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Post by southerngirl on Jul 12, 2009 8:11:39 GMT -5
I'm still working on getting ready for my apartment inspection here ... and then I want to continue the momentum and keep decluttering. I live in a 2 bedroom townhouse and work at home (sell vintage books on eBay). My big challenge is too much of everything. Do you find it is easier to do a clean sweep or to do one box at a time, breaking it into smaller projects? Trying to plan the next step so I keep going this week. Thanks!  |
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Post by flylady on Jul 12, 2009 9:53:07 GMT -5
I think, one box at a time, so you don't burn yourself out, it all depends on when your inspection is? Good Luck, you CAN do it!
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Post by southerngirl on Jul 12, 2009 10:04:03 GMT -5
Hi, thanks for your note. I'm talking about after the inspection ... I will still have MANY boxes to go through at that point.
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Post by scribbles on Jul 12, 2009 11:34:15 GMT -5
For me, it depends on what I'm decluttering. With papers, I can go about 15-20 minutes, and then I can't make any more decisions. Everything starts to go in the "decide about it later" pile. So, for me, going through paperwork can only be done in small chunks of time, because I get "decided out," instead of worn out.
Most other stuff, I can work for longer periods of time. Clothes and books and kitchen stuff, I can work for a couple of hours at a time.
But I'll admit that I have never spent a whole day doing nothing but decluttering.
When my squalor was at its worst and I knew I had to do *something*, I did 15 minutes of decluttering a day. I started in the den, which was the worst room, a high level 2. I decluttered for 15 minutes and then I took the next 15 minutes to deal with what I had just gone through.
Things I was keeping were sorted and put in boxes. I had the "Great Wall O'Boxes" in my living room. The boxes were labeled with their contents--Craft Supplies, Photos, Office Supplies, etc. Trash went into the garbage can. Recycling went into the recycling bin. Donations were put in their own box.
It was that second 15 minutes that was the big deal for me. I had decluttered many, many times before, but never did anything with the stuff. So I had piles of things to keep and things to throw out and things to donate, but they just sat there.
I still have two boxes from the Great Wall O'Boxes that I need to sort through (and maybe declutter a bit more!) and find homes for the things in them.
At the time, I could handle 1/2 hour every day of decluttering. More might have just been too much.
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Post by southerngirl on Jul 12, 2009 12:41:50 GMT -5
Thanks, Scribbles! I related to the Great Wall O'Boxes. That is sort of where I am right now too. When I moved here I had boxes of my various collections, books, etc. and some of those are still boxed. I also have over-shopped for eBay inventory (that is what I do for a living) and have many boxes of that. I feel like I live in the house of boxes.
I had a paper mountain in the dining room but it is newly gone ... so I am grateful that there is no more paper to go through. I find paper takes the longest too. So many decisions - keep, file, toss, etc.
I think I need to put aside a couple of extra boxes for donations in the living room, and have regular donation runs as I declutter.
I really like the 15 minute at a time idea.
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Post by yearning4order on Jul 12, 2009 12:49:13 GMT -5
I decluttered for 15 minutes and then I took the next 15 minutes to deal with what I had just gone through. Things I was keeping were sorted and put in boxes. I had the "Great Wall O'Boxes" in my living room. The boxes were labeled with their contents--Craft Supplies, Photos, Office Supplies, etc. Trash went into the garbage can. Recycling went into the recycling bin. Donations were put in their own box. It was that second 15 minutes that was the big deal for me. I had decluttered many, many times before, but never did anything with the stuff. So I had piles of things to keep and things to throw out and things to donate, but they just sat there. I still have two boxes from the Great Wall O'Boxes that I need to sort through (and maybe declutter a bit more!) and find homes for the things in them. This is the part I'm wondering about too, as I'm doing the initial "first sweep" through the house so that I can create a staging area, as well as reclaim some storage space to put "keeper" items in. But currently the office is becoming a "pile and sort later" zone, until I drill my way to the closet and can actually begin putting things in there. So far I've emptied 3 or 4 tubs of papers, with the same number left to go. But I'm wondering if my method of bulldozing to the next free storage space and then finding homes for things is the right one? (The closet is largely empty, it can be seen but not reached just yet. Once I clear the clutter and whatnot from in front of it, then I can use it, which is where a number of things like the Christmas ornament box are waiting to go to.) I'm also curious, where do I go to get the side racks to put hangers in my file cabinet so I can use hanging files? It's a nice wood file cabinet that I got at an office furniture liquidation. Edited to add, Southerngirl, I also used to sell on eBay, used to sell high end childrens' clothes. While it was great supplemental income at the time, as I was watching the hoardhouse.com videos last night I realized it really fed my hoard/clutter tendencies. How do you keep that in check, or are you not a hoarder? |
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Post by scribbles on Jul 12, 2009 17:16:18 GMT -5
Yearning, what worked for me with this method was that I gathered all the like things together. Slowly, but I did gather them.
