Weekend uncluttering

[fred_mouse]

How is your uncluttering going this weekend?

I'm mostly continuing on stockpiling items that will probably leave the house in a recently cleared area of the spare room. I'm not counting them yet, because I haven't done the emotional work of deciding, or of running the suggestions past the rest of the house. However, they are out of the front hall, which is nice. I still need to do a stack of work to get it down to less than a teetering mound, but I have hope.

What did leave the house this weekend -- some items via the local Buy Nothing group (from which I also acquired a few things -- most of which are going in to work and the other one has already been used!), and expired medications to the pharmacy.

And I've found a cheap notebook, and am making notes in two sets. The first is items I've found to rehome, and the second is items I have successfully rehomed. I anticipate that seeing one list growing while the other is not will motivate me to get more things out of the house.

Comments

[tanaqui]

I'm glad you're feeling a bit more hopeful about the teetering mound in the front hall. It sounds like you've made some good progress! I also like your idea about the two sets of tracking notes -- I hope it helps.

I went through the small amount of jewelry I still had in my old jewelry box. I'd already donated a lot of stuff several years ago, but hadn't worn anything that I'd kept since then. I kept one thing I might wear and two items that have sentimental value, and put them in a bag with the newer jewelry I have (which never made it into the jewelry box...). The other items went in the donate pile. The jewelry box, which has a damaged lid, went in the bin. A small job but a satisfying one. :-)

[fred_mouse]

Sounds like the jewellery box, which a physically small task, was a bit more of a mentally large task, given that you've found multiple items to rehome/throw out. Well done!

[tanaqui]

Less of a mental task than I expected. But I am noticing a trend in areas/categories I decluttered two or three years ago where I'm going, "Hmm, I can see why I kept this at the time, but... why did I keep this?" (In other words, I'm more ruthless or less sentimental or just have a better handle on what I should keep.)

[fred_mouse]

I think in some ways those previously decluttered areas are easier because those items were kept more because of decision fatigue than anything. I know that at some point all my 'maybe's become 'keep' in first pass decluttering, just because I no longer trust that I'm able to make those decisions sensibly.

[adair]

Ah, making a list of what you have done! I found keeping count of books as they left the house encouraged letting more go.
However, books also came into the house and I did not keep count of them, other than those I entered on LibraryThing.

Those lists should be a good thing for you, and may over time help you figure out what sorts of things are difficult for you to move on. I gave up on t
he effort to rehome everything; I do not even take all books to BTP because some of them will get thrown out there and too old, or slightly damaged.

[fred_mouse]

Oh, good to hear that you've had success with the keeping a list. I'm very carefully not thinking about all the stuff coming in, because at this time of year, there is quite a lot.

[tanaqui]

I've seen lots of discussion elsewhere about how trying to find the "perfect" home for something can make it much harder to get rid of, and that for some things you just have to have an "amnesty". Are you able to do something with the books that can't go to BTP (even if it's just paper recycling)?

[yukonsally]

I put a giant broken bit in the trash, so that'll be gone today. Added some small toys to the Halloween give away box (ongoing project that pays off big at Halloween!).

[tanaqui]

I'm sure your trick-or-treaters love your give-away box -- that's a very neat idea! (And yay on the large broken thing going.)

[fred_mouse]

Oh, the Halloween box sounds like a great idea. I pass all the small toys on to a primary school teacher friend for their equivalent 'small treats' box.