Simplify - In Danger of Cute Box Overload

Recently I bought a recipe binder for the recipes we print off of the internet. It came is a beautiful box decorated with strawberries. Strawberries are one of my favorite motifs, so I wanted to keep the box to cut it up for some purpose. However, it suddenly occurred to me that it is probably the right shape and size to package up a plate that I have been needing to send overseas for some time. The plate needs to be double boxed, but I was having trouble getting a box for the inner one that would be close to the same size as the plate and help stabilize it in the bigger box when surrounded by packing materials. I resigned myself to the probability that I will use it for that and, after all, it's a good use of it!

Do you have a problem with wanting to save cute or useful boxes that come in the mail or with products inside of them? I don't know if anyone else here does, but I do. I am always thinking that a box "could be useful" or is too pretty or sturdy or generally "useful" to just put it in the trash. Thankfully, Dana K. White at A Slob Comes Clean has the same issue. She also has a useful solution that can really help in dealing with these things.

Enjoy! :-)

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Tips for Decluttering when You Are Emotionally Exhausted from Dana White

Here are some helpful pointers on how to deal with areas that need help even when you feel emotionally exhausted. Life has been "too much" on so many levels the last couple years that it can make us freeze up on things we see as non-essential. But, over time that can mean that cluttered or problem areas can get out of control and just add to our stress. These tips can help us at least make progress without making emotional decisions.

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Our Guest Room Do-over – Part 1

 

Our guest room has been either a mess or mostly empty ever since we moved into this house.  At first it was used as a dumping place for things I didn’t know what to do with, or wasn’t using at the moment. 

When my in-laws came to visit and stay here a few days, we did a massive clean up and got it presentable, but the accommodations were very sparse.  (My brother and sister-in-law also spent a couple nights in here when their 5th wheel was being worked on.)

I used the room for sorting stuff between visits and then would have to clean it up whenever my in-laws came, at least to the point where we could set up an air mattress.  We set up a double layer, queen-size air mattress when we had overnight guests. 

It worked out OK for a few years and my in-laws were fine with it for awhile.  But then, last winter when they were here the wrong mattress was set up and they didn’t sleep well at all.  They said maybe they would stay at a motel the next time they came. 

I felt really bad, and so it occurred to me that it might be a good time to really fix the room up and get a real bed!  I wanted them to know they are welcome in our home and that we want them to come and visit, especially since I have been unable to travel to their home for a few years now.  My husband was onboard, and we could afford to do it at this point, so we began to make plans.

My Inspiration

A new housing development is going in “up the road a piece” from us.  They are building large, fancy houses, and when my in-laws were here to visit last January my mother-in-law wanted to stop in and look at the model homes that are open to the public.  It was a fun little sidetrack “just because we could”. :-)  These houses were definitely out of our league!  I would feel very uncomfortable living in anything so grand.  But, in one of the houses I saw a room that I REALLY LIKED.

I loved this pale blue color because it felt so airy and light.  It made me feel like I was up in a high open space.  If fresh air had a color, this would be it, especially near a fresh water lake. :-)

(By the way, this was a secondary bedroom, not the master suite in this luxury home!  Also, although this room was my inspiration, anyone who has spent much time on this blog or The Home Maker’s Corner should know that my style is not exactly “chic”.  :-)  My husband says my style is “eclectic cottage”.)

I got to wondering if I’d like this color in my own bedroom “if we build our own house someday”.  But, blue can be depressing to me, so I wasn’t sure.  When I started thinking about re-doing the guest room, it occurred to me that we could paint it this color so that I could see how it looked in a more “normal” house and decide if I liked it.  After getting some paint chips at a couple stores we headed over one day to see if we could match it, and we did.  It turned out to be a pale shade of aqua.

We bought our paint and primer and some odds and ends for the job and were planning to start on it “soon”.  Then my in-laws let us know they were planning to come for my husband’s birthday in June.  I don’t remember exactly when they told us this, but it seemed doable to me at the time, so we decided to try to get it done before they came.

