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weekend check-in
Hi all and welcome to the weekend check-in. Last week I set myself an ambitious to-do list and er, managed three of them. But that's three more than none!
This week, in a flashback to January, I have tested positive from covid, am isolating from my family in my room, don't have any symptoms, and am considering applying the Dana K. White 5-step decluttering to the places I didn't get to in January. (For one room that I didn't think was that messy, I didn't get around all of it in January, and I pulled out a LOT of rubbish / recycling from the places I did tackle.)
One thing I have managed to keep up since January is keeping the places I decluttered free of new accumulating rubbish. I do a little pick up in here most days, usually when I get an hourly movement reminder from my fitbit. But there are plenty of shelves and stacks to go through still.
Share your challenges and successes in the comments!
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Ok, not a "proper" decluttering round, but after eating my (delicious) lunch and putting my plate outside the door for collection by spouse, I spent a few minutes straightening my bed and picking up around it: rubbish in the rubbish bin, recycling piles started by the door, things that do not belong on my bedside table returned to their actual homes, etc. Now my fitbit is happy for this hour, and everything looks a lot nicer for me spending the next few days in here.
I'm going to have a drink, and reread some comfort fanfic and then come back to do a proper set of decluttering rounds after that.
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The fitbit nags me ten minutes before the end of every hour if I haven't done 250 steps that hour. I can just march on the spot, but I try to make my movement break do something useful if possible. Is it tidy this room? Is it walk around the house and find dirty dishes and take them to the kitchen? Is it move the laundry on a step (from wash to dry to fold to put away)?
The Dana K. White method is quite useful because it minimises hard decisions. (Basically: pull out everything that's actual rubbish/recycling and bin it, that has a home elsewhere and take it there, or that you actually want to give away and have a donation box to fill. Often, that's enough to make it easy to sort out what's left, but if not, there's a couple of further questions to ask yourself.
I am half-assing this because I'm just piling things up to go to the recycling bin / donation box / home elsewhere in this house (I have rehomed things where the home is in this room, at least), but it's quite satisfying and it is pretty decision-light.
As for getting well: at the moment I'm not ill. I only know I have covid because I tested before going to see a friend who's very high risk from covid, and the test result was an unpleasant surprise. If I start feeling at all ill, I'm going to rest up, but in the mean time I guess I feel like if I'm stuck in here I might as well do something other than read fanfic.
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Round 1: found a stash of paper that needs shredding, plugged in the shredder, started shredding a few sheets at a time, letting the poor shredder cool down in between time. Started tackling some boxes of Misc Child Stuff stashed in front of the bottom of a bookcase: so far I've extracted a small amount of actual rubbish, and sorted what's left into lego + misc other toys. Plus a couple of pens and bookmarks that have homes elsewhere in this room. Filled the shredder once, found a useful bag to decant into and continue shredding the pile.
Oof, it's dusty round these Misc Child Stuff boxes.
Round 2: abruptly derailed when I tipped a drink over and had to tidy it up, and then discovered the bloody timer app had reset, so I sighed and started it again, thinking 4x 15 min is no biggie. Dug through more boxes of kid stuff, increasingly high pile of recycling and probable-giveaway stuff, beginning to fill the bin, realised I'd completely missed the break notification from the timer app and decided to sit down for a bit - and as I poked the timer app it reset again. Grr. I think I'm going to take a proper rest and skim-read a couple of the kids books I just unearthed, to see if I want to bother keeping them. (They've been in a box in my room for multiple years, probably since at least 2018, and the kids haven't noticed, so probably they won't care either way ...)
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Well, I decided I couldn't deal with the app flaking on me again, so I put on a 30-minute BBC Sounds (Sara Cox's half-wower) alternating feeding the shredder, and pulling things out of the mystery boxes. I had a good nap after the first half hour, and then I did a second half hour, at the end of which I had finished the shredding, been through three mystery boxes and the shelf behind, and requested the vacuum cleaner from my spouse by text message.
