imperfect decluttering

[rmc28]

In the days between Christmas and New Year I spent some time looking at my daily and weekly schedule to try to find when it's realistic for me to do any tidying/decluttering. I settled on 1 hour each on Saturday and Sunday, probably best done as 3x 15min with 5 min breaks. I also went looking at various cleaning/decluttering sites linked via this one tumblr post For those with home related New Year's Resolutions and picked out from there Dana K. White / A Slob Comes Clean's 5 step decluttering process as the one most likely to actually work for me.

Now it's Saturday, so I should set a timer and try out this 5-step process, but I have covid and am isolating from my household so I can't do it "the right way" (i.e. tackle the most visible mess first, take things to their proper homes elsewhere in the house). On the other hand, I have no symptoms and am basically well in myself, and I'm stuck in one room. Might as well have a go at trying out this 5 step process on the place where I am right now, even if I have to do it imperfectly.

If you have something you wanted to tackle today, whether it's a shiny new system or an old favourite, whether you are set up perfectly or forced to improvise a bit, maybe now is the time to try? Let me know how you get on in comments, and I'll post my own progress there, so I actually do it!

Comments

[rmc28]

Round 1:

• emptied a bag of Stuff and now it is a small pile of things for child's room and a pile of recycling and a rubbish bag
• went to put something on a shelf in here, pulled off some obvious rubbish, and some cables that need to go elsewhere, and opened a box and put the packaging in the bin bag/recycling pile and placed the contents where I want them for now
• started pulling rubbish and things out of my bedside table - I think I really need to resist the urge to put things on the lower shelf of this because they just disappear from sight and I have no idea they are there. Maybe if I put it on its end, so I still have a useful surface by the bed but don't get tempted to fill it up?

I can absolutely see that taking things to their "proper" homes as I go would make this less messy - right now I have piles everywhere, which is exactly the failure mode of decluttering. But I'm reasonably confident I can finish Project Bedside Table in the next round, and then use the last round to mask up and take things elsewhere in the house.

[rmc28]

Round 2: finished Project Bedside Table, pulled a few more random things off shelves as I was rehoming things onto them, now have a bunch of "things that need to be not in here", including a handy sturdy bag. So I think (very much imperfectly) I'm just going to keep putting things in there that are for rehoming around the house, and when I get free of this room I can take 10 minutes to do that at some point. (And if not, I will get back here on a Saturday or Sunday coming up when it is Decluttering Time and do it then.)

I would not have said I had lots of rubbish in my room but it is surprising just how much I'm finding now I'm looking for it. Some actual obvious rubbish and some things in the category "honestly, never going to use this, never going to be of use to anyone else, the ethical thing is to take responsibility for landfilling it myself now".

So last round: bag up the stuff for rehoming and then systematically start working around my bed for any more rubbish, and if I finish that space, start hunting through the bedside shelves on the other side ...

[rmc28]

Round 3: pretty much as planned; again I found more rubbish than I realised. Special note to the very nice gift pack of fancy toiletries, which was for some reason under my bed. The toiletries are now with my other "nice stuff" and the packaging is broken down for recycling. Plus a couple of things pulled out of the other bedside shelves which were "huh, probably I was going to fix this ... yeah that's not going to happen".

End result: the area around my bed is way less cluttered, I have got rid of most things that were on my bedside table and changed it around so it shouldn't collect the same level of clutter again. I have one carrier bag of binnable rubbish and probably two more of recycling to take out. Plus one bag by the bed of things that needs to go elsewhere in the house, but for now at least it's all in one bag rather than heaped up different places, and I do know where each thing in there should end up.

There's definitely a bit of being ok with imperfect answers for now: e.g. I collected together a bunch of notebooks to the same place in here. That's probably not the "forever home" for those notebooks, but it's still an improvement over having them in half-a-dozen places in this room, and it's where I'll think of if I want a notebook, so it'll do. For now.

I'll be interested to see how much further around the room I can get with another hour of this tomorrow.

[fred_mouse]

Congrats on the achievements. I am contemplating your bedside table solution, as possibly applicable to me, because things are definitely getting lost on the shelf/on the floor underneath.

[wychwood]

Haha, I also fell down a Dana K White rabbit hole this week! I watched all of the One Hour Better videos; so soothing...

[rmc28]

I realised we basically already do her top two things: Do the Dishes, and 5-minute pickup. Most mornings either me or fanf unload/load the dishwasher, and most days I wander around the house finding things to pick up and put in the bin / recycling / kitchen whenever I need a movement break. (It's that or move laundry on a step.)

I have been honestly astonished at how much rubbish I've pulled out of this one area of this one room in about an hour, which I would have described as "a bit messy" beforehand. Is it perfect now? No. Is it better? Definitely yes.

[sphyg]

I'm trying to use up or get rid of net minus things each day, even if it's just eating some frozen food, or putting something in the charity pile or recycling bin.

[tanaqui]

Dana K White is hands down my favourite decluttering blogger — I've recommended her advice here several times. Her approach is just so good for dealing with overwhelm and avoiding making a bigger mess. Glad to hear it's working for you even when you can't leave the room, rmc28!

I spent a little bit of time today tackling a set of shelves that were last fully decluttered several years ago and which have been accumulating bits and pieces and getting messy and annoying for a while. Went through my needlecraft stuff and found a few things to throw away that let me consolidate and remove one large container. Rehomed some other stuff that was badly stored to let me get rid of another large container. Filled up the space created with some stuff that was being clutter elsewhere in the house.

Also did some digital decluttering this week and tackled some of the virtual/physical pile of media (of various kinds).

And did some general putting things away around the house during the course of the week. I need to do more of that and also be more successful at actually getting things out of the house over the next few weeks.

[hooloovoo_42]

Thanks for the link. I've been out of the housework/cleaning/decluttering loop for a couple of months and need to regain some ground. Not least as I have a new dishwasher being delivered on Monday and need to make space for them to move out the old one and deliver the new one.

[kaberett]

Also piping up to say thank you for the link -- on the one hand I have spent A Bunch Of Time this evening reading on from there, and on the other I have also:

• put a couple of magazines in the recycling, having skimmed as much of them as I was going to
  
• gone through my wallet and disposed of the accumulating receipts
  
• rubbed out a bunch of pencil markings from a notebook I am Not going to use and boxed it up and then moved it to the pile of stationery I'm going to sell (at... some point soonish)
  
• consolidated stationery from the sofa, where it doesn't really live, to the bureau, where it does
  
• consolidated the freecycle/charity/etc boxes
  
• moved the blankets for Admin: the LRP into the staging area for Admin: the LRP things

... and probably some other stuff, but that will do for now!