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Post by TML on Nov 13, 2010 7:21:03 GMT -5
I have been reading the books by Peter Walsh 1) it is all too much and 2) does this clutter make my butt look fat.
His thinking is upside down and out of the box for me. I can see that I have been reshuffling the chairs on the titanic and wondering why the ship is sinking.
So I thought I would post my take on it and see if others read it the same way or had additional thoughts.
Essentially it is stop looking at the clutter and stuff. I have been focused for years on how am I going to get this stuff organized and make it look good. I have been shoving 5 pounds of stuff in a 3 pound space and there is no way it is going to all fit and look good.
I am instead focusing on each room and deciding what do I want from this room (space) in terms of function and how do I want it to look. I focus really hard on what it will look like and see me living in it and enjoying life. Then I look at the stuff (piece by piece) and decide where does this stuff fit in. If it fits in this room (focusing on the vision) then it can stay, if it fits in another room then it goes in the out of place box otherwise it goes in either the give, sell, or trash boxes.
Another example is my bathroom double vanity top. It has been total chaos with every flat surface (and stacked on top of each other) covered. Right now I am organizing it.
I can keep 6 items on top.
1. soap dish
2. soap liquid dispenser
3. toothbrush holder
4. glass (this I am debating on replacing with something else)
5. little jar for Q-tips and cotton puffs.
6. Mystery item
The mystery item is one other item that I think adds value and I really need badly so it deserves a space. Right now I have not decided and of course all the items are screaming pick me and I think I was bribed by the cold cream jar.
Then underneath the vanity behind the drawers I should have a portable bucket for daily needs and a set of little drawers for items I use on a weekly, monthly basis.
Underneath: (one side is my stuff and the other I put some cleaners but I have much more space now)
Portable bucket with a handle: (I found a really cute one at target... acrylic aqua blue) anIn here I am keeping my daily beauty stuff except for make up. The face wash, astringents, moisterizers, and etc.
Then I have a little make up bag
A little drawer set with my nail polishes and etc, grooming stuff that I use weekly.
I whole lot of stuff was just wasting the space and then nothing could be found or used.
So by turning it upside down I meant....
Instead of looking at the stuff and trying to find space for it all, I am looking at my space and placing stuff within the space (focused on function and vision).
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Post by messymommy on Nov 13, 2010 10:15:13 GMT -5
I understand certain designers do it this way, too. Rooms must be functional AND lovely. Lots of them start by emptying out the room completely and then bring the pieces back in, one at a time. If something doesn't function well, fit well, or contribute to the overall look of the room, out it goes again. It can go to another room, or be donated or trashed. (Like your bathroom counter, TML. You decided that 6 items out will still give you the look and functionality you need, and all the other stuff had to find a better functioning place to live.)
Thanks for posting this. I'm thinking my bedroom needs me to look at it upside down for a while.
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Post by sporadic on Nov 13, 2010 10:43:04 GMT -5
So by turning it upside down I meant.... Instead of looking at the stuff and trying to find space for it all, I am looking at my space and placing stuff within the space (focused on function and vision). I haven't been able to work that way. I first need to know what I have in order to know how to organize and store it. The only way I could truly know EVERYTHING I have is to sort & edit (purge). Buy doing this process first, I kept only the best, most useful and most liked items - then I could know how much & where in each appropriate room. |
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Post by fluffernut - now Jannie on Nov 13, 2010 11:34:20 GMT -5
I once rented a house for a two week vacation on a lake. It was fully furnished (even came with silverwear and pots and pans) and had maid service. All I had to bring in were my food and clothing. It was great to see totally empty table tops, empty closets, empty kitchen cabinets. Wish I could afford to live there year round. Hey, I can, I can clear out all the junk from my real house. All that I'll miss is the water view.
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Post by CaringFriend on Nov 13, 2010 12:25:14 GMT -5
All that I'll miss is the water view. And the maid service!   !!! |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 13, 2010 12:30:19 GMT -5
Peter Walsh's method is the one that has worked best for me. Granted, it's not a permanent fix. (My previously pristine rooms are now cluttered again.) But it's the best one I've found among all the decluttering books I've tried to work through.
