2025 DECLUTTERING CAMPAIGN MrsSD - The Joy of Decluttering

grunnie

I have lurked for a few years now and hope to post this year. I have been retired nearly 21 years and in this house for 49 years Time flies but I need to just clear out loads of bits and pieces.

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

Hi
Thanks for a new thread Mrs S_D and I would love to join again please!
I am fairly good at not acquiring new stuff but I need to focus on getting rid of all the clutter I already have - particularly in the spare room, loft and garage. I'm not setting a target for the year but am setting myself one for January -  I am going to focus on decluttering the spare room so I can make it into an office for me to work in rather than working at the breakfast bar .
Love to all
Deni x 

kayjay1809

weenancyinAmerica said:

@kayjay1809 - your house sounds like mine. And I have the same health issues you do. Even with two shots in the spine, the pain still keeps me from moving around a lot. Recently I have mainly been shifting papers as I can't move boxes very well. Going to call in help I think to help get organized. But they have to have somewhere to put it in order to move it and right now, there isn't room to even sort what is in any of the boxes. Someone on the another thread said she was diving her house into 25 zones for the year and was going to tackle one zone at a time. That may be the way to do it here also. If we just didn't have so many cardboard boxes coming in every week. But we have to have a lot delivered now and the boxes keep getting in the way. The spondylosis is the big problem, because all I want to do is sit. But I've started to crochet again, so I least I feel productive that way and I have been doing a lot of family history on the computer. But cleaning I do in spurts. I just need a cleaning crew to come in and get everything done once, and then I might be able to keep up with it after that.

Yes we sound like twins!  My husband just said with the zone idea, we’d clear zone 1 into zone 25, zone 2 into zone 1 etc etc 😂. Do you find that? I move stuff around a lot and as you say, nowhere to put the boxes. We do have our son’s old room, he lives in London now, and I had moved boxes, well a friend had, up there but then he wanted to come home for Christmas.  He said oh it’s ok mum as long as I can get into bed - 👀. So we cleared his bed back downstairs.  He is going to come again in Jan or Feb to sort out his stuff, he’s much more minimal than us (his flat is immaculate and him and his girlfriend are minimalist), however if we’re going to move he’s going to have to take his stuff or get rid of it.  But up until then that can be a ‘packing room’ or post room.   I was thinking of ordering moving boxes and decluttering what I want to keep into them, as we want to move that’ll save packing later on and spread it out more.  My husband works very long hours to support us, so he can’t assist much. I do have a lady from the village who comes once a fortnight to clean through.  I looked into a decluttering company to help me, but they charge £48 an hour with a minimum of 3 hours!  And we’d need a lot more than 3 hours 😬  

florianatwobob

@kayjay1809 we tend to have an ongoing donation bag for the charity shop and a periodic box set aside for books/dvds etc for Ziffit. Books/dvds get scanned once read/watched (and no longer wanted) and either end up in the box or the bag. The bonus is if they go to Ziffit it’s pennies in the loft conversion account!  £7.58 this week!! Woohoo!! 

Start small but thoroughly. I went through a drawer last week and edited out the less favoured pens. They’re currently in a box but need to go in an envelope and will leave to go to a charity that sends pens to kids in other countries so they can go to school. A win for me and a win for them!  

Also think about why you’re hanging o to things, e.g it was a present from Dear Auntie Maud who died 30 years ago, you can’t stand it but feel guilty letting it go (Auntie Maud won’t know you’ve let it go to be enjoyed by someone else) or if you feel bad because it was expensive (in which case keeping it won’t bring that money back but selling it might recoup some money). 

The yarn would probably be well received on F-book marketplace, by local care homes or your local buy nothing groups

weenancyinAmerica

Maybe in three hours of help, you could clear a spot to put the four boxes (keep, give away, sell, trash). Then build up a stack from there. Have you considered hiring students who might work for less? I have considered some of the neighbor kids too. I don't know if they have the same rules there as here, but Mormon missionaries are supposed to do service hours every month including helping people clean up even if not members.  

vulpix

kayjay I would say make one room a haven and keep it that way. Start with small bursts. I have similar health conditions and I try to get up every time adverts come on the TV and do something. Good for my mobility and good for the house keeping. eg I will run hot water in the kitchen and soak the dishes, next ads go and wash them etc, fetch the washing off the line, next ads fold the washing etc. Also just get one room or part of room clear, don't try for perfection, you can come back to it in the future. Just plod on till it's done. It makes such a difference to my mental health to have somewhere tidy and pleasant to go to. Do the easy stuff first, obvious rubbish. I wouldn't get bogged down with something like photographs until much later. Plus, accept any offers of help. You can do this, we gotcha!

