Having moved a couple times in the past couple years Trish and I have realized how prone we are to collecting clutter. It happens to the best of us, but we are really trying to keep an orderly house so this weekend we are having a garage sale. We have gone through all the furniture that we don’t need anymore and are planning on selling it. We have a china cabinet, a dining room table, a bed frame and dresser, and a ten gallon aquarium, plus some odds and ends and a lot of books! The house we are in now doesn’t have a formal dining room, so all this stuff had been in the garage. We had a hard time deciding if we were going to sell it because it is all stuff that has been in my family for years. It is good classic furniture, but when you keep storing this kind of stuff you wind up running out of storage space. The next thing you know the clutter is taking over your living space, and it is hard to find anything much less keep a clean and organized house.
Tonight we are going over to the church that allowed our former senior pastor to office out of. He had a room there that in the beginning was used as his office, but towards the end wound up being a storage room. He has books from the 50’s, papers, cabinets, trinkets, more books, piles of things that were at one time important but no longer are… you get the point, it is a mess. Since he retired I have truly been putting off going over there, but the church that has been so kind to us is calling wanting to know what we plan on doing – so tonight a group of us are going over to clean it out. The only thing worse that cleaning your own clutter is cleaning someone else’s.
When we hold stuff too tightly we begin to develop a habit of collecting. When we keep clinging to old books, or trinkets, or papers that aren’t really necessary it all takes space and room to store. Think about it, every time you go somewhere you usually bring something back with you. A pamphlet, a brochure, packaging, or just stuff in general. I have heard a song on the radio some time ago that talked about “traveling light.” I think it is a great idea – it keeps our lives from becoming over run with useless stuff. Of course Trish thinks that I am so unattached to anything that I could live with nothing! (it’s not true I need my ipod and my MacBook!) But it does drive me crazy when things pile up and there is no place to put stuff, it happens to me too, no matter how hard I try, so every once in a while I have to purge! Thus the garage sale…
What are your solutions to the over-cluttering problem? How do you handle organization? Have you ever had to clean someone else’s clutter? Do you watch “Clean House?”
Please tell me I am not alone!
okay, i confess. some people – very lovely people i might say – have had to clean my clutter! there, i said it. and i know it had to be a pain in the rear, since it wasn’t their stuff.
since we’ve moved i’ve been pretty diligent about keeping the clutter at bay. i think having no storage helps and knowing that we’ll be moving house in another year or so is also fairly motivating.
Moving is a HUGE motivator to clean out stuff. Staying organized is a constant challege. I’m organized just not always disciplined, there’s the problem for me.
Knowing another move is coming soon is a help too. I take pics of the kids school papers every so often so then I can purge them.
Living in a country where you don’t know the language very well helps you get rid of magazines, newspapers, and sales flyers.
Great idea! Take pictures of papers and things they make for school! That way you can store it all electronically and reduce the clutter…
How many of you recycle or reuse stuff? do you have plastic recycling or paper that you put magazines and packaging in? In Texas we had recycling that picked up at the curb every other week, that helped reduce a lot of the paper clutter!
Thank you, I like the picture thing. I don’t know where I read about that idea, but it isn’t my original one.
Germany is BIG on recycling. It’s a lesson to learn when you first get here on how to manage your garbage. We have 4 trash bins. One for plastics and such(pretty much any wrapping of food), one for cardboard/paper, one for compost items, and then one for trash (which there isn’t much after the other 3).
we think thailand is big on recycling. we can’t figure it out. they have one pick up for lawn clippings, dead plants, etc… it all goes to some big compost heap. then they have a seperate trash and recycling pick up. you can through all your recycling in together, they sort it.
one of the things that suprised me about living in colorado was that you had to pay for recycling or take it yourself. when we moved to colorado i had this perception that it was a granola state so i had high hopes for the recycling. in tx we didn’t pay extra (i’m sure we really did pay for it – just included in the bill). we’ve also switched to cloth bags for grocery shopping and it is almost painful when we forget to bring them and have to get the plastic bags. but i’m currently working on a great big plastic bag reusing project…
and i used to watch clean house – loved that neecee (or however you spell her name.)