Minimize existing clutter and excess possessions

I don’t really do Christmas, per se, so I get a four-day weekend for just sort of generalized messing around this weekend. I think I’m going to go crazy and pick out lots of stuff to get rid of, and maybe rearrange. My goal is to have a whole trunkful of stuff in my car to go donate… and I have a big trunk!

I’m selling some yarn on ravelry, and some other stuff I have around the house on Craigslist, now, so I’ll be glad when that’s out of the way.

I have two bar stools I have from an old apartment where I had a breakfast bar… I haven’t been able to bring myself to get rid of them, so I’m using one for a plant stand and the other’s stashed behind the tv. Maybe it’s time to make the call, on those. (Except I don’t know where I’d put my peace lily, then… :-)

I thought I was doing better with decluttering, but then I saw my downstairs neighbor’s apartment and … it’s so clean and spare, I’m soaking in envy. My problem is, I have artsy-craftsy hobbies, and they just accumulate stuff. I should pare down.

Does it count towards “less clutter” if I decided, this year, to only give Christmas gifts of things I made, that can get used up, so their houses won’t be full of junk? (Well, at least, I won’t be contributing to fullness-of-junk.) I’m going to give out crafts I made (knitting and soap, basically) and homemade candy. Possibly cookies if I get around to it. And I’m going to take the money I would otherwise have spent buying gifts and donate it. This works out really well for my charities, because my workplace will match my donations up to $2k. So far, I’m leaning towards Médecins Sans Frontières and (locally) the Howard Brown Health Center. So that’s my plan… food, use-uppable soap, and health care for sick people. Totally better than pink fuzzy slippers.

Honestly, where does it all come from? Every time I think “well, I’ve certainly made inroads now!” I start rearranging something and find more piles of stuff I don’t see the need to keep any longer.

I had decided a couple of months ago to try the backwards hanger trick to find clothes I was reluctant to give away but never wore, and turned all my hangers around. I’ve been good about that (not that it takes any effort beyond the initial), but I also just sort of, last weekend, started axing backwards-hangers stuff even though it hasn’t been a year. Just one of those “oh, let’s be realistic! you haven’t worn this for three years! and you don’t plan on doing so any time soon either!” things, trying to make some room in there. I’m no longer out of hangers for stuff… I have plenty of extras. There’s still many items hanging backwards awaiting judgment, but I feel a little better having shortcut a bit.

I’m grateful to have a small entryway outside my front door, so I can just move all the stuff out there as I collect it, and then pile it up until there’s enough to justify another trip to The Brown Elephant!

You know, it’s maybe a good thing this seems like it’ll never be done (and so I’ll never be able to click “I’ve done this!” and get it off my todo list)—because at least having this on my list is a constant reminder. Well, as if just having stuff everywhere isn’t enough of one. Still. Where does it all come from! I don’t even buy that much stuff anymore, since I’m trying to concentrate on saving money.

Oh well. I decided to do the GTD closet trick—I’ll be turning all the hangers in my closet around backwards this week sometimes. Then when I put away laundry, I’ll face the hangers normally. In a year, anything still hanging backwards goes off to be donated. And as for now, I’ve found some shoes that were living in my closet indefinitely by virtue of cuteness, so I tried actually wearing them, and some of them were too big and others too small and the bottom line is I remembered why I never wear them, so now they’re all going to get donated as well.

It seems like I just hauled off a bunch of stuff to the Brown Elephant just yesterday… this really is never-ending! But every time I find some new open space in my apartment that wasn’t there before, it’s worthwhile.

Any other person in the universe would have been, like, “Hey! Look! It’s 90+ degrees in the shade, and 10,000,000% humidity outside from the rain! Maybe we should not do the errand that requires six trips up and down the stairs from the third floor to the ground, then loading a full carload of stuff, driving up the traffic-tacular north side, and unloading all the stuff by yourself. Maybe we could do that another weekend when it won’t induce heat stroke.”

