Yes I am still here on planet Earth!
What a long blog break I took! Actually I have been way too busy to write lately. I, a confirmed pack rat, have been organizing, sorting, and “de-junking” my house.
I wish I had taken before and after photos. Clutter and mess was creeping in and threatening my sanity. So far two whole pickup truck loads of stuff have left my life and it feels GREAT!
I am not done yet. I have a big house and lots of things pack ratted away, but I am nearly done with the downstairs and then I will move on to the upstairs.
It took me a whole year of sitting around and procrastinating to finally get going with this enormous undertaking!
If you are feeling bogged down by stuff and need some tips to get moving to eliminate it, here is what I have learned:
- Start small. Don’t think about your whole house or you will just want to curl up and take a nap instead. Be sure to make each goal achievable in a short time, preferably a day or two.
- Pick a closet, drawer, cupboard or something easy for your first tidying session. Once you see how great it looks, you’ll be inspired to tackle the bigger jobs.
- Make a deal with a friend to help each other sort and organize. When you have someone else there to help you work, you can’t just go take a nap instead! Plus, it is way more fun to do it with some pleasant company.
- If you don’t have a friend available to work with and you can afford it, hire someone to help you. This might sound extreme, but that is what I did. Hiring a helper is the only reason I have been able to accomplish all that I have accomplished so far. My helper is a friend of a friend who needed a part-time job. It is a definite win-win for us both. She has a job, I have help and motivation, and we both have found new friends in each other (never having met before).
- Set a schedule and stick to it. For example, Every Monday 9AM to 3PM at your friend’s house. Every Thursday 9AM to 3PM at your house. If you are not strict about your schedule, you’ll find a way to procrastinate. Trust me. I KNOW.
- Be ruthless, it will feel good in the end. Do you really need five pie plates? If you haven’t worn your out-of-style, navy blue interview suit in ten years why are you keeping it? What about that tacky porcelain cow that your aunt gave you for Christmas twelve years ago and that you keep only because you like your aunt (not the cow). Someone out there will find that cow in a thrift store and think it is the most wonderful piece of art and you (and, indirectly, your aunt) will make their day if you only just give it away!
- Unless you are a regular Ebay seller, don’t hang on to things thinking that one day you will sell them on Ebay and make a fortune. Ebay takes time to do right and if you tend to procrastinate about sorting your house, you will almost certainly procrastinate about listing your things on Ebay. Just get it all out of there and let a “real” Ebayer find it in the thrift store. The good feeling of letting go is probably worth more than you would have made anyhow!
- If you have sentimental feelings about any of your give-aways, don’t put them in your own yard sale. Seeing strangers handling your precious belongings and haggling with you over prices will be distressing. Either give them away to a thrift store, or find a good friend who will sell them for you.
- Once you decide what to toss out and what to donate be sure to get all of it out of your house right away. This avoids second thoughts, nosy children, and clutter simply moving to a new location such as a garage or attic. Plus, you need the immediate reward of feeling the positive energy that moves in to replace the stuff that leaves.
For more inspiration as well as some ideas for where to donate your cast-offs, read my old post Sort, Junk, Donate. Good luck!
(Thrift shop photo courtesy of Wikipedia - license information here)
Yes, I am still alive. The blog has been silent this week, which means that my life has not.
There has been Brownies, Cub Scouts, Music Together, a field trip to the Waste Water Treatment Plant, and various volunteering activities at school … plus don’t forget the never-ending laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, and tidying. I am pretty sure you all are familiar with this situation.
I even missed the semi-annual Blog Blast For Peace for the first time in a year and a half (sorry Mimi!).
Tidying has been particularly intense the past few days. The contractor completed the last stage of replacing the carpet with wood floor. This time it was the older kids’ rooms and the stairs.
This meant that the copious contents of the two oldest children’s rooms were regurgitated all over the bottom floor of the house. I am faced with a complete and utter disaster. If a tornado had hit, it could not possibly have been worse.
Clutter makes me mad, so my only option was to attack it all today (my first day free of other activities) or “go postal.”
So far I have gotten rid of four garbage bags of trash, plus a large box for the thrift store (the kids keep taking things out of it though, so that part is still under negotiation).
