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Post by def6 on Jan 20, 2023 22:06:23 GMT -5
Welcome to this group AnEchoOfWhispers and Best of Luck in whatever you set out to get done in your home.  |
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Post by AnEchoOfWhispers on Jan 21, 2023 10:13:54 GMT -5
*Waves Hi*
Thanks for more suggestions!
joyinvirginia & papermoon: Thanks! I had a look at the working in 3s thread a long time ago -- I'll look again.
reve: Thanks for the message. I also struggle to get started. Once I *do* start, one of my next big barriers is "decision fatigue". I get started on things, go for just a few minutes, but then it gets extremely difficult to figure out whether an object is something I should keep, or donate, or what. I get very anxious. When I'm getting very worn down by deciding, I sometimes take things to my SO, and ask him what he thinks. He usually tells me to throw it out. Once in a while he thinks we should donate it, and he's sometimes helpful actually getting things into a box for donation. Neither of us is really good at taking the final step, and making it go to a donation location, though! For every 3 boxes we fill, probably 1 gets to a donation site in a timely manner. Others can sit for weeks or months.
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Post by ausmel1 on Jan 21, 2023 15:19:56 GMT -5
Welcome echoofwhispers. I find as soon as I fill a bag or box of donations I have to get it out of the house and to a donation spot. If I don’t it just gets moved around, in the way, stuck under something else, half forgotten. It may not be the most time efficient way to dehoard for lots of people by taking out only small boxes but it works best for me. I then get a feeling of having achieved something. I have found the thread “ 2023 items “ useful to me to keep disposing of a small number of items each week. It all adds up. I understand the factor of decision fatigue. I find if I start with things I see that I have no emotional attachment to I can get a bit done. I also can easily give away things I have valued and collected but no longer really need when I think someone else can make good use of this. I hope you can find a method that works best for you. I would say keep trying methods Until you find works for you, and while you are trying you are getting something done. Best wishes
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Post by papermoon on Jan 21, 2023 15:32:22 GMT -5
ausmel1, I do the same thing... I whisk donations out of the house ASAP. I can honestly and gratefully say that I've never regretted anything I gave away. I barely even remember those things, except for the feeling of relief! Whoosh! Out the door and good-bye!
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Post by nonchalant on Jan 21, 2023 15:55:59 GMT -5
*Waves Hi* Thanks for more suggestions! joyinvirginia & papermoon: Thanks! I had a look at the working in 3s thread a long time ago -- I'll look again. reve: Thanks for the message. I also struggle to get started. Once I *do* start, one of my next big barriers is "decision fatigue". I get started on things, go for just a few minutes, but then it gets extremely difficult to figure out whether an object is something I should keep, or donate, or what. I get very anxious. When I'm getting very worn down by deciding, I sometimes take things to my SO, and ask him what he thinks. He usually tells me to throw it out. Once in a while he thinks we should donate it, and he's sometimes helpful actually getting things into a box for donation. Neither of us is really good at taking the final step, and making it go to a donation location, though! For every 3 boxes we fill, probably 1 gets to a donation site in a timely manner. Others can sit for weeks or months.
There are a few charities that do pick-ups. I don't know what we'd do without them. Just call for an appointment or schedule one online and that's it. You leave the boxes or bags outside the house. No one needs to come inside.
Check to see if anyone in your area will do pick-ups.