So I've now vacuumed up all the dust lurking on the shelf and around the boxes on the floor, and put everything back on the shelf that is a harder decision than rubbish / lives elsewhere / give away. Two of the boxes are empty and the third now contains only toys & lego. Plus I have a giant pile of paper recycling, a bag full of shredded paper, a bag of rubbish, and a pile of things to give away. My mug for holding pens is overflowing, but at this point I feel like the solution is commandeering another mug from the kitchen (yes, I know Dana K. White would say decide which pens to get rid of, but for now I have space for another mug and that's easier than making more decisions).
That is a satisfying point to get to today.
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Haha, yes! It's OK, she says that you can keep extra containers if you have space for them. Although in the long-term it is of course worth thinking about how many pens you really do actually need / want / use - I have a huge pencil-case full and in all honestly only spend about ten minutes a week writing... probably most of them should go...
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I probably never need to buy another pen again, but er, I like having them around. See also notebooks, postcards, and other stationery. I am slowly collecting all the stationery of different types together as part of the decluttering progress around the house, eventually I will have it all in one place and then it will be very easy to remind myself that I don't need to buy anything new.
I do take a lot of handwritten notes if I want to remember stuff - for some reason writing the notes by hand seems to help fix things in my head. I did attempt formal bullet-journalling for a while but I mostly default back to "take notes, make lists" in whatever notebook is at hand.
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I have way more books than any organiser person would approve of, but that is what I want space for. So I try to make sure I'm not keeping books for the sake of it, and am otherwise entirely at peace with my seven full bookcases. But my pens are just sitting there taking up space I could be using for something else, so I do want to go through them at some point. It's all entirely personal, isn't it.
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I seem to remember Dana K. White says to test pens and make sure they're working before you keep them. :-) So, if you haven't done that, it may be an easy way to reduce the numbers a bit.
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I have been testing every pen before it goes in the mug! I also try to remember to bin pens if I try to use them and they don't work.
(I just really like pens, they tend to be my go-to souvenir from anywhere I visit.)
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Right, noting for my own reference that as Monday was a bank holiday and I remained in isolation, I did do another two approximately 30-min stints tackling the remaining boxes and bookcases.
I have pulled out so. much. stuff. Don't get me wrong, the shelves are still full of books and some things I probably should make decisions about, but I've filled another carrier bag to throw away, and I have a truly huge recycling pile. (And that is after taking some time first thing while everyone else was still asleep to take out all the rubbish/recycling/shredding I generated yesterday). And a large pile for the charity shop.
I entirely emptied a small bedside table and decided to freecycle it, along with the pedal bin I never use in here. I think the biggest thing I decided was that I no longer need to keep all the textbooks from my business degree, nor do I need to keep my handwritten notes. I haven't consulted them in the 5.5 years since I finished the degree, and I can't imagine I ever will now. I've kept the most interesting textbooks, for now, but that cleared a lot of space (that I promptly filled with books that were teetering elsewhere).
Today is a normal working day, and if all goes well I will be away at the weekend, but I really want to keep up the momentum in this room somehow.
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We've had so little time to do it, and it'd gotten so bad because that's where we cram everything to keep the rest of the house clutter free.
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We did some big decluttering of pantries where I used to live, and it was amazing how many things had been in there for ten years or more...
Big jobs like your basement can be very disheartening, but you've made a start! That's good.
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That's so epic, well done!
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Today I went through the next bookcase; didn't remove very many books, but at least I've confirmed that I do want to keep everything on there. Also, again, left some space for future acquisitions.
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Maintaining tidiness is just as important as the decluttering efforts, I think. And deciding positively to keep books is great, rather than just passively keeping them, and I like that you're leaving the space for future books to come live there.
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I am so impressed. My garden is a perpetual disaster area, and I'm mostly avoiding it to work on the inside of the house, but really it all needs tackling at some point.
Hurrah for the extra space you made in the garage!
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But as the house is now mostly under control, my main focus this year is on trying to get on top of all of the outside stuff. It won't end up perfect this year, but it might end up at a point where I can spend next year doing more than just rescue work.