I am tired and grumpy, but after much quality time and “help” (or not) from my three children, I leave you with this deeply philosophical thought:
Why do children want to “help” all the time when they are 2 and you don’t really want them to; but when they are 6 and 8 and you need their help, they are no longer so enthusiastic?
Aaaargh…… #*^^%#()_+@
The post I had planned for today will have to be postponed (no pun intended). Tonight it is my turn to host book club which means I must spend my day shoveling junk out of my living room and making my house look somewhat presentable.
Why? I don’t know. Most of the members have children so they know what it’s like! Who am I trying to fool by tidying up my house? Do people really think I live neatly all the time?
Oh well. Whatever flaw of my character compels me to attempt to make my house a model of child-free, elegant perfection, then so be it. Now I am off to collect stray legos and excavate the dining room in an effort to find the surface of the table.
By the way, this month we read The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
. This was a refreshingly humorous change from the long list of depressing books we seem to have gotten into lately. If you are a gardener and want a laugh, you’d enjoy it.
Thanks to morguefile.com and photographer Keshan Gunasinghe for this still-life (taken in China)
adult books, Book Recommendations, Everything Else!, mess, musings, other
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book club, cleaning, mess, The $64 Tomato, what I am reading, William Alexander
When I die, I DO NOT want to be reincarnated as our sofa!
Our sofa is a practical sort of sofa. I found it years ago for a great price at a consignment store. It is a good solid sofa, with nice high sides, plump pillows and cute little bolsters. It has some style, in a slightly retro kind of way. It is wonderful for reading with a cup of tea, lounging with the laptop, or even sleeping on all night. Oh, and did I mention the color? It is upholstered in a sensible, kind of baroque-like pattern of goldy-browns and dark browns.
But, look closely at our sofa and you will see chocolate milk stains (well hidden by the pattern and brown color), cat claw snags, sags in the back cushions from too many cats and kids sitting on them, and a small split on one arm that has been sewn back together (easily covered by a throw). TV-free kids can be a little hard on a sofa.
This is what happens on our sofa:
The moral of this story is that if you are not going to sit your kids down neatly in front of TV, you’d better have a sturdy, brown consignment-store sofa!
I have a love-hate relationship with stuff. I am, by nature, a neotoma albigula, more commonly known as a “pack rat” (see photo). Yet I yearn to simplify my life by shedding all the excess.
Whenever I get stressed about mess and excess, I go on a cleaning frenzy. I tidy, I throw out, I donate. I always feel so good afterwards. Cleansing the closets equates to cleansing the soul!
However, there are always some strange things that I have trouble parting with: stuffed animals from my childhood (they are my friends, and besides, their feelings would be hurt), the swizzle stick I saved from that family vacation to Maine when I was six (the prettiest shade of red I have ever seen), a box filled with every work schedule I ever had as a flight attendant (cool places!), another box with every letter my Mom or Dad ever wrote me (sentimental attachment), old board games I plan to sell on Ebay (when I have time-ha!), etc. How can I teach frugality and simplicity to my kids when my life is filled with odd and unnecessary items?
I have a particular weakness for cardboard boxes. I like to save them. You never know when you might need one. Plus the kids play with them, and one day I will use every single one of them when I sell all my extra stuff on Ebay and make a fortune.
My husband hates my stuff, especially the boxes. He says we need to just rent a dumpster. I told him, we’ll rent a dumpster when he agrees to put at least half his precious garage junk treasures into it.
I continue to fantasize that my house will one day be transformed into a zen-like sanctuary of simplicity and spiritual living. It will look like one of those minimalist spaces you see sometimes in House Beautiful or even Architectural Digest. My furniture will all be white. My few, artfully arranged books will have matching spines in a soothing palette of neutral colors. I will have miniature zen rock gardens on my coffee table instead of the zen scattering of Cheerios which sits there now.
One day…
Oh…are you going to throw out that box? Can I have it?
Everything Else!, mess, organizing, silly ramblings, simplicty
| cleaning, mess, neotoma albigula, organizing, pack rat, packrat, simplicity, simplifying
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