 Vx

daisy_1571

ETA - I've copied in some other folks ideas too in case its helpful

Welcome newbies and friends from previous threads.  Cant sleep so I'm going to do a brain dump of a any of the general tips that have helped others in the past that I can remember.  These come from the collective declutterati consciousness, from books we've read, podcasts listened to, things our granny taught us, youtube videos watched.  Pick and choose, some methods brilliant for one, would be awful for another.  Some folk use a combination,  some start with one then move to another as their circs change.  



Never leave a room empty handed.


Start putting like with like rather than little bundles all over the place.  When you see you have 20 of something its MUCH easier to get rid of the broken, non working ones and select out your favourites to keep from the rest.  The ones left over you know can go.


If you are overwhelmed and have no idea where to start, literally start where you stand.  What can you reach by stretching your arm out.  Sort that.


Don't gather huge boxes or bags for your sort, sell, donate.   If you can't lift it when its full, it will sit there.  If it will take too long to fill it, it will sit there.  If you have to move it cos its in the way, it becomes another receptacle of random stuff you will have to go through later to see what it is.


Use small boxes and don't wait on finding more, get it out the house every single time you leave the house.  Carrier bag of charity shop stuff?  Take it with you.  Recycling?  Take it with you.  You get the idea.


If you are seriously hoarded up with no room to move, get a bag, set a timer 5 minutes, 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes.  Start in the hall.  Look for rubbish.  Genuine this is an empty envelope type rubbish, old takeaway leaflets etc, bus tickets, single shoe, broken umbrella.  In the bag, timer goes, get the bag out in the relevant buckets as per your council's bin types.  Stop at your allocated time.  Decision making is hard.  You'll get better at it but don't overwhelm yourself.  Do this once a day, twice a day, every hour.  Whatever works.  Move onto a room. Then you can start sifting the next layer of stuff.


Main thing is, once the decision is made, get it out your house.  You don't want to be holding the same thing in your hand again next month making the same decision. 


Same goes for selling.  Are you genuinely going to wait on a bright day, photograph it, list it somewhere,  keep track of it whilst it waits, if it eventually sells find it, package it, take it to the post office, deL with the no-shows, the missing in post feedback etc.   By the time you've done that will it be worth the money its brought in to you?  Some people would do all that for a pound, others for a fiver, others wouldn't do it for a hundred.  Which type are you.  No right or wrong answer.  If its worth something do you have a relative or friend that is willing to do all the work and give you a percentage of what they make ?


Similarly if the thing is broken, missing pieces, stained, not fit for purpose, downright dangerous - don't pass it on to a charity shop rather than make a decision yourself.   They get charged for their rubbish to be picked up.  You aren't helping them if you are making a perfectly nice volunteer waste time looking through your rubbish and sorting it for you.


If you are trying to sort out some drawers for example, the contents of a drawer can fill all the surfaces in a room if you spread them out.  So don't empty the whole chest of drawers at once.  You'll have 5 lovely tidy drawers but you'll turn round and see a huge mess of stuff that needs dealt with.  Overwhelming when you're tired.  Do one drawer and see the job through.   Only when everything from that drawer is dealt with should you start a new drawer.  Might seem counterintuitive when you think there's bound to be more stuff in here that will ll need to go to the understair cupboard so I'll just start a pile over here and take it all at once.  No.  That pile there will fall into that other pile, the phone will go and suddenly its time you were leaving for an appointment and the room looks like paddy's market.  If you put it away as you go, the room won't look worse and you'll feel achievementrather than despair. See basketcase note below for better info on this one - it was Dana I first saw it but I couldn't remember at the time.

Container method - see basketcase below but its helpful to remember if you have 'a space' (ie shelf, drawer, cupboard, your house) the items have to fit that space, you can't make the space magically expand to fit how many items you would like to keep.


Designate a box/drawer/shelf/room to - Things That Need To Be Decided On.  Label it clearly so you don't later wonder what it all is. Don't derail yourself if you're in the zone by stopping and having to decide on a tricky thing, a sentimental thing, a toy you need to find 2 more bits for etc.  Pop it in there and keep going.  Those 2 bits will turn up and can be amalgamated later.  The tricky stuff can be looked at later.


