declutter my house

It always amazes me how much we can give away while not noticing its absence at all. Again, we’d accumulated lots of bags and boxes in the basement, so I took all those as well as various things that didn’t fit in bags (such as a child-size wheelbarrow E is now too tall to push) to the donation center.

We have a big plastic box in the basement where things for donation go. It always overflows into multiple bags and boxes before we get around to bringing the things in, but it still seems like a good system. We don’t have to decide to go around and gather what we no longer have use for—we have a spot to stash that kind of thing as we come across it.

E never wants to throw anything away.

I somehow feel that when there’s a type of paper he does every week as schoolwork, I shouldn’t start throwing them away while he is doing more of them—it seems unsupportive.

He sometimes sits down and churns out a pile of pictures quite quickly.

All these sorts of things pile up. We found a big basket and started using it as a landing spot for them. That was in kindergarten.

It filled. It overflowed. We moved it to our bedroom to be sorted through, but kept from visitors’ eyes in the meantime, and started a new basket. That filled. It overflowed.

The deluge slowed this summer, allowing further procrastination. We could squeeze the occasional new page into the 2nd overflowing basket.

With school starting next week, and recycling being picked up today, it was finally time to address this problem. So last night, while barely listening to the convention, S and I sorted through the baskets, emptying them completely. Things too adorable to discard (pictures, things he wrote) went into artists’ portfolios (one for kindergarten, one for first grade) bought for the purpose. We were able to keep it to a pretty reasonable quantity kept. And about 98% of the stuff went right into recycling.

I feel so much lighter!

We have a artist’s portfolio for second grade work already, so I’m hoping we can put things we can’t part with into it throughout the year, so the basket stuff will just be unimportant papers we can ditch more easily. If we’re not as daunted by the pile, I hope we won’t procrastinate it as much.

At some point (listen to me lie to myself now) I’d like to go back and scan a lot of the stuff we saved, then load it all into one of those digital photo frames so we can see all the cuteness instead of keeping it packed away. Because some of the pictures are just. so. cute.

My cousin/friend and her husband and son (my godson) came to visit yesterday. H is almost exactly 4 years younger than E. I was able to give away a ton of stuff to them—boxes and bags of clothes and toys that I’d been setting aside. I don’t care if they only end up keeping a fraction of it when they get it home and sort through it; if there’s anything they can use that pleases me, and it makes it so much easier for E to part with things if he’s giving them to someone he knows.

And they didn’t want two ride-on toys we had, so out by the road they went this morning, with a “free” sign on them. They were gone within the hour.

Yay!

When E was littler, he was given one of those nice wooden pretend oven/stove/sink things, with TONS of that realistic looking pretend food and dishes and pots and pans and all kinds of stuff.

He was only ever interested in it in a lukewarm way. With encouragement, he’d play with it on occasion, especially if I played with him. But mainly it was a big space hog.

Some time ago, he agreed with us that it could go. But, though I give away so much unwanted stuff, I thought this was worth selling. So it sat in a corner of our dining room for a long, long, long time, waiting to be sold. Much like many other items we intend to sell.

Finally, knowing that Sunday would be a rare weekend afternoon at home, I got some focus about this. I dusted it, spread all the food items out in attractive groupings, took pictures, and wrote an enthusiastic description. S posted it on Craigslist, and 4 hours later it was in the buyer’s hands. And E was delighted, because it’s his money. And I am delighted, because I’ve reclaimed some space in the dining room.

I’m hoping this will be great positive reinforcement for us to continue doing this kind of thing.

For a while now, I’ve felt like there is just too much stuff in the home office.

Now, some changes are happening at work which alter what I need to keep within easy reach of my desk, so today I rid myself of some stuff and put some other stuff in boxes, because I’m not likely to need them often.

Then I tackled S’s desk. It has the desktop computer, and technically it’s “our” computer and “our” desk, but since I have another desk (and work on a laptop) I never sit there. I decided that we don’t need everything we have to be within easy reach: 2-3 legal pads are more than enough. We rarely reach for a new folder or binder. We almost never want looseleaf. And so on. So I put all that kind of extra stuff in a basement cabinet that had some extra shelf space. We keep canned goods and such on basement shelves and think nothing of running down there if we need an item, so why shouldn’t we behave the same way with office supplies? It looks so much less cluttered now.