It does seem really harsh to totally empty out a room, but that's pretty much what I did to my three bedrooms and living room. It took a lot of time (3 days for a moderately cluttered room) and I did leave the big furniture in the room. But I found it so much easier to get rid of miscellaneous things when I took them out of the room and then later had to decide whether to put them back in the newly cleaned room.
I'm not sure how well this would work for a hoarding situation or a severely cluttered/dirty room . You might need extra time and maybe some extra help for cleaning, repairs, or hauling away. That would take longer. But for a situation like mine, where I just needed to get rid of a lot of miscellaneous junk that had built up over time, it worked wonders.
(For reference, my issues are not so much about attachment to stuff; rather, I tend to have guilt about waste, and I tend to neglect cleaning and decluttering so things pile up and get messy.)
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dazymae2
New Member
Decluttering one day at a time
Joined: September 2010
Posts: 95
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Post by dazymae2 on Nov 13, 2010 12:45:37 GMT -5
okay, I just purchased his book for my kindle. Even though I have rid myself of a lot of stuff in the move, I am finding that I still have too much stuff. I like his idea of looking at the space you are filling and only putting those functional or beautiful items in that space. In the past my bathroom was covered with stuff!! In my new place, I have my toothbrush caddy, a soap dispenser, Kleenex box, soap tray, and a few decorative items to brighten the space and make me smile. I do have my jewelry pegboard on the wall and a 3 small jewelry boxes on the counter. i packed away all the excess jewelry away in a box under the sink. I have extra shampoo, soap and tissue under the sink. The blow dryer, mousse and hair spritzer is in a storage container in a cupboard under vanity. Excess medications are in zip lock bags in another storage container in another cupboard under sink. Now I did unpack clothes yesterday and hung them up in closets and put away in drawers.. I have come to realize that even though I donated over 30 garbage bags of clothes already, i still have too many clothes!! I am hoping I can purge myself again of all these excess clothes. Clothes are hard for me, as I never had very many clothes growing up, I had hand me downs, or the few items we would purchase at the beginning of the school year. So I am having a hard time letting go. But I am sitting here thinking about what i hung up in my closet yesterday. do I really need the teeshirts with the food stains?? Or the threadbare white dress shirt for my husband?? How about the Hawaiian mu mu that I feel conspicuous in and never wear out of the house. Then there is the lavender quilt on my bed, that i have had since I was 16. It is missing patches of fabric and i have to use extra blankets on that side of the bed, because it isn't very warm where the fabric has worn out. I have other blankets in the linen closet that I am not using that are beautiful and functional. I need to let go of my "blankie" !! What about the 100 video's that we never watch cause we use the DVD player almost exclusively?? He really does give me something to think about. I only Kept functional items for my kitchen and i have a place for each and every item with room to spare. I want this for the rest of my apartment. i am still unpacking, but I think I will re-examine my stuff again. I am glad you mentioned his name, because he is really making me think!!  |
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Post by Script on Nov 13, 2010 15:04:58 GMT -5
I have been toying with the idea of limits I too decided some time back to establish definite LIMITS on some possessions. Some examples, as follows: *I can have CD's on the two shelves in a certain cabinet. Once the shelves are full, I have to get rid of some CD's before getting more in. *I have specific drawers for lingerie, including panties, bras, pjs, sleep tees, lounging stuff. Those are my LIMITS. I am a lingerie junkie, and could cheerfully buy more-newer-nicer-cuter every day of the year [thanks to catalogue shopping]. Knowing that there is a LIMIT and the one-in-one-out rule has to apply is very helpful! *I have two small trays for perfumes. THAT'S IT! I can have only what fits on those trays [one in bathroom, one in bedroom]. There are always such good 'bargains' and deals and gift-with-purchase offers wherever I go, so having a LIMIT is very helpful for me in resisting buying more. Great ideas here! |
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Post by shopgirl on Nov 13, 2010 15:19:16 GMT -5
What a thought-provoking thread! I'd love to figure out a way to have my THREE plastic 7-day pill holders so that I can see them, but NOT see them, if you know what I mean. They're unsightly. On my bathroom counter. If I don't see them, I forget to take my meds and vitamins. But I hate to see them.
