Decluttering in March

[Float On]

Spring is here and then it isn't and then it is again and then not again. Just when I get into an outside project I'm driven inside again.
This week I really need to declutter my laundry and sewing room. It has acquired a pile of projects than need finished and a pile of stuff that I need to go through for the thrift shop. My boys leave things in there they don't want or can't fit into anymore.

A big project this month is going thru the studio and getting it cleaned and decluttered. Colors in frit or bar that we haven't used in years I'd like to list as supplies on Etsy or Ebay. My packing room is an explosion of bags, bubble wrap, and boxes and has a lot of our show supplies are crowded in there as well. Everything has a place.....but it all got jumbled up when my husband returned from the Florida shows and had to unload the truck in freezing weather. What a mess.

[Float On]

Can't believe I forgot my biggest decluttering challenge this month but I was sure reminded when I walked into work this morning. Our church was in a 50/50 partnership with another church, we've bought out their half of the property and they have left their rooms (offices/storage/SS classrooms, etc...) full of stuff for us to go through. Its a huge job and I'm already hitting the Zertex since I'm getting hives from all the dust.

[danna]

March 01
I usually start the month with 5 items a day and then if I am doing great with the decluttering and quit counting at some point.
So here I go again
1--holey sock to garbage
3--phamlets to recycling

4 items to date

Edited to add Float On we are seeing NO Spring here yet...lol

[redfox]

Sent 14 pairs of shoes to consignment (half of them my Mom's). I have about 3 dozen garments to take in as well, and am sorting them by season. Despite the temptation to trade them at 50% for stuff, I opted for the 40% of value in the form of a check.

[nancibt]

Arghh! I forgot that I had told Amvets I had things for them to pick up today. So now I get to keep the clutter AND the guilt. :-(

[fidgiegirl]

I sent several garments to the charity pickup. Well, they are still sitting in the living room but they are packed and as good as gone. I am feeling very much like I have too many clothes. If they can't ALL fit in my dresser, it's too many. I do a seasonal swapout but my current clothes should fit and they don't right now.

Interestingly, many of them are like new and were "deals" I got on the REI Outlet, especially, or clothes bought by my DH as gifts for me on that site. I love him and I know he means well, but maybe clothes should be off limits. I return the vast majority of what he gives me but even what I keep I often don't use that much and eventually it ends up out the door like this. Some things are a home run, though . . . oh well, at least I have the gumption to return the things that I really know I'm not going to wear or that clearly don't fit right. A good lesson because even at a deal they are still usually in the $15-30 range per garment and some I only wore once or twice but just didn't like.

I feel better for having unloaded them. One I was going to alter, and wasn't getting around to it . . . now not only is the item gone from my life, but the related to-do is off my list. Yeah.

Want to work on this hard this spring. We had a realtor come through and told us we had waaaaaay too much stuff. We know that, and I'm really feeling it. I want to pare it down by at least half. Problem is, it's antiques my husband has lovingly collected over the years. He's attached. Oy.

[fidgiegirl]

DH has considered listing some of his antiques on eBay! Yippee! He is still thinking about a few, but they moved upstairs out of their normal location. That is a very positive first step.

I was telling DH about the "outbox" concept I read about in Apartment Therapy (thanks to whoever recommended that book on the old boards - it's awesome). Basically if you are skittish about just giving something away, but you know it can't "live" where it currently lives, you can move it to an area of your house that is your outbox. There, it can sit for a while. You can think about it. But because it's out of where it was always used, or sat, or whatever, you break some kind of mental bond with it. You took the first step, and now it is easier to make a decision on what to do with it, whether it's give away, sell, store, etc. We already kind of have that in our upstairs junk room. Some stuff goes in there to live for a brief while, and some hangs out for a looooong while, but very few of the items in that room are ones that we plan to keep permanently.

I think the realtor visit really got him wanting to act on his stuff. And since we are of the mind that if you have to do stuff to your house to sell it, you might as well do it right away, while you still live there and can enjoy it yourself, we are kind of renewed in freshening our place - fixing all those little things, getting rid of stuff, etc. Let's see how it goes.