I’d already decided to try to “shop our own stuff” on this project as much as I could, and had been making a mental inventory of things I could use in the room.  My sister-in-law offered a queen size bed frame she had, and my dad let me have some of his 1950s collection that he was planning to get rid of.  So, it wasn’t like we were starting with just paint.

This is what our guest room looked like when we started.  I may have removed a few things already before I took these.  I can’t remember now.

It was a real hodgepodge of stuff, but not nearly as bad as those first pictures at the top which were taken around 2009 or ‘10.  It definitely needed a lot of help, though!

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Due to the size of this project, I’m breaking it up into parts.  Stay tuned for more installments! :-)

Part 2 – In the Process

Update On Getting Rid of 365 Things

 

You may recall that this year I challenged myself (and anyone who wanted to join me) to get rid of 365 things.  I’ve kept working on that goal even though I’ve failed at posting any further updates till now. :-) 

For some reason, I started at 365 and have been counting down.  I think it would have been easier to count up, but - Oh well.  I started this week at 141 things left to get rid of.  Since there are 162 days left this year I’m ahead of schedule, which is very gratifying.  Plus it gives me a buffer for weeks when I might not be able to make much progress.  If I’d counted every item individually I’m sure I would have been past my goal by now.  But, I was intentionally under counting some things in order to make it harder on myself and more effective.

The worst weeks were two different weeks when I only managed to get rid of one item.  I think I was sick part of one of those weeks and the other one was the week we tried to go on vacation.  (I say “tried” because we ended up coming home early.  Long story.)  The best week so far was a few weeks ago when I got rid of 27 things!  That was satisfying indeed.  I also had two different weeks in which I discarded 24 items. That really helped me catch up.

Just for interest I’ll list some items here that I’ve either thrown away or donated (or will be donating).  These are not necessarily the total amounts of these items I’ve gotten rid of.  I haven’t added up totals for categories (as yet) and maybe won’t.  These are just numbers taken from random weeks – in other words, I got rid of this number of whatever it is in one week – not all total.  I hope that makes sense.

1 sun catcher
1 spice carousel (in the way and seldom used)
1 bag of orange peels (from the fridge. They were being saved for making candied orange peels, but I realized it wasn’t going to happen and gave myself permission to throw them away, and to count them. ;-)
1 bed skirt
1 bed coverlet
2 packages of trim (sewing type trim)
1 jug fancy fabric scraps
1 tea kettle
1 old garden hose segment with sprinkler attached (Yeah. That was sitting out in one of the gardens. What? Don’t ask.)
1 bag candy :-)
1 catalogue (Well, it was a quilting catalogue that I especially liked – Hancock’s of Paducah – and I wanted to keep it!)
3 shirts
1 string (It was a string of considerable substance and color and it hadn’t been used in all the time it was stored and it was cut in an unlikely segment.  Huh.  Sorry, some of you just won’t understand that.  I think it’s a genetic thing. :-)
1 container of old feta cheese (Because it was given to me and I kept thinking I’d use it, but it was getting strong and a little weird and finally I just decided to pitch it.)
1 computer chair
4 garments
1 corn syrup (Found on its side in the back of the pantry. It had leaked. Ugh.)
1 dead plant (don’t ask – Not donated, don’t worry.)
1 package stale pancake mix (It was given to us, but my husband makes them from scratch.  What can I say?)
1 frying pan
"1 useless gadget" (That’s actually what I wrote in my record. I don’t even know what it was. LOL)
12+ various food items (things I wasn’t going to use)
1 item décor
6 jars old food (These were mostly things my family has been carrying around for years that ended up in my store room.  They were old.  Yes, they should have been used, but that’s how it goes sometimes when you home can food and can’t stand to use it up too quickly, but don’t use it quickly enough.  Blah.  I want to try to break that trend for my own part. :-)
1 plastic container
2 batches of bows (See photo below.  Confession time – I have a weakness for gift bows.  I use them on both wrapped packages and on gift bags.  Well, I didn’t really know how many I had until I decided to sort and reduce the gift wrap collection which involved more than one box.  Ahem!  I realized I have a problem that has to stop!  Yeeps. :-o)

These photos in this post were taken on my cell phone, hence the poor quality.