Sunk cost.  A tricky one for lots of us.  Lots of ways to look at it.  You spent the money.  Its gone.  You aren't getting that money back.  Now you have A Thing.  The Thing doesn't care.  Having The Thing won't put the money back in your account.   Not having The Thing won't put the money back.  However, you won't have The Thing any more, reminding you, forcing you to store it, give it house room, take care of it, drain your mental and physical energies.  The money and The Thing are not the same.  If its useful, keep it.  If its not useful to you but could be to someone else, let someone else have it. 


Another tricky one is "I hate waste".  Well thats no reason to keep it if thats the only reason you are keeping it. You don't live in a warehouse or storage unit (unless you do of course).  You live in a home which should service your CURRENT life.  You aren't not-wasting it by keeping it on top of your wardrobe not using it.  You will be not-wasting it if: you actually use it, if you set it free to let someone else use it, if you break it down into its component bits and recycle as much of it as you can. You are especially not-wasting it if having to decide how to get rid of it makes you think twice before bringing more stuff in beyond what you need.  Even in storage things decompose, they go over, they waste.  Countless stories on here talk about us keeping something for good, for when it will fit, for when we have time for that book/that hobby/that life but when we go to use it the sole disintegrated from the upper, moths ate holes in it, it smells stale which never comes out, you pass on and no one knows who is in these photos etc etc. 


It was given to me by...... again no need to keep it.  It was someone else's memories, not yours.  The purpose of it in your life was to be gifted to you with love - thank it for being a gift given with love and pass it on to someone who will love it and use it.  Lots of ways to reframe the thoughts.


Lastly if you have lots of little kids so lots of washing and sorting of clothes.  An American lady, mother of 9 i think, i watched just amazed me with such a simple solution by just turning the whole task on its head.  Usual routine, gather clothes, separate as preferred whites, colours etc.  Wash.  Dry on line/clothes horse/tumble etc.  Sort out whose clothes is whose, put sorted clothes into relevant rooms/wardrobes etc depending on kids ages.  This took her ages trying to keep track of whose socks, whose shirts etc since so many were similar sizes.  Complaint is how long all this takes, endlessly week after week.  Husband watched the routine, his job was some kind of time and motion man/engineer or something logic based like that.  He said problem is sorting the clothes, you need to stop that.  She said in exasperation, that's literally what washing clothes is darling, how on earth can I stop that?  The elegant solution - enough clothes in circulation for each member of household to make a machine load, a dirty washing basket for each member of household, allocated days for each member of households clothes to get washed.   On allocated day, any kid old enough or mum if not, takes their basket to washing machine, once done their stuff goes into dryer (and next member's clothes into washing machine if 2 needs done that day) (dryer obviously makes the process quicker but same principle applies if line or horse dried) their basket sat on top of dryer till clothes were dry then all clothes returned to that member of household.  So clothes never mix to begin with so never need sorted !!!  Flippin' genius!  Bang, all that time saved at a stroke.   

I mention the above story partly in case it genuinely helps a large household, but mainly I try to remind myself that just because we've always done it one way, doesnt mean there isn't a far better simpler way that I just haven't thought of yet.

Daisy xxxxxx

From dnd

May I add, get a roll of cheap masking tape and a permanent marker pen.  I have found it invaluable for making temporary labels.  My ex made me feel I had to get everything right first time; as a result I spent so long trying to figure out the right size box for everything before I ever got round to sorting. 😞

Now, knowing I can either move the label or write a new one for a box I'm liberated. 🤣🤣
The masking tape is also great for freezer labels - cheap as chips and easy to remove when required.

I find letting go of things hard, the logical bit of me says let go but there's a part of me that wants to hold onto the memory and also a large part of me that wants to collect and complete sets of things!   I really want to get back to all my hobbies and try new things.  So, I take it slowly and get myself to the place where I'm happy with what's going, and it is slow going, but I know that if I don't do that I will feel regret when I've got rid of some things and guilt when I go out and replace them.  The human brain is a bizarre place, at least mine is. 🤣 Dx

From basketcase
Anyway, I've found Dana K White 's blog A Slob Comes Clean resonates with me. So I bought one of her books, Organizing for the Rest of Us, and I've been trying it.  It seems to work (so far!), so I think I'll see how far I can get with it.

In this book she has a chapter called Declutter Without Making a Bigger Mess. All the equipment needed is a binbag (plus recycling if you do it), a box to donate and feet (yours, someone else's or an acceptable equivalent!)   