What I really want to avoid with this is him feeling like I'm telling him to get rid of all his things. He told me that he knows rationally that it is not fair that I moved in and have not had a chance to basically have any say in the decor, but that also, when he thinks of getting rid of things, he is sad. Today, he was contemplating selling a cool basket. "Do you want me to sell it?" I said, "I'm not going to tell you what to sell. They are your things, and I don't want you feeling like I told you you had to sell them." Hopefully we both win in the end . . . I wouldn't want our next place to look like this in the whole house like it does now (antique North woods). A room or two, ok. But we wouldn't be able to take all of it and still both be happy.

[Rosemary]

I finished 3 winter projects that involved decluttering and organizing: old photos, bookcases, and files.

[Lainey]

Thank goodness for big trash pickup. It's 4x/year in Phx, rotating by area, and ours starts on Monday. So I'm putting out 4 chairs, one broken wooden box, and other misc. items out on the curb. Couldn't be more convenient - our tax dollars at work!

[janharker]

Today I cleaned out my closet. Two bags of clothes, a couple of travel bags, a few odds and ends, some junk jewelry. The thrift shop isn't open until Tuesday, but the wall in the hallway leading to the garage is lined with things ready to go. We bought a new lamp for the DH to use at his reading chair. So the old one is also waiting for the thrift shop.

In two weeks my DH will be gone for several days. While he's away I'll get rid of more. Not his stuff, but stuff that if he saw me planning to get rid of it he'd complain. It'll be stuff that he never sees and never uses, such as flower vases, baskets, office supplies. He's one of those "we might need it someday" people. I'm not.

[maribeth]

Finally re-upholstered the seat cushions of the couch, and threw the old covers away.

Also moved DH's large toy helicopter from the bedroom dresser to the front closet, so I don't have to look at it anymore.

[Jinger]

Finishing up undone projects before starting any new....but I just found an amazing new book of Scandinavian Crafts and it is sooooo hard not to begin a new project. I will keep my commitment though. Today I am finishing up some bird ornaments for next holiday season, posting my progress on my blog to keep me going.

http://iliketomakethings.blogspot.com

[larknm]

Went through files, easy because all are in one cloth bag like you would take to the grocery store. DH has thrown out some stuff in the process of doing taxes. I have put some clothes out on the street for people to have, and will do the same with a few books. I used to like to reread books a lot, but that has changed and some can go. Like the files, there aren't many of these, so easy. I like when they're gone--I don't have to keep making decisions about whether to part with them.

[Gardenarian]

Laundry room. Eek.
I have so far taken 5 boxes of junk to Salvation Army.
The laundry room is our junk drawer. :0!

[reader99]

I've been using my household inventory (YMOL) as a springboard for decluttering. I glance down it for big numbers and ask myself if I really need *that many*. For instance today I noticed I have 17 lightbulbs (long story). Considering I have ONE lamp that takes these regular bulbs, surely I could put a lot of them in the building laundry room and let other people actually use them instead of me storing them, probably for years.

[Float On]

Decluttering my fabric stash this week by making some new window treatments for my 14 year old.

[Lainey]

3 big bags of magazines gone. (yes, I'll admit - it was while watching another episode of "Hoarders" that I decided to do this...)

[Stella]

We are kicking serious behind this week. We have even decided to get rid of the big screen TV in the family room. Zach's best friend's parents are interested in taking it. I am so flipping excited about that I can hardly stand it. I was initially opposed to the placing of the plasma screen in the living room, but the guys (DH and Dad) agreed to put it off to the side, not in the center of the room, and I'll have to admit it's been nice having it up here.