So, this is my mid-year update on this challenge.  There may not be another one till the end of the year.  We’ll see.  If you want to tell us about your efforts please leave a message.  If you’ve blogged about it yourself leave a link too, please.

Laying Aside Weights -- Get Rid of Fifty Things Challenge

 

(That’s the not-endangered spotted carpet of our spare bed room.
Thanks former resident, whoever you are.)

Hebrews 12:1  Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

I mentioned in a previous post in this series that I’ve been working on a decluttering challenge myself and would tell you more later.  This is “later”. :-)

In reading and watching things about the whole decluttering process, I came across a reference to a book called “Throw Out Fifty Things” by Gail Blanke.  In reading some of the book online at Amazon.com I concluded that I wanted to buy the book and read it, which I did.  Now, right up front I have to say that I really can’t recommend this book.  The reason is that, though the first part of the book is useful, the author has a number of chapters on decluttering one’s thinking and indentity which contain too much of the rudiments of the world.  Colossians 2:8  Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.  Throughout the book, in fact, is a thread that says you can “reinvent yourself” into something better and “become the person you want to be.”  As Christians we are called to be what God wants us to be, to be “reinvented” by Him.  2 Corinthians 5:17  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Having said that, I did find some things in the book that I could extract and use which were helpful to me.  The basic decluttering challenge in relation to going through one’s possessions was workable and there were some useful points there. 

To start with, the basic plan is to learn to disengage yourself appropriately both mentally and emotionally from the clutter in your life.  Secondly, the plan is to go through all of your stuff in a relatively short amount of time (I think the basic process was to take two weeks) and to “throw out fifty things” (you’re allowed to donate them or give them away). The grit of the challenge comes in when you find that each individual thing is not counted, but rather categories!  So, if you go through your books and “throw out” 15 that counts as one thing.  If you discard 22 items of clothing and pairs of socks, that counts as one thing.  Yeah, that’s a lot harder than you might at first think!  To get to fifty takes some work.

Also included in the throwing away process is bad habits and thought processes.  This was where the book became considerably less interesting to me.  There was quite a bit there was not too useful for a Christian for various reasons.  Some of it was still OK and had a point, though not applied the way she used it.  However, the basic idea of changing one’s habits and thought processes for the better can be applied in a Christian manner.

So, being me (the ladies in my family are noted for altering recipes, even on the first go), I changed it right off to fit my own needs and methods.  I didn’t start in the room she recommended (the master bed room).  We live in a single wide with additions on both sides, so  I started in the room that made the most sense progressively, which was the master bath.

At first I focused on the object-type things only, and I made some good progress.  As I mentioned before, when you start seeing the things go it can be quite invigorating and make you want to do even more. :-) 

Mrs. Blanke’s rules of disengagement left somewhat to be desired in my opinion (from a Christian perspective).  We do need to disengage ourselves from our things, and from wrong thinking and even some people.  However, it’s important to try to come at this from a biblical direction.  Some points in other areas that Mrs. Blanke made were spot on, so in my own thinking I kind of incorporated those into my own method of disengagement.

To start with, the Australian decluttering authority Peter Welsh says there are two kinds of clutter – 1) things we “might need” later, and 2) things that we are emotionally attached to (memory related).  I personally see a third and that is the things we don’t notice or refuse to make a decision on.  We know we don’t need them, we are not attached emotionally, but it’s a bother to do something with them.  My family has all three bases covered!  Consequently, I have a triple challenge, so to speak, but I suspect a lot of us do.

My rules for disengagement are something like this, though I admit I haven’t really written them down before:

1. Do I need this?

2. Does this serve a useful purpose? If not, why am I keeping it?

3.  Am I keeping it because I like it or from a sense of guilt, either because it “might be useful some day” or because it was important to someone I love?  (This is one I’m just realizing and I think it’s going to be helpful.)

4. Do I actually use it?  Or do I have plans for it in the foreseeable future that I will be likely to really carry out?  Would someone else put this to better use? (This one can be tough with things that I have fond hopes of someday doing – like craft projects.)

