uncluttering one day and one thing at a time

Week 24

• Laundered all the sorted-out clothes and then either bagged up for donation or put away for wearing
• Reconnoitered M&S, who are not currently doing the clothing drops but showed me where they will be when they are again, and decided I couldn't face John Lewis.
• Used one of the two weedkillers (the one for brambles) but the other we couldn't get the dispenser working, sigh.
• Agreed delivery of woodchips, but discovered my driveway was too narrow for the delivery vehicle.

Week 25

My neighbour very kindly allowed me to have 3 cubic metres of woodchips delivered to her driveway on Monday (she is away at the moment) so I could take my time moving it by wheelbarrow to my own driveway. I got that done mostly on Tuesday and Wednesday, around work. I did about 3/4 of the work myself, with some help from offspring and spouse. (It goes noticeably faster with two wheelbarrows and someone else trundling a barrow back and forth while I fill up the other one ... and when I can't keep up with the barrows, it's time for a break.)

Plan for week 26

• Survive the heatwave
• Use the replacement weedkiller dispenser
• Upgrade the offspring's curtains
• Attempt to freecycle old curtains
• If the weather allows, start laying weed control fabric and moving woodchip to cover it

Week 21

• Freecycle: I successfully got rid of a futon, the old patio curtains, and the old TV, all safely no-contact collections. I find Freecycle exhausting and irritating to deal with, but all my recipients were in fact very nice, and now my house is emptier.
• I moved the immediately obvious excess furniture out of the living room so it feels less cluttered.
• I utterly failed to put the "charity" clothing collection outside on Monday, but on previous form, they will be round again in another week or two with another bag, and I have more than enough to fill that too.
• I ordered three more curtain upgrades (the front windows in the living room, and two bedrooms) and they arrived.
• I made a tentative list of gardening/weedkilling supplies (thanks for the recs last week!), but the first place I checked only had it on click+collect and we're still in self-isolation until Monday. And I ran out of time/motivation to get any further.

Plan for week 22

• Upgrade the curtains, and list the old ones on Freecycle (with photos from the start, this time!)
• Find somewhere to store the excess cushions that used to live on the Freecycled futon while I decide whether to Freecycle them too or not. But at least stop them taking over the sofa.
• Get over my donwannas and Strim. The. Effing. Garden this weekend, while the weather is in the sweet spot of not-too-hot, not-too-wet.
• Make a plan for getting weedkiller et al once I can leave the house again.

Plan for week 13 was:

• continue clearing the garden
  • replacement strimmer arrived Sunday of week 13, it rained all day
  • some small clearance work during rest of week 13
  • Sunday of week 14, actually used new strimmer in earnest, we now have about 3-inch high weeds instead of waist-high weeds
  • more small clearance work a couple of times during week 14
• agree with spouse what to do next
  • spouse is happy for me to do what I want (subtext: he will be delighted if I can reach SUCCESS of a non-perilous outdoor space, but he has no capacity to engage with the project of getting there)
• order mulch when confident of the ground being clear
  • not there yet

Indoors: still no progress in the living room, but we have ordered a new TV bench which will arrive next month and agreed on a new TV to sit on it once it's here. This gives me a deadline to sort out the corner unit shelves where the TV used to sit.

Plan for week 15:

• spend some time each day on the remaining clearance tasks in the garden (I still doubt I will reach the point of being Ready For Mulch this week, but I certainly won't if I do nothing)
• ship the boxes of clothes to family that I sorted out last month: regrettably, it doesn't seem much safer for couriers in my country than it did a month ago, nor does it seem likely to become much safer in the next couple of months, so I think there's no point delaying them any longer
• if feeling avoidant of the garden, tackle the corner unit or the Misc. Stuff above the coffee-table books

Week 9

After managing the hour of toy sorting I detailed last week on Saturday, on Sunday I started the epic outgrown-clothes sorting project, and by plugging away a bit at a time, I finished it yesterday. I am kind of ridiculously proud of this one, and I wrote it up in detail at my own journal just to have a record. I guess the key points are:

• it turned out to be bigger than I expected
• I managed to organise myself so I could take breaks fairly often without losing progress
• it spawned a couple of side-quests (the part where I was stacking toilet rolls in my bathroom in order to free up a packaging box was probably the silliest)
• the back room is visibly tidier and more organised as a result

Week 10

I'm feeling extra-avoidant at the moment, so giving myself choices rather than hard goals. Any of the following will be progress:

• work on the corner unit as detailed last week
• tackle the shelves of Misc. Stuff above the coffee table books
• put on gloves and long sleeves and start pulling up weeds in the garden, because the gardener isn't coming any time soon

I was travelling to visit family Friday evening-Sunday evening so failed to check in then.

The plan for week 3 was three hours-of-power, with the focus on finishing the last box of papers, and then shifting my attention to the shelving units.

Outcome: I didn't do any of those things, but I spent the time/capacity on:

• auditing our food cupboards / fridge / freezer
• cooking up food near its use-by date, or to make space for more efficiently-packed food
• setting up a bigger-than-usual groceries delivery and putting it all away sensibly once it arrived (with oldest stuff at the front, etc)
• setting up this week's order to fill in some of the additional gaps I spotted during the previous task

I set myself a couple of rules: only get food we would buy normally, and only buy extra of things that are on special offer, as they are presumably in surplus. But now my cupboards are both tidier and fuller.

Plan for week 4:

• meet with the gardener (tomorrow!)
• back to the hours-of-power in the living room: if possible Tue, Wed & Thu (Friday I have a funeral to go to, so not even going to try that day)

Goals for week 1 were:

• get in touch with the gardener
• hours-of-power: Sun x2, Tue x1, Thu x2, Fri x2

Actually achieved:

• Sun 1x hour-of-power
• Freecycle emails

Yeah, it turns out I drastically ovestimated my capacity / motivation here. It doesn't help that I'm also behind on a language course, and given the choice between catching up on that, and decluttering: well I did my language study.

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Goals for week 2:

• contact the gardener
• hours-of-power: Sat x1, Sun x1, Wed x1