She has a kind of 5-Step strategy for doing 1 area at a time which, if interrupted, doesn't leave a pile of stuff everywhere and has still made a difference.  You don't get everything out, you deal with one item at a time - from start to finish. I do recommend the book, but to summarise the process (Which I think of as "Do you suffer from Piles?" 🤭):

Step 1 - Trash: straight to the black bag/recycling 

Step 2 - Easy Stuff: the things you know have a place (clothing, crockery, books etc) take them there. Straight away. NO 'PILES FOR LATER'!

Step 3 - ‘Duh’ Clutter: things you know you shouldn’t have kept – eg your primary schooler's toddler-sized coat (Hence the 'Duh').  To donate if in good condition, bin if not

Step 4a – Ask Question 1: "If I needed this, where would (not should) I look for it first?" (Even if it was a surprise you had it!) TAKE IT THERE.  Again, straight away.

Step 4b (ONLY needed if you don't have an answer to Q1!) - Ask Question 2: "If I needed this item, would it occur to me I already had one?"  If it wouldn't, donate.  (You've already put the ones that have a home somewhere - even the surprises!)

Step 5 – The stuff you'd look here for if you needed it: This should now fit in the available space.  If not she recommends what she calls the Container Concept - Contain doesn't just mean 'hold', it also means control.  Consolidate and purge items until only "container-worthy" items remain. (eg if there are 10 pens and you only have room for 8, donate your 2 least favourite.  You don't buy a new container that holds 10!

From moorviews

I am easily overwhelmed and need to see some successes quickly. My technique was to pick a visible area that was not too daunting and put everything away/recycle/bin, or with like with like, even if that meant squeezing it into a cupboard or drawer. I then kept that clear (visible success) but turned my attention to the full cupboard (on another day) and would do a shelf at a time. Gradually, I found that I could put pretty much everything away that I wanted to keep. It is quite an organic method with one thing naturally leading to another. 

Siebrie   A tip for you: if you are not using an item and it is blocking you from enjoying your life, it is already in landfill, just in the satellite location at 'your home'

DundeeDoll

helloooo @Mrs_Salad_Dodger and everyone on this sparkling new thread. I took a break 2024 but back now all fired up. love the tips already shared here. Going for 2025 items - that's 6 a day, or 39 a week, or 169 a month. I've also joined the 25 for 25, which includes zoning the house into 25 for one of the challenges. I also need to get on top of work emails (has sneaky look, 1088 in inbox, m'eh) so will also be aiming at reducing that by 25 each working day. Which means by March I should be on top of them - sounds so easy when I write it here 🤣 Happy New Year everyone who celebrates, and stay safe if you're in an amber warning in the UK.

BlueJ94

Morning all! 

Threw away 3 mugs this morning due to them being damaged! not much decluttering today as we've got family coming over this afternoon for snacks and a few drinks on the plus side we finish work at 3pm today!

Moorviews

Nice to see you again @DundeeDoll 😊
It’s lovely to see people who have lurked joining in too 🎉 That is how I started and I found it really helped me to post what I had managed to do. As well as the wonderful @Mrs_Salad_Dodger, cheerleader extraordinaire 🌟 there are lots of great interactions to enjoy. Also, whatever I was having trouble with because there was always helpful advice offered.
Fantastic summary of tips there @daisy_1571 👏

@kayjay1809 - I am easily overwhelmed and need to see some successes quickly. My technique was to pick a visible area that was not too daunting and put everything away/recycle/bin, or with like with like, even if that meant squeezing it into a cupboard or drawer. I then kept that clear (visible success) but turned my attention to the full cupboard (on another day) and would do a shelf at a time. Gradually, I found that I could put pretty much everything away that I wanted to keep. It is quite an organic method with one thing naturally leading to another. 

I am definitely in for 2025! My motto for the year is to start small - anything that happens after that is a bonus. It’s not that easy for me because I have big ideas, however, I don’t have the physical vitality required these days. I need to tailor my ambitions to my energy level. We do plan to go through the loft but it will be one box at a time instead of imagining that we can empty it in one go. I have just one section of a big shed to go through, otherwise it is all Mr MV and DS with sheds and the garage to be sorted. It would be great if that could be progressed. My own shed is tidy and lovely to behold thanks to the 2023 declutter. Otherwise, there are all the usual suspects in the house to keep going through and just generally thinking about on a day to day basis. Some mountains remain to be climbed - boxes of photographs I am looking at you, however, I am not going to put pressure on myself with this. 

Happy Hogmanay everyone 🎉