5. If it is a memento – does it have good memories associated with it, or are there some bad memories mixed in that I’d rather not recall?  (You’d be surprised how many things I’ve either let go of because of the bad memories, or decided to keep and adjust my thinking toward the memories, perhaps even letting go of old hurts or struggles – it’s been quite freeing.)

6. Is this weighing me down?  Is it a useful thing in it’s way, but really only making more work or stress for me?

Then there are the three questions that I mentioned in a previous post:

1. What does this have to do with my service of the Lord?  Is it profitable to the life to come (1 Tim. 4:8)?

2. Is this ___________ essential to my well being?  Does it help me maintain a workable comfort level?

3. Is it a good use of time, energy and/or emotions?

This has more or less been my thought process in this decluttering challenge.  Some of this comes from Mrs. Blanke’s ideas, some have been developing as I go and some have only come to me quite recently (though maybe it was in the back of my thoughts for awhile).  Disengaging from our stuff is more difficult than I expected.

I rolled right through things at first, but eventually I got bogged down.  I ran into some snags. 

First of all, I got to more difficult areas eventually, and rather than slowing down and doing them, I either skipped them “for now” or broke them down into smaller chunks.  Breaking them down worked, but putting them off is a weight that needs to be shed.

The second snag was that I realized I was becoming emotionally exhausted and that was weighing me down.  Because I come from a heritage for feeling obligated to keep “useful” things as well as one that easily is emotionally attached to sentimental things, I started having after shocks to the decisions I made when I was in “get it done and gone” mode.  I required a break, which helped.  But, sadly, I still wonder about specific items I got rid of simply because of who gave it to me or something connected with it. I have to remind myself that the person and/or the memories of the person are more important than the thing she/he gave me.  I don’t need every little thing to remember her/him by, especially things that I won’t even use or don’t like.  And, I don’t need to feel guilty because I didn’t like it!

The third issue I’m facing now is that our garage is getting warm as the weather here in Texas heats up.  So, I’m going to probably sidetrack a lot of areas I could work on and focus on that for awhile.  We really do need to get it cleaned up, and there’s a lot there that needs to go!  We would like to build a tornado shelter in there, and park our car inside.  Both are possible in our garage, but it is too full for either right now.

Working on the actual object-type things has had its challenges, but I felt that there was a point in Gail’s book regarding the throwing out of bad thinking, beliefs or feelings, though not in all the ways she dealt with it.  Consequently, I’ve also tried to work on some attitude and daily living issues as well.  This has been different.  I think I’ve made some progress in some areas while others I feel like a total failure in.  I’m sure this is pretty “normal”.

Last but not least, from the book I got the idea of keeping a record of what I was throwing out (or sending to the thrift shop, or giving away).  Again, I didn’t follow her suggestions exactly, and I also made the categories to suit my own thinking.  I didn’t run things over from one room to another much either unless they were closely associated (like food, which is stored in the kitchen and dining room).  Since she included throwing out bad thinking, habits, etc. as individual categories, I listed my “goals” along this line as individual things.  Unfortunately, I’m almost to 48 now and I still have a lot of stuff to go through. ;-)  But, I don’t have a problem with starting a new list to get through the rest, or raising my final goal total.

For my own interest and totally not in the book, I decided to also record some of the things I removed from a given room to a more suitable place, things I repurposed or recycled for other uses, and things that I reorganized and straightened up.  This has added to the project, of course, but it has also added to my sense of improving our living environment.

Altogether, I feel like I’ve made some good progress, but I also feel like I have a long ways to go.  I think this process would probably be improved by doing it “with” a friend or family member so that you can keep each other inspired, encouraged and accountable.

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I intended to make a later post on this book, but having thought about it off and on for awhile, I can’t really get motivated to write more on this specifically.  I will undoubtedly mention this book in further posts, but not particular posts on the book itself.

Clearing Out the Fridge

It is a temptation to put this post in the “Laying Aside Weights” series, but since it really doesn’t have to do with the theme of that specifically, I suppose it will be better to let it stand alone.