The family room is now essentially just a place for large muscle play. Tomorrow Zach is going to clear my craft stuff out of its temporary storage place in the boys' closet so we can set it up in my new craft space and the train table, which currently resides in the family room, will be moved to the boys' closet for them to play with. The girls have kind of outgrown it. The family room seems to be fast becoming a roller-rink now that Cheyenne and Bella are allowed to rollerblade in there. You know you've decluttered when you have turned your family room into a roller-rink. :)

[Float On]

Stella we skated and skate boarded in our basement growing up as well as having the table-tennis table (my brother went on to win a state title in table-tennis thanks to that being in the center of the basement). I loved that huge open basement, fun for dances in Jr and Sr High.


This morning's decluttering involves cleaning out the back of my Durango so we can re-pack and head north to the farm for a few days. Just how does so much 'stuff' get piled up when you have that big space behind the 2nd row seats, can't even remember the last time I set up the 3rd row seat. Actually most everything in there right now is packing supplies that people give me when they see me which is great because I appreciate recycling peanuts, bubblewrap, and boxes - it just takes up a lot more space than the packing supplies I pick up at my supplier. So I'll go dump all that stuff in my packing room and then re-organize that after I return home from the farm.

[Stella]

Float on, your basement sounds fantastic. That's kind of what we are aiming for. A rec room more than a TV room.

[iris lily]

I am noticing an unhappy collecting trend here: free comporters/cotton quilted bedspreads. I use them on the sofa. I cut one of them up and sewed into pieces for my little dog to have soft bedding on the floor. I get them from dumpsters and from the street (homeless people here leave a lot of trash on the street. The last one I collected frorm the street was fresh out of the wash, you could smell the dryer on it. But still, I washed it, of course!)

I think I will have to cull the ones that are more polyester than cotten, and give them to DH for paint cloths.

I am feeling very happy about the under layer of crap I've gotten rid of in the past year. I don't miss any of it. While there are 1 or 2 things I think about I don't really miss them. And, I am up $2,500 for this stuff. But I have to be careful not to sell things for the sake of money because that's when I will cut too deeply and regret getting rid of the items.

[fidgiegirl]

I was at my parents' today. They are hoarders. I really want to purge now, but instead I will pack for our trip.

In good decluttering news, we got rid of seven items of clothing yesterday in order to get coupons for Herbergers. And then we only brought home two items that we can now use (or rather, will want to use).

Also, I have had the bug for a few weeks here. After vacation, man . . . after vacation. Hitting it hard.

[SiouzQ.]

I got hit by the de-cluttering bug big-time yesterday due to a lot of uncertainty about my job and my future at my place of employment (a long story that I may share on the workplace forum). So Friday night I awakened at 4 am and started fretting about what MAY happen and it got me thinking about my long-term plan of down-sizing drastically and eliminating most of my possessions so I could potentially do something crazy and wild like traveling, or moving someplace different to start the next phase of my life. I have been dreaming of this moment in my life for all those years I was a single parent. I no longer have a minor child to take care of, so now is the time to start the process!

All these years I had been aquiring (sp?) and storing strange found objects for collages such as: rusty paperclips, rusty hangers, broken toys, weird scraps of paper, twisted metal, animal bones, game pieces, doll parts...yeah, you get the picture. Thing is, I did make a lot of art with this stuff but I have WAY more than I'll ever need and I have decided to let a lot of it go since I don't feel the urge to make art like that anymore. I will take the scrap metal to recycling and the rest of the cool stuff I will put an ad on Craigs List so other scrappers can take advantage of my treasure trove. My almost empty basement is even emptier! I may save the coolest stuff to use some day but only if it fits in a small box.

Stuff like this is a hard decision but once I make up my mind that I can no longer let things hang in limbo-land, I am chomping at the bits to keep going with it...the next thing to tackle is all the old family photos, again very, very cool stuff dating back to the 'teens but there is SO MUCH! I have been trying to winnow this area down for years and years and seem to be at the final editing point to where I can actually start scanning the ones I really want to save.

I wish I didn't have to work today because I am on a roll and it FEELS SO GOOD! I feel lighter already because I know I am readying myself for an exciting new adventure, whatever it may be. I am sick of living in the past! Bye for now!