Identify and Rid Myself of 43 Items of Überclutter

i tend to keep most of my nice shoes in their boxes to keep them clean and in a “home”, and i keep those boxes in a tall stack in between my two identical dressers that have been pulled apart slightly to accommodate. lately, the stack has gotten too high and i weeded out the boxes of the shoes i wear a lot to make room for more. i have a bad habit of keeping boxes, so i need to make myself either make use of it to organize other things (like travel products) or into the recycling they go!

i don’t know if this technically counts as uberclutter, but we bought a new tv stand that is way larger, nicer, and has 4x more storage than the old one had. considering that i’ve moved my entire record collection into it and off of my mondrian shelf, it’s clearing up a lot of clutter so i consider that theoretical uberclutter cleared. now i can use my mondiran shelf the way i originally intended, for book and art storage/display.

my sewing machine from college has been packed away for about 6 months now, so its time for the little table it used to live on to go. i’m trying to clear out all college furniture so, adios little gray table. you’ve been a good table to me.

Now that my wedding is over (boo hoo) time to get rid of my giant stack of wedding magazines. I’m keeping the cool bridal couture mag that cost like $8, and also the issue of Brides with my dress on the cover (!) but thats it. It all has to go!

Note to self: Blog in this category more.

Being a true San Franciscan, I have one hundred thousand scarves. I love football (soccer) scarves, striped scarves, pashminas, really really long scarves, really really soft scarves, so many! So far, my storage solution has been thumbtacks on the back of my hall closet door where I hung them all. Long story short, not a good idea. Good thing fiance’ is a smartypants and cleverly rolled them all up and stuck them inside a multi-compartment vertical shoe rack that hangs from the closet bar. Genius! Now every scarf has it’s own little compartment and I can do with them what my OCD loves best: color code!

So, I guess I didn’t “rid myself” of anything, but I did free up a lot of space and got rid of a lot of annoyance.

For a long time, we had out record player and stereo system on my computer desk in thie living room. Recently, I re-arranged the furniture to make the room seem bigger and the desk just had to go!

I hope some nice person adopted it from out on the sidewalk outside so it doesn’t have to be cold and lonely tonight. :]

Sean finally came and got his computer, chair, and a few other boxes and bags of stuff yesterday.

It’s so nice to have it all out of the living room, you can move around so much easier now.

What a mess it got to be!

I removed all the shit from on top of it and moved it to the other side of my bed where it’s much more efficient. And instead of putting random crap on it, I set up my makeup staples and a vanity mirror to have a vanity and makeup applying area, it’s really nice.

I also put all my perfumes in one area, and all my lotions and creams in another area so everything is nice and categorically organized like my OCD likes.

I have to work on ways to drum up more storage for other items I have that have no homes for. This will improve the general effort I am putting forth to re-arrange my room and get it cleaned because it’s still a mess. Between the gallery in construction and my house, I feel like all I do is clean all day, every day.

13. My magazines.

This is something I’ve had to get around to for a long time now. I’m weird about my magazines. I’ve kept every one of my Ws I’ve ever had, and a lot of my Vogues. I can’t seem to rid myself of them – all the haute couture and special articles about foie gras and Ibiza being lost to the trash compactor’s wrath…I can’t bear it.

There were also a large number of magazines I hadn’t read yet. Ones that had lured me in by beautiful covers, catchy article headlines, the promise of this new collection or so and so’s wedding, and so on.

All this doesn’t sound so bad, but there were also the magazines I had read, laying around the house in their random piles, taunting me to sort through them and throw them away. It took me a while to get around to it.

So, I took ALL the magazines from ALL over the house and put them in one spot. I then sorted them all by title. Then whether I had read them or not. A ton were thrown away. What I was left with was all my Ws in all their spendor, filed by date. The unread ones neatly stacked next to them. My special Vogues filed into a magazine holder by date, and the unread ones in a special holder next to them. Then came a third holder with random mags I hadn’t rad yet, Vanity Fairs and Rolling Stones and a few art magazines, followed by a holder heralding my ‘scrap’ or ‘inspiration’ magazines, ones I’ve kept to cut up or ones I’ve kept for special articles or whathaveyou. Finally, a holder with my international fashion magazines, of which, at $10-$20 a piece, have never been thrown away. A: cos they’re beautiful, and B: at that price, it’s like throwing away a book!

Oh, for the love of French Vogue!

12. Coins.

My old roomate Sean and I always had the worst habit of leaving coins everywhere. Since it was something both of us always did, neither of us really noticed just how out of hand it had gotten at its worst point.

I think I first noticed our change epidemic when I realized that no matter where I looked in the house, there was probably some change laying there, or in a close proximity.

It was everywhere!

Like a slow silent currency army moving in to colonize my apartment one cent at a time. I could take it no more.

When I started to pick up all the change I saw, it became a never ending journey! Change on the tables, floor, counters, in the bathroom, in the hallway….absolute madness!

So, I:

1. Took a small clear glass vase and put it in the kitchen designating it the coin jar of the house. All coins except for quarters (laundry) are to go in there. When it fills to the top, off to CoinStar I go.

2. I also took a little vintage tea saucer I had and put it in my room for the change that collected in there,(a lot) to be emptied it into the kitchen jar when full.

Hopefully, this can severely cut down on the coins laying all over the house and earn me some extra cash on the side!