The clutter in my fridge is not exactly a weight, although maybe some people would view it as such.  It can be a nuisance, but mostly it’s wasted space.  It’s cleaned out pretty well now, but the truth of the matter is that it will probably get bad again eventually.  Coming from a long line of fridge packers…well, at least two generations…I don’t see myself bucking my genes on this one. ;-) 

Not that I wouldn’t like to improve, and I actually think I have some. My mom, in her own right, has improved some to start with and I’ve tried to go a little farther. Neither of us have, nor desire, the “knack” my Gramma had of filling a fridge (and its freezer) with myriads of little plastic containers holding a tablespoon of this or that.  I can’t speak so well for our freezers, though we do make the effort to control them from time to time.  When you opened Gramma’s freezer it was a good idea to stand back.  Just the act of opening the door was likely to dislodge something that was being held in by the mere presence of the door.  Trying to extract something could even start a small avalanche.  Mom’s freezer and my freezer are sometimes not much better.  Sigh.

But, to get down to the point --

I decided it was high time to get the fridge cleared out of excess stuff.  Though I do try to date my leftovers to keep them from getting too old, I still sometimes have something that gets missed in the shuffle.  The bulk of my excess, however, is the result of opening too many jars of pickles, pushing untasty jams and sauces to the side because I can’t make myself pitch them, and saving “useful” things that are not as perishable as most foods – such as bacon grease.  Ahem.  (This is the down side of being a bit too paranoid about wastefulness, by the way.  There are two sides to that coin.)

I found at least 4 containers containing some amount of bacon grease in the fridge (I think it was five, but I’m not sure).  Yeah.  That’s a lot of old dabs of bacon grease, considering how seldom I cook bacon from raw and thus have excess to put away.  And, don’t ask me how many there are still in there because, though I discarded some, I added another one the other day. 

You see, the very best corn bread recipe I have calls for bacon grease (no wonder it’s so good, right?), so I can’t bear to discard it thinking about that delicious corn bread.  The thing is, though – I seldom, seldom make corn bread!  (Hmm….this looks suspiciously like “weight” thinking to me.  Something that does need to be laid aside!)  Plus, green beans and eggs are so good fried in bacon grease….

Well, Friday morning is the day our garbage is collected, so Thursday is a good day to do a job like this.  In an effort to acknowledge my limitations and not overdo, I made the decision to not clean the fridge at all, but only clear out the items that had no future.  I also decided not to try to do the fridge and its freezer on the same day.  (We also have a chest freezer, which needs to be defrosted, but it’s not quite so cluttered with useless things as the fridge freezer was – I think.)

If you are a “normal”, energetic, healthy, strong woman (I don’t know many, but there must be some), then you might think this is a bad plan and method and that it would be better to do the whole thing in “one fell swoop” as Gramma would’ve said (only not about the fridge).  If you have a chronic health problem, are often overly busy, have kids, homeschool, have hormones or any number of other things that tend to make women tired and run down, I suspect you will see the point in this plan. :-)  Anyway, it worked for me.

On the Thursday in question I cleared out the fridge, saving the cleaning for later (apparently much later).  Here is what it looked like --

Before:

Note the bag of (smelly) garlic on the top shelf – some of it is now growing in my dad’s garden.
You can just see a gallon size jar of pickles behind the milk and orange juice.  There were two jugs back there actually – one almost full of pickles that had the “lovely” flavor of vinegar, garlic and plastic.  (Not a commonly accepted flavor of pickles, but the result of a company switching from glass to plastic jars.)  There was also a glass gallon jar half full of kimchee.  Now, I like kimchee, but I couldn’t eat this kind because it didn’t agree with my finicky stomach.  My parents and I made the kimchee together, but it ended up in my fridge.  Now it’s at my parents’ house.