Tonight, I’m going to make S sort through more stuff that I couldn’t do myself: computer cables and things like that. I thought of CIAGW, because I think this is one of her never-ending clutter issues, and I found cables all over S’s desk and in the aforementioned basement cabinet. And I think there’s a box under his workbench, too. And we have one old laptop and 2 old computers stashed away. It might be time for a technology purge!

Anyway, “less is more” was echoing in my mind as I worked on the office today, and while there’s more to do toward getting less to be in the room, I did make major strides today.

I recently removed all wire hangers from my closets. I had a ton of them! Then I heard a story on NPR about how the price of wire hangers has gone way up, and dry cleaners are encouraging people to bring them back. Well, we only go to the dry cleaner a couple times a year, but we happened to be going Saturday, and we gave them all those hangers.

Also, we got E to agree to get rid of some toys he hasn’t played with in a long, long time.

Saturday I came home with a trunkful of things of my mother’s that were destined for Goodwill. They sat in my car for several days while I felt embarassed to have it heaped up to the window level with plastic bags. Finally, I dropped them off today.

How does this count as decluttering my house? Because I added the big heap of stuff we had here before I went. It’s not a huge step forward, because these were things we’d already identified—I didn’t do any purging. But at least I got them in the car and to the donation center. It’s something.

Yesterday I went to IKEA and while there, picked up some magazine holders. I keep magazines at my desk for work purposes :) not to while away the hours. And I’d filled up all the existing holders, so getting new ones helped me organize that top shelf.

Then I removed a lamp. I really liked the lamp, but I cannot. find. the. lightbulbs. it. uses. So a few months ago I bought a $10 lamp at Target “until I find the right lightbulb.” Well, duh. I was kidding myself. I had a nonfunctioning lamp and a functioning lamp on my top shelf. How stupid is that? So I got rid of the lamp.

Then I spent a huge amount of time crawling around on the floor under my desk dealing with wires & cords. You know those huge tangles of wires? I got rid of a few things that were plugged in there (extra lamp, for example) and twist-tied excess length on some cords so they’d be more contained. And then I moved the power strip up to my desk.

I’m not sure about that last part. My desk isn’t huge and every inch is valuable real estate. But. I also hate crawling under my desk every time I want to plug in or unplug my laptop. It’s a major psychological barrier. So now I won’t have to do that. Also, I keep a stool under my desk so I can rest my feet on it, and I always have to fit its legs just so among the wires. Now it’s just in clear floor! And the wires hang down but don’t touch the floor. It will be far easier to keep dust from building up down there.

There’s much more I could do to get this office into better shape, but this was a very satisfying hour.

S, E, and I spent the entire day Saturday on E’s room. We handled and evaluated every single toy, selecting what didn’t need to be kept. We moved things to new places. For example, he got more Lincoln Logs for Christmas, so they needed a bigger bin. We dismantled and removed his train table to give him more floor space, since even when he plays with his train set (rare), the table seemed to limit him. We even moved his bed.

It was great to find spots for some stuff that came at Christmas and has just been occupying floor space ever since. And it was great to get rid of some stuff.

What really made me happy, though, was how well E handled all these changes. In the past, he’s been reluctant to give up any toy whatsoever, and has been known to burst into tears at the idea of changing anything in his room (as when we wanted to put up some shelves). This time, however, he was very mature about it, seriously working with us to decide what he really wants to keep and what was “too young” for him or just no longer interesting to him, and was even enthusiastic about rearranging furniture. He’s growing up! (And I’m not just saying this because he’s hanging over my shoulder right now!)

Gave away 2 huge boxes of misc. stuff, one box of books, a small bag of clothes, and a small TV.

I hope it doesn’t rain. The donation center was supposed to be open until 4, but wasn’t, so I added my stuff to the piles of things outside the door. It’s two towns away, and I checked their website ahead of time. Why weren’t they there?!