Declutter my home for 30 minutes every day

Getting rid of the clutter in preparation for the move was wonderful. I had heard of the peace it brings, but I never imagined what a profound feeling it would be. No clutter ever again.

I finally got the 6 ft long table out of my office. I had it piled high with clothes and had grocery sacks underneath full of papers. It was terrible coming in to look at that mess.

A few weeks ago I heard someone comment that the word most of her clients used after she had helped them remove the clutter was “peace.” She said she now advises new clients by asking, “Would you trade this thing for peace?” It puts the idea of keeping stuff in a whole new perspective.

I purged, cleaned, rearranged, and systematized everything in my bedroom, living room, bath, and kitchen. For the last 6 weeks, all has been tidy, so I’m knocking this one off my list.

It’s back!
I had cleared some clothes out of my closet and from under the bed that were too small for me and separated them into piles in the living room. Like many people that struggle with weight, I have several sets of clothing. There are my fat clothes and my not so fat and my just a little overweight and my normal set. Normal for me is still pretty big, so I even have some clothes that are from many years ago when I worked out and dieted like a mad man and lost over 70 pounds.

All these piles of clothes had to move quickly when my grandson came to visit and needed to sleep on the couch. So off to the studio in a great pile on a long folding table until…. my wife needed the table for a garage sale. So….I’m back to a big pile in the middle of the floor again. Arrgh!

I bought some of those giant zip-lock bags to store the clothing in and they can go under the bed once I sort through them again.

One of these days…. :)

Seems like I can’t get ahead. I rearranged the studio and cut down the engraving workbench to a reasonable size that fits in a corner now. I really don’t need much space when most of my work is done looking through a microscope.
The problem now is that all that stuff that used to be piled around and on the old bench is in this huge pile in the center of the room.
I’ve been down with pneumonia all last week so I haven’t felt like tackling this job.
One day.

I am so bad about papers. Important papers, printouts, mail, magazines…they all go into THE PILE. Then THE PILE starts to topple and gets split into two then three piles. I’m looking around at 5 piles right now. I know that there is also a box under the desk of magazines that I wanted to go through.

When it came time to file my taxes recently it really was interesting. I looked in a file folder that I had created years ago for tax info but there was nothing there for 2005. I went to the pile and as I dug through it I found everything I needed. There was my W2, my 1099’s, my receipts for donations, my property tax statement. Everything was safe and secure in THE PILE.

I’m a packrat. Especially with books. There are hundreds and hundreds of books around the house. Three huge bookcases in the studio/computer room. All kinds of subjects. Motivation, selling, speaking, history, biography, religious, how-to and the list goes on.

I’ve gotten better with one problem area though. I’m handling the mail as it comes in each day now. It gets read and then either thrown away, shredded or filed. No more stacks of mail. Well, except for the magazines. This is part of the problem I’m having with another goal on my list, “Reading the Book of Mormon before the end of the year”. I have so much stuff to read that it’s hard to keep up.

Hello.
My name is Stan and I’m a packrat. (hangs head in shame)

HELLO STAN

Please help me. I’m going to put this goal on my list of 43 things and hopefully having to stare at it each day will encourage me to follow through. It’s worked for other things here.

There are so many areas I need to work on. My closet is already on my list. I literally had stuff falling down on my from the closet.

My studio is another disaster area.
The problem is that once I get engrossed in an engraving project my world is what I can see through a stereo microscope. I really could care less that the rest of the studio looks like a storm just passed through.

After our yard sale last weekend, I was able to reorganize the things we kept in such a way that I now know where everything is when I need it. My art studio is now a place where I can work without having to spend an hour cleaning first.