After:

Notice how you can actually see the light on the top shelf now.  That is because the multiple layers of stuff have been reduced!  Also, there’s a big, almost empty space on the second shelf.  The parmesan cheese has been moved to an upright position on the bottom shelf.  On the left of the bottom shelf is an unopened 2 lb. package of cheddar that expired in June or July – of last year.  Yeah.  Embarrassment, horror, disgust (at the waste), you name it.  There were white specks all over it which I thought to be mold, but I decided to open it anyway.  To my surprise and relief, it was still fine – NOT rotten!  The specks were the salt coming out apparently.  So we went ahead and ate it. ;-)  (This was some weeks ago and we are still alive, so YES, it really was safe, oh doubters.) :-)

The door doesn’t look a lot improved because I moved some of the odds and ends jars that were crowding the inside to the spaces I opened up in the door.

I actually didn’t take the “after” picture till a couple of days, so there are a few other changes as well, but you get the idea.  I think it’s actually even more empty now, and since I did this job in February, I seem to be keeping it better for at least awhile!  Not that I think a fridge should be empty.  When I have legitimate things to keep I’m fine with it, but the excess of things that were past usefulness was the problem.  Also, having the fridge more empty is handy because I can store leftovers right in the pan I will reheat them in, which saves on dish washing! :-)

To my shame, I have to admit that I totally forgot the drawers till later!  Ack.  I’m not sure I would’ve wanted to “share” them with you anyway. ;-)

Ok, I can’t believe I could write that much about cleaning out the fridge!  Looks like the freezer part should wait till another time.  Too bad, the story about…..well, you’ll have wait and see. ;-)  (We had “wait and see” a lot for dessert when I was a kid.  I so disliked that answer!)

Laying Aside Weights - So, Where to Begin?

More posts in this Challenge.

Hebrews 12:1  Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

So, how do you actually knuckle down and really get started with laying aside the physical weights that are besetting you?  In the first place, it would be good to select an area of specific need if you haven’t yet, and since my most pressing need at the moment is to get rid of clutter and unfinished projects, that’s where I have started.  I suspect that most of you can use this too since there are many of us that are so “fabulously wealthy” that we have to fill the garage (ouch) or spare room, or a storage unit or backyard shed with our excess stuff.

The first thing that probably started me down the road of reconsidering  possessions and clutter was a little book my dad loaned me called Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James.  While I don’t agree with everything she had to say (she is not a Christian writer), I found some things in her book that were challenging and helpful.  However, I really didn’t implement a lot of it.

The next thing that gave me pause to consider was last spring (2011) when we evacuated our house and headed south when a powerful storm was going to brush us from the north.  The feeling of leaving almost everything you own (I took a few things in a couple bags) not knowing if anything will be there when you get back is weird to say the least. (Note: We live in Central Texas – this is tornado country!  Praise the Lord we didn’t even have hail damage here from that storm!)

Then in September that year the wildfires started.  With high winds at the beginning of the month and extremely high fire risk due to prolonged drought, things were pretty scary for awhile!  We gathered up our “to go” pile in a few boxes and bags, and put several day’s worth of clothing and essentials in a back pack.  We were living with the constant possibility of evacuation because fires were popping up all over Texas and spreading, sometimes rapidly.  Some were positively huge. 

It’s a strange feeling to go through your house and pick out the few things that you’d really like to keep and can load quickly into the car in case you have to leave suddenly because of a wildfire.  It made me stop and think about some of the things that I own.  Really, if I never use them, what is the point?  Why are they cluttering my life?  And, what is important here?

Matthew 6:25  Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

I didn’t think of this verse at the time, but I think it fits in a way.  Life is about so much more than stuff, even though things can bring us some temporary pleasure.  We also read in Luke 12:15,  And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

In my first post I also mentioned the inspiration I’d had from other sources, particularly some of the things that have been helping me more recently.  I’d like to pass on a few more ideas that might help you get started and make some headway if you haven’t already.

Again, please remember that I put a disclaimer on my sources.  Please use discernment with these things.