I of course am blithely ignorant of the consequences of actions such as this until, like, I’m on the way home, and melting into a pile of goo. Man, is it just unpleasant out there!

On the bright side, now my house has, let’s see. Four fewer (copier paper sized) boxes of books and stuff, three garbage bags and two grocery sacks less clothing and bedding. And one less candleholder. And I can actually see my living room floor again now that I’ve gotten all the “to give away” stuff actually given away. I’m not sure what to do with all this crazy unused space! Maybe I’ll just sort of sit and admire it for now. Just as soon as I drink a gallon of water and bask in my air conditioning for a little while.

(P.S. When I was unloading, another person came by and donated a full sack full of yarn. The shop employee asked if it was new, etc., and the guy said that his girlfriend just bought it, and then realized she didn’t like the color. And I did not stick around to stalk the yarn. I got the heck out of Dodge before adopting more crap to take home. It was a close one though.)

I got rid of some stuff I was meaning to get rid of, recently—sold an old computer I no longer used, sold my old comic books, and made my first trip ever (!) to sell used CDs and DVDs. Then I cleaned out my closet and have bag after bag (well, some are more grocery sack sized than garbage bag sized, but still) of old clothing I’m going to donate to The Brown Elephant.

I went through a trunk in which I’d been collecting all the items of sentimental value to me – old pictures, t-shirts with some sort of memory attached, etc. – and trashed a bunch of stuff I no longer wanted. I got the contents of the trunk down to a small cardboard box, and while I don’t want to keep it in the cardboard box indefinitely (not least because there are newspapers in the collection, and I don’t want them to fall apart), it’s way less than a whole trunk. This way, I was able to reuse the trunk to store part of my yarn stash.

The trunk, plus the extra space in my closet, means my whole yarn stash is indoors now (instead of some of it being in ziplock bags on the back porch, which always made me worry), and also sorted so it’ll be easier to find. Yay for having enough storage by getting rid of junk!

Time to declutter.

Maybe I’ll set aside next weekend for cleaning and picking out things to get rid of.

Need to find where I can sell used CDs/DVDs, maybe put old clothes on consignment or something.

I’m going to take some time off work in July so I can make plans to go donate/sell/get rid of stuff then.

My office is still not nearly as cluttered as it got before, but it’s not as nice and neat as it was for a while. I need to reclaim that neatness; it made me really happy and now I’m all dissatisfied with clutter. :)

...I adore having a clutter-free living room. It’s so neat and organized and yet still cosy and welcoming! It’s lovely to see where the floor meets the walls and there are no dust-bunnies there, or anything pushed up against the wall.

It’s so refreshing! I’m so grateful to the friend that pushed me to start getting rid of things. This was one of the best habits I’ve ever started to actively pursue.

I find it easy to get rid of a fair amount of stuff, but sometimes I run into a little barrier that says “no, I spent a lot on that, I can’t just get rid of it.” Most recently this came up when during this weekend’s clean-up-athon, I found a box I’d never unpacked since moving, a year ago. It was full of audiobooks on CD – Harry Potter books 1-4 and 6, and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower books 1, 3, and 5. I really am resisting putting those in the “to be donated” box (although I happily put several other audiobooks in there), and the main reason seems to be “they were freaking expensive.” Which they were. If I recall correctly, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was about $110 new. But… it was in a box for a year and I didn’t notice. I haven’t listened to it since I bought it (I was on a road trip when the book came out). Yes, I probably would listen to them again if I had them, but….

I don’t know. I’m torn. They will probably get donated eventually (if for no other reason than I will talk myself into it because since they were expensive new, and they should be relatively easily resold, they could raise some good money for the charity secondhand shop I donate my junk to), but … sometimes I wonder how to get over the barrier in my head that says it’s okay to spend “good money (space and time) after bad (buying something I don’t use).” Like if I admitted I bought things I didn’t need I would be admitting to some sort of shameful mistake.

Oh well. I’m probably overanalyzing this. Sometimes it’s just hard to overcome the “stuff” barrier, though.