
Some days I do think I'm making progress. I have moved boxes and boxes of family photos (and slides) spanning generations to my house where I am sorting out the best and making scrapbooks for my brothers (both live far away and removed from the mess) and myself and then I'm tossing the rest. Still, I have a long way to go before we have the house ready to put on the market. The realtor would like to have it ready by March, but I'm thinking that is totally not going to happen.
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The other day, my husband was wondering out loud where a specific heavy duty extension cord was that he wanted to use with an outdoor heating pad we put in the garage for the outside cat. And a light bulb went off in his head and he said, "I bet I know where it is, down in the basement." We do not keep very much stuff down there as we have a garage out back. So, he goes to the basement and voila! Just what he was looking for. Acting like he just snagged a big fish, he brought it triumphantly upstairs. "Here it is!" he said so happily. I smiled and said, "That's exactly how easy it should be to find everything in the house, which is a good reason to declutter."
I am hoping that in that moment, he saw the reasoning behind my simplifying our belongings. He sees me tossing stuff and worries that I'm throwing our life away. All I'm doing is lightening the load.
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I'm also proud that I cleaned my laptop of all the old crap. Yes, it froze all the time and I never used it. Then the big computer went on the blink. We ordered a part, but in the meantime, I still needed a computer. I got the laptop, copied all the photos on it to a thumb drive, then reprogrammed the laptop back to its factory settings. It works soooo much better, no freezing. My husband said, "How'd you do that? I wouldn't know the first thing about doing that." I said, "I googled it!" and it was simple. I pledge not to load the laptop back up with a bunch of crap. I'm keeping it clean as I can so it's easier to use. If and when we get the big computer back to running, I told dh, once that thing goes on the blink again, I'm not putting any more money into it. We don't really need it anymore. Our lifestyle has changed, we are empty nesters. We both use ipads most of the time. We can have a laptop for incidental use and retire the big PC. I told him, "We have evolved."
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That's what I want, DivineMrsM,,, I want to know where stuff is,, and be able to easily find it!!
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Hi ladies- I visit one of my consignment stores recently and found some nice credit there. Taking my first load of spring things to the other consignment shop a week from Saturday. Doing a some spring cleaning and purging as the weather is warm here. I am always looking at whether things have a place to be stored, if they work and are functional, can be fixed or need to be tossed, etc. I have a whole new way of looking at at "stuff".
Continuing on my quest to reduce and simplify!
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I saw this on facebook and thought of this group.
Sounds like a good plan.
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I need to join this group. I'm not much of a hoarder, but we've been in this house for 25 years, so we have more stuff than we should. My personal rule is if I haven't used it in the past 2 years and it's not particularly valuable or sentimental, out it goes. Still, I find little piles of stuff here and there, mostly things I need to file.
We're fortunate that MIL had downsized years ago and when she died last month, she lived in a nursing home. It took all of 6 hours for DH and his sister to clean up her room. My mom, OTOH, is a real hoarder. She keeps receipts from 30 years ago, 20 year old dead flower arrangements, hundreds of knicky-knacky cheap made-in-China stuff, sheet music that she hasn't looked at in 25 years, and almost 100 towels in varying states of fray. Everything has a story and she can't part with any of it. I know that when she passes, we kids are going to have a hurge pile to deal with. If it were up to me, I'd pitch about 80% of it, but I have a couple siblings that also hoard, so I guess I'll have to defer to them.
In the meantime, back at the ranch....I managed to get my sewing area cleaned up yesterday. I currently have it in a corner of the living room, but DH has been talking about moving it all down to the basement. I don't sew often, but when I do I don't want to do it in the basement, so I think the stuff will have to go upstairs to a bedroom. My next project is to clean out under the bathroom sink and all the kitchen drawers. I have at least 3 drawers that just collect odds and ends and who knows what's in them?
We're considering selling the house in a couple years and moving to the left coast. That means I better get with it!
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OncoWarrior, good mantra!
In decluttering, I have realized how spread out my interests have been, no real focus on any one thing and giving a feeling of being diluted.
I finished reading Marie Kindo's second book, Spark Joy. I didn't think it would have much new to offer but I was pleasantly surprised. It sort of refines the process. I learned more reading it and it inspired me once again.
I spent about 20 minutes last night tidying my closet. I do it the way Marie Kondo suggests. It gets messy when Iife gets busy, but I had some down time yesterday and it took no time to organize it again. I really like her system.
Poodles, there's not much you can probably do about your mom's hoarding tendencies now. As for the drawers and cupboards, you could do one at a time or just pull all the stuff out at one time and decide what to keep.
That was the big take away from Kondo's book. It may have been said before, but she says to concentrate on what you want to keep rather than what you want to get rid of.
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Excellent sign, Onco!