The first one I want to mention is the “fast 21 thing purge” which I saw on a lady’s vlog. Simply grab a bag or box and head through the house.  The goal is to quickly search and find 21 things around the house that you don’t use and either put them in the bag/box to donate, or throw them away.  Because you are going fast and only picking out 21 items it won’t take too long, unless you let yourself get bogged down with the decision making process. This I am all too familiar with.  The important thing is to keep moving, make the decision and then stick to it.  Get the things out to the car or buried in the trash as soon as you can.  (I haven’t yet used this method since I’ve been working on a slightly different type of purging challenge which I hope to explain later.)

I probably should mention the respect of personal property here. I feel pretty strongly that it isn’t wise or helpful to carelessly throw out other people’s stuff – especially things they are going to miss.  One friend’s sister-in-law decided to sort through her sister’s basement and threw out most or all of her brother-in-law’s school mementoes. Naturally, he was quite provoked! My great-grandparents moved often and they threw away all Grandma’s toys except one doll every time. This seemed to affect my grandmother in later years.  She was very attached to things and even showed some hoarder tendencies. So, try to be wise about this, even with your kids. Include them in the decision making process when possible. (Teaching them decluttering skills now can have lasting benefits!)  I know from personal experience that it can be hard in some situations, but it is good for your relationships to your family to respect their property.  Then if you do need to reduce things without their presence for some reason, they will know that you won’t be unkind about it.

The next quick method of getting rid of things is to “go shelf by shelf”.  Sometimes it is just too hard to think about doing a whole job at once, but if you do a little here and a little there you can make it.  Just go shelf by shelf as you have a few minutes.  Clean, declutter and organize just that one small section at a time.

For example, today I wanted to clear out the fridge of things that were old, tired or not getting used.  I knew that trying to clean the fridge itself at the same time would be overwhelming for me, so I stuck to the first job of just clearing out the junk.  This worked well, and my fridge looks a lot better even if it isn’t clean – yet! :-)  So try going “shelf by shelf” when you have a few minutes – talking on the phone, waiting for something to cook, waiting for someone, etc.  Even baby steps are steps!

Another great suggestion from the same lady is to “suffer for 15 minutes”.  The basic idea in this is that you can chip down an iceberg 15 minutes at a time. :-)  You can’t do it all at once, but if you do it for 15 minutes a day you can eventually get it done!  Her description of being overwhelmed by the enormity of a project fits me to a “T”.  I am one of those don’t-start-because-it’s-too-much-to-do people.  I also tend to be one that starts a project then pushes it aside if it’s taking more effort than I thought or if I run into a snag.  But, this “suffering for 15 minutes” is a good idea and I want to give it a try.  By limiting the “suffering” to that time frame I think even I could make some progress!

And speaking of those unfinished projects lurking around making me feel guilty and unaccomplished…. 

Here is one last good suggestion that I need to seriously put into practice: Abandon an unnecessary project.  Ok, I know that’s not what she titled it, but the fact is that some of our projects that never get done really aren’t “fun” projects.  We may have thought at some point that it would save us money or be useful or that it would be fun but, we found out that either we wouldn’t get it done, or it wasn’t fun after all.

Though I hadn’t heard this suggestion till today, I’m tickled that I’ve already been working on this. I have recently discarded three “fun” projects that were cluttering my life.  There was a scrapbooking blank calendar that was made unnecessary since I discovered it is easier to create my calendars online.  I also decided to discard my paper raffia which I had used to make baskets.  I don’t think I’ll ever do that again, so it might as well go.  These craft items will be offered to friends, and if they don’t want them, they’ll go in the donate pile!  Yes!

I also sorted through the stuff I collected for scrapbooking.  At one time I thought I would be a scrapbooker, but as it turns out I am a card maker. So, why fight it? :-) I might put together some photo album type books, but probably never any involved scrapbooks with journaling, mementoes, and lots of ornamentation.  It’s time to let it go.  So, some of the items were delegated to card making, some selected as worth keeping, and a number of things, which will go unmentioned in case any of my family reads this, were discarded. <grin> Some things will be sent to the appropriate family members and they can decide what to do with them.  Out of my space. :-)  Whew!  That feels good, actually!

So, were you inspired to put any of these ideas to use, and if so which ones?  Maybe you came up with your own method for working down the pile.  Want to tell us about it?  Leave a comment! :-)