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Post by OnTheMend on Nov 13, 2010 15:39:55 GMT -5
What a thought-provoking thread! I'd love to figure out a way to have my THREE plastic 7-day pill holders so that I can see them, but NOT see them, if you know what I mean. They're unsightly. On my bathroom counter. If I don't see them, I forget to take my meds and vitamins. But I hate to see them. Maybe you could set (a) reminder(s) on your computer or cell phone (or BOTH!), to take the medicines? |
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Post by blossoming on Nov 13, 2010 17:18:23 GMT -5
i like this. this is how i do things. makes things harmonius, usable, keeps our homes from being warehouses.
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Post by CaringFriend on Nov 13, 2010 17:45:49 GMT -5
I'd love to figure out a way to have my THREE plastic 7-day pill holders so that I can see them, but NOT see them, if you know what I mean. They're unsightly. On my bathroom counter. If I don't see them, I forget to take my meds and vitamins. But I hate to see them. I keep my three 7-day pill holders in a Ziploc bag in a drawer I open every single morning. Could you place yours in your underwear drawer or some similar drawer? Keeping meds out of the bathroom also keeps them away from moisture.  |
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Post by TML on Nov 13, 2010 20:38:57 GMT -5
I love the decorative box idea for medications. You can get really pretty fairly inexpensive boxes at the open markets or pier one import or etc. I am glad to see the upside down thinking has worked for people (stuff into a planned space rather than space for stuff). It is slowly working for me. I have managed to pare stuff done so that most of it is what I think of as good. However, I still have enough "good" stuff to fill a ware house. I did the hand over heart pledge he mentions too (with my mother) that I will only buy essentials until I get this dug out. Of course I am not sure my essentials and Peters are the same thing . I am also using it on Mom (Mom lives with me). Our living room like the rest of the house is a wreck and I having been trying to get it organized but everytime I pick up something of Mom's she is like put it down that is good we just need to find a space to stick it. So I tried the technique on Mom. I asked her if this (waving arm at living room) is how she wanted to live. She said no, absolutely not. Then I asked her how did she want to live in the living room and how should it look. So we talked about it for a while. Well we cleaned off the fireplace mantle (down to two pretty candles) and the coffee table. Mom donated some items to good will and some of the other items are in her sewing room. However the sewing rooms time will come. It is still a work in progress but Mom and i are working from our vision of how it should be rather than looking for places to stick stuff. So far so good. |
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Post by vega on Nov 13, 2010 21:37:26 GMT -5
I've worked both bottom up and top down on this sort of thing. Sometimes I get out all my stuff, as sporadic suggests, and see what it is and how much I have and other times I look at the space and pare down to fit it. Usually it's sort of a circular thing for me. When I get, say, my drawing supplies, down to what I consider a reasonable level but then go to put them away and find they still overrun the space, I either have to go back to my art supplies and pare down some more OR look around for a different area to be my art room (and thus something else would have to go). I do think that maintaining a vision of what I want any particular room to look like is very important. If I go just with my desire to have all the supplies I think I could possibly need for the next six months (or whatever) that can lead to me piling the room up in such a way that it's no longer conducive to creating art (or relaxing or cooking or whatever the room is for). On the other hand, sometimes my vision of how I'd like things to look is so minimalistic that I could only keep two pens and a pack of sticky notes and that won't do either.  I do like Walsh's concentration on the life we want to lead rather than the stuff we own. The point of a home isn't just to warehouse our stuff, it's to facilitate us being who we want to be. I think the best thing I learned from Peter Walsh was that when I think I'm 'deciding' whether to keep something, I'm often just identifying the item. You see it on his TV show (is that still on? I don't have cable anymore, so I don't know) he'll say to people " is this important?" or " do you want this?" and they say " that was a wedding gift from my aunt zelda" As if that answered the question. It doesn't. I used to think (as the people on the show do) that it did. That " it was a wedding gift" or " my mum made that" WAS a defacto answer to " do you want this?" The day I realized that it wasn't and that I needed to dig deeper and really answer the question for myself (which might mean no, but might still mean yes) the way I looked at my stuff changed radically. |
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Post by shopgirl on Nov 14, 2010 15:14:06 GMT -5
Thank you for your suggestions on the pill holders! I never thought of decorating the pill holders themselves. Those giant letters SMTWTFS are so ugly. Thinking of teeny tiny photos on each compartment, like a pretty calendar. The small one maybe tiny flower stickers. This could be fun!
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