Welcome, Poodles. Not much you can do about your Mom's hoarding. If you are thinking of moving, here is a good time to declutter. Ask yourself "do I like this enough/ want this enough/need this enough to pack it in a box and move it across country?"
Until I found Marie Kondo's books, that was my thought process on decluttering.
I follow Becoming Minimalist on Facebook. He says there are 2 questions to ask. Do I need this? Why do I have it? It can help to put items in perspective too.
Divine: glad you liked Spark Joy. I felt the first book was a primer,,, get a glimpse of the process,, and the 2nd book really refines it.
Now to get busy. Taxes are done, and I have a bunch of paperwork to either file or shred!
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Hi ladies- I took my first round of spring items to my consignment store yesterday. I made the apt last month and started putting some things together, but then have been SUPER BUSY with work and realized this week, I needed to finish going through some things to have enough to take in. They took most of what I had, no sandals yet, so I will hold on to those. I think I will have more to take in once spring is here (more summer things). More stuff OUT of the house!
Mustlovepoo- how did you get that name? Anyways, welcome to our thread. My parents kept much in their home and it was hard to clean that out when we had to. Is your mom a Depression-era baby? Both my parents were, but my fathers family was the one that was hit hard by it and he would make us stockpile enormous amounts of canned food and other things he thought he might need some day. I remember eating some split pea canned soup one time when home visiting and got food poisoning. I think that soup may have been 20 years old. After that, I never ate anything out of a can in our parents home and one day, we just got in there and threw it all out!
When he moved to a nursing home, my sister and I started doing clean out work every time we were back east visiting our mom. Even with that for a good 10 years, cleaning out an overstuffed house that had been lived in for over 50 years was one of the hardest things I have EVER done! When the time comes for your mom's home, watch out for basements and attics, they can be a nightmare!
Divine- when we were cleaning out our parents house, as mentioned above, we did not have much time to decide what to put together to pack for the movers to take to our homes, and what to do with the rest. I used a golden rule of thumb which was "things we loved" vs. stuff. With time, even some of the things we loved and took have come to be less sentimental value. I think it is hard to make those fast decisions on those sentimental items, but many have to do it.
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LOL, jazzygirl. My handle is mustlovepoodles. Unfortunately, It gets shortened to mustlovepoo.
I love Marie Kondo's first book. I don't buy into all of it--I like my shirts hanging--but I do like her philosophy. I can feel the energy instantly when I touch something that sparks joy. This week I plan to work on the kitchen drawers, one at a time.
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Poodles, I hang my shirts, too. I don't fold my unders, either. I did stop knotting my socks in a ball, but instead of folding them, I find it works best to just lay them flat out in my drawer. I'm not about to take everything out of my purse every time I come home like she does. Her approach is great but there's plenty of room to adjust the style to our own personal liking.
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Totally agree about NOT emptying a purse every night! No way!! And I hang a lot of my shirts too,, I just fold up the tee shirts and sweat shirts.
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I loved having folded T shirts, but the position to fold them made my back hurt. Back to hangers. I do fold my underwear and sox. I could get a lot more sox in the drawer once I folded them.
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Needed to come read for some inspiration!! I haven't focused on decluttering in a while - been too busy with work and other things. Now that Spring is in the air, I've got the urge to declutter some more. Let's hope I can accomplish some of that this weekend! Enjoyed catching up on the posts. Teka - loved your super power quote - sent that to my Mom and Dad!! I will be visiting them soon at their condo and will be curious to see if it has gotten cluttered up yet. Moving from their house of 50 years to the condo was a big change!
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oh Mel,, I bet that was a big change. My Mom has been in the house since 1962,,,,, **cringes***
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Glennie - yes it was!! Dad pretty much went kicking and screaming! He wanted to stay in his house forever, but Mom knew it was getting to be too much for them. I'm so glad they were able to get rid of so much of their stuff. My Dad tricked us all and brought some of it to their house at the beach in NJ, but, they really did a great job and the amount they got rid of was staggering!
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Going thru a house full of things like that and keeping what you value and discarding the rest stirs up lots of memories. That's not a bad thing. I think it helps you to come to terms with things and move on.
Last year we moved my mother in law from the house she lived in for 67 years to an apartment across the street from us. I was proud of her. She relived lots of good times while going thru her things but at age 87 was able to embrace themove. She'd been holding on to too many things from the past. Her house was like a memorial for days and people gone by. We were able to update some things for her like photos and appliances, so she is living more in the present.
We have a clean up week here in town in May. You can put out just about everything at that time and the garbage men will haul it away. We had so much going on last year we weren't able to take advantage of it, so lots to put out this year, old sink, toilet, dryer, wooden swing, ect. There's nothing quite like the feeling of "aahhhh" after a huge pile of crap like that is carted off. Look forward to it!
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