I have found that for me, there are three catagories of stuff when I'm purging.
1. Trash. Stuff that you don't really even have to think about. It just goes in the trash.
2. Stuff I think I want to keep, but I'm not really sure. I might have a duplicate somewhere, but I'm not sure where and I don't know which one I'll want to keep and which one I'll want to toss.
3. Things I know I want to keep.
What worked for me with the Wall O'Boxes was that I got all the stuff I thought I wanted, or needed, to keep all in one place. Once I had all my craft supplies together, it was a lot easier for me to see which ones to keep and which ones to let go.
Once I had all my clothes in one place, I could put all the sweaters in a pile. I counted them. I had 33 sweaters. I did not have room to store 33 sweaters. And 33 sweaters seemed like an awful lot for one person. I was able, by seeing all the sweaters together, to pick out my top 10 sweaters for work and my top 5 sweaters for home/running errands. I cut the sweaters down from 33 to 15.
Had I just looked at each sweater as I came to it, I would have probably kept most of them. It is very easy for me to look at one thing by itself and come up with many reasons to keep it. Looking at all of one category helps me to realize how much I have--and it was almost always too much.
One of the reasons I did the sort and purge this way was that I knew I was going to have to buy some storage furniture. The apartment I was living in had very little built-in storage. But, for once, I didn't dash out and buy the storage furniture and then throw stuff in it. I sorted and purged and looked at what I had left and *then* figured out what sort of furniture I needed to buy.
I've also accepted the fact that I might think I have found all my vases, say. And I've found a shelf in a cabinet to store them all. And then I might find another one that I want to keep. And there's not enough room with the other vases to store it. So, at some point I will need to find a new home for all the vases. I like things to be settled. I have to work at being flexible on issues like this.
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Post by Meme on Jul 12, 2009 18:21:56 GMT -5
I think the clean sweep is really done one box at a time but maybe faster - it depends on how you can handle the physical and the mental upheaval - and getting it ''gone''.
hugs as you do what you can do with what you have..........
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Calico
New Member
Joined: October 2011
Posts: 59
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Post by Calico on Jul 12, 2009 21:27:29 GMT -5
I usually do one box at a time. Like Scribbles, it helps for me to "put like with like" as I'm sorting, and then go through the things once they're together. I did that with clothes - I would take an armful of clothes and sort them into bags or boxes: jeans, pants, shorts, sweatpants, sweaters, sweatshirts, T-shirts, etc. Then once I had them sorted by type, I could take one bag at a time and make decisions about them.
I had a lot of boxes in my garage after I moved in. I brought them in one at a time, emptied the box onto the living room floor, flattened and recycled the box, and then went through the items. A mantra that is helpful for me is to think of the choices: give away, throw away, or put away. I found with my boxes that had been stored for a long time, about a third fit into each category.
It tends to be more motivating to be successful with one box, than to tackle a whole room and end up having to shove things back into closets or drawers because you run out of steam (or time).
Calico
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Post by southerngirl on Jul 13, 2009 8:13:29 GMT -5
Thanks for the help and the advice. Scribbles, that is great advice about putting likes together. That helped a lot with clothes and makes sense it would help with boxed items also.
Yearning4order - re: selling on eBay. I used to collect vintage books and then realized that I only want the truly special ones (i.e. about one small bookcase full). This was a few years ago and it was eye opening to me. I have been culling my personal collection (which is very large) and my other sales items are vintage books I've bought at estate sales, etc. I realized this weekend that I do NOT need to shop at estate sales, library sales, etc. for quite some time ... I have a backlog of books to sell (specifically 22 boxes of them!). I sell full-time so can actually move through them pretty quickly. I am a Powerseller and have been selling since 2003.
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Post by yearning4order on Jul 13, 2009 10:04:10 GMT -5
Yearning4order - re: selling on eBay. I used to collect vintage books and then realized that I only want the truly special ones (i.e. about one small bookcase full). This was a few years ago and it was eye opening to me. I have been culling my personal collection (which is very large) and my other sales items are vintage books I've bought at estate sales, etc. I realized this weekend that I do NOT need to shop at estate sales, library sales, etc. for quite some time ... I have a backlog of books to sell (specifically 22 boxes of them!). I sell full-time so can actually move through them pretty quickly. I am a Powerseller and have been selling since 2003. Wow hats off to you! Yeah I don't think I could ever go back to it. In all the cleaning I've been doing I continue to unearth boxes and tubs of amazing childrens' clothes...that just got buried and never got sold! Very nice that you are able to make it work for you. Scribbles, great suggestions about like with like! |
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