The big declutter

17. January 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
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Mr. Geeky putting in new floor

So the last few days, I didn’t get to my daily decluttering.  At first, it was because I was recovering from the robotics tournament, but on Sunday, Mr. Geeky started a process we’d been talking about for months: moving the office to the attic.  This was a multi-step process, involving first cleaning out the remainder of the kids’ stuff from their old rooms (which were in the finished attic) and then changing out the carpeting.  So Mr. Geeky bought and put down some laminate flooring.  Once that was done, he moved the office furniture in, and then we cleaned out the old office to make way for a small guest room and down the road, a bigger bathroom for our bedroom (which shares a wall with the old office).

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One desk in the new office

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Another desk in the new office

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Still to be cleaned and decluttered

It was a big lesson in decluttering regularly. Years of stuff had accumulated. We found labels for 3 1/4″ floppies and for videotapes. There was fancy resume paper, old magazines, computer and gadget manuals. We’d just piled them up. So we threw out a lot. What we didn’t have time to make decisions about we put into bins and we’re determined to get them out this summer and go through them.  It’s amazing how much crap we keep–because we think we might need it.  But honestly, we couldn’t have found it if we needed it anyway.  I had no idea we had disk labels!  It’s still a work in progress, but we’re getting somewhere.  I think I got all my decluttering in for at least a month.

 

The pain of decluttering

08. January 2012 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

I’ve been good so far, decluttering every day for 15 minutes.  But man, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed.  I’m moving from the front of the house to the back, so I started with an enclosed front porch that has been the catchall room for years.  Some things I’ve thrown out:

  • diaries from 2nd grade on
  • old papers and notebooks from college and grad school
  • old papers related to the kids–handouts, flyers, etc.
  • reams of poetry from college/grad school; I kept a copy of a book I made and that was it
  • books (donated to a used book store)
  • a bag of clothes, drapes and towels that had been stored out there and forgotten
  • other stuff I can’t remember

I’ve literally only cleared out about a 1 foot by 1 foot area.  Okay, maybe 2 x 2, but seriously.  See, there were boxes and stuff inside the boxes.  Then there was a stack of books about 3-4 feet high.  And then there was a table to be cleared off.

I’m getting to the hard stuff: pictures, kids’ artwork, mementos from events.  I have a stack of framed photos to go through.  Some I know where I want to put them.  Others I have no clue.  Most of these I’m setting aside in the “keep” pile, with the idea that I will go through the pile and put everything in a place, and the stuff without a place, well, it gets thrown out.  I find it very difficult to throw out pictures and cards, even when I really don’t want them.  It’s like I think the person associated with them will find out.  Sigh.

But I’m plowing ahead anyway.  I think I’m going to be in this one room for well over a month.  I keep reminding myself that it didn’t happen overnight, so it’s not going to be clean overnight.  At this point, I think if I worked for more than 15 minutes at a time, I would be overwhelmed and it just wouldn’t get done.