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Post by reve on Jan 22, 2023 12:35:14 GMT -5
*Waves Hi* Thanks for more suggestions! joyinvirginia & papermoon: Thanks! I had a look at the working in 3s thread a long time ago -- I'll look again. reve: Thanks for the message. I also struggle to get started. Once I *do* start, one of my next big barriers is "decision fatigue". I get started on things, go for just a few minutes, but then it gets extremely difficult to figure out whether an object is something I should keep, or donate, or what. I get very anxious. When I'm getting very worn down by deciding, I sometimes take things to my SO, and ask him what he thinks. He usually tells me to throw it out. Once in a while he thinks we should donate it, and he's sometimes helpful actually getting things into a box for donation. Neither of us is really good at taking the final step, and making it go to a donation location, though! For every 3 boxes we fill, probably 1 gets to a donation site in a timely manner. Others can sit for weeks or months. Oh I hear you so much on decision fatigue! Firstly, I really do agree that decluttering is a muscle that needs regular work and gets easier the more you are used to it. You can pass over an item now, and come back and get rid of it later once that muscle is stronger. That's totally fine - it doesn't have to all be done in one go. Recently, I've been finding that I can do several passes over an area and that helps me. I think in my recent master bathroom declutter, I did one big "sort through and chuck" where I got rid of a trash bag's worth of easy decisions, one organising session where I chucked another bag's worth with more challenging decisions (things like "I do have another of these downstairs in the correct place and haven't used that in forever" and "if I wanted this again, it would be really cheap to replace" helped me there), and then chucked some more things out while cleaning to the value of another half trash bag. That was over the space of something like a week to ten days. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and even just chucking 2 or 3 items at a time is still making progress. And progress, not perfection, is what's important  . I think it's The Minimal Mom on youtube who talks about having a Time Will Tell Bin when decluttering. If it's not obviously trash or donatable, put it away or in the Time Will Tell Bin, and don't worry about having to make a final decision on it now. Then you can go through that bin later, when you've had that extra time and distance, maybe setting aside some time with your partner to do so. It means you don't have to make a difficult decision on anything in the moment. If you schedule it in that way, it could also be good to do it as part of a day you set aside for taking donations out of the house? I hear you on the struggling to get it actually out of the house though. I really had to schedule some of my donations this past year - I finally got rid of a box of donations that came with us from our old apartment four years previously! If, like me, you struggle with the emotions of letting things go, I take photos of items. The photo will mean I always have the memory of it, and it saves automatically from my phone to my google photos archive. But then I can let the item go and have the memory without giving up the physical space in my house. As for getting started, I've worked at breaking tasks down. So "doing my laundry" for example is often several tasks - gathering laundry and bringing it to the machine (this step I often miss now as I am so much better at putting laundry into the hamper in the bathroom next to the machine), doing a load of laundry, transferring it to the dryer, folding it and bagging it up, taking it upstairs, putting it away. It may not work for everyone, but by making the tasks more bitesize, it doesn't feel like I need so much effort and energy to achieve *something*, and as I say, progress is what we are aiming for. Between more bitesize tasks, and trying to achieve at least three tasks per day, I'm now totally caught up on my laundry, which is a position I've never been in in my life before. Also, one thing that I remember I started thanks to this board was having a trash can in every room. That has really helped me with surface trash.
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Post by nonchalant on Jan 22, 2023 15:22:05 GMT -5
Bite-size is good. That's why I do small loads of laundry two, three times/week. Otherwise, 😱!
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Post by Arid on Jan 22, 2023 15:26:15 GMT -5
That was an *excellent* post, reve!
Arid
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Post by AnEchoOfWhispers on Jan 22, 2023 22:10:08 GMT -5
Thank you all!
I do feel like I'm getting started, and making a little progress. I did actually get a box of books sorted and over to the donation site yesterday. Hooray! I was hoping for more, but one box was what I could manage, and that felt okay. Now I have to deal with the chaos that resulted from trying to get that one box ready (there are now a bunch of books I decided I wasn't ready to donate that are piled on chairs, instead of in bookcases or in the old falling-apart boxes they were in. *Sigh*)
nonchalant: there used to be a charity I relied on that did pickups of clothing, but they stopped doing that several years ago. I think I still have the last bag I put together for them under some things in my front hall... Now I'll have to see if I can research some other ones, and get back on track with that. Thanks.
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Post by reve on Jan 28, 2023 9:50:02 GMT -5
Well done on getting that box to the donation place Echo! Every little helps, and you're making progress. Maybe the books that you are not sure about donating yet can go in a time will tell box and you can come back to them in a a few weeks?
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