Penny-wise or Just Plain Packrat
November 20, 2007
When you’ve spent most of your life moving every couple of years, you tend to associate purging with moving. We’ve lived in the same house for almost nine years, now, and the old habits aren’t working anymore. I’m finding myself having to reprogram the way I function when it comes to clutter. No more tucking it away and forgetting about it till the next move.
I spent the day Sunday cleaning my laundry room and dining room in preparation for Thanksgiving. Since we don’t have a garage, this is where all the tools, craft supplies, and just about everything else is stored. What a job! I took an entire car load of stuff to the Salvation Army.
I realized something about myself in the process. For me, clutter isn’t just an out-of-sight-out-of-mind issue. Money has never been something we have an excess of, so I have become very thrifty over the years. I’ve always opted to repair things instead of replacing them until they’re no longer repairable. Up until four years ago, I was a stay-at-home mom and had the time for most repairs. Since then, those items have been tucked away for later repairs. And man, have they piled up!
So – now that my life circumstances have changed, my relationship with my “stuff” must also.
My three new rules for clutter:
1) For purging – Choose a day when I am particularly sick of the mess and feeling not-very-sentimental to tackle another area of my home. This will ensure that I do the most thorough job. I have gotten rid of things that I’ve regretted before when I’ve been in this mood, but it’s far outweighed by the freedom I feel at tossing all the rest.
2) For saving – Decide on the spot whether it is more cost efficient to spend my time/energy/money to fix the item, or to just replace it.
3) For the saved items – Fix it within a week or get rid of it.
I’ll be applying these rules to my plan to have my home clutter-free by January first. Anyone care to join me?
Hi.
I just moved in September. I vowed that every box I packed would be stuff that was worth hauling with us. When the packing was leisurely, that worked great. I offered my mom and my brother-in-law a chance to paw through the boxes and carry off what they wished. I still ended up with a van-load of stuff for the Salvation Army.
However, when the pace picked up and my husband started helping pack more and we were both in a hurry, the rule vanished and stuff just got chucked into boxes unless it was very obviously trash or obsolete.
Most of our stuff is out of boxes now, and I have another box of ‘stuff to get rid of’. This holiday, I will offer my mom a chance to paw through the box again. There’s less wonderful stuff in there this time around, but you never know. She’s visiting us this week, so after she leaves I’ll take the box up to the Salvation Army and it will be out of my dining room. Some of this stuff is kitchen items that won’t fit into my new kitchen, extra things we don’t have an extra closet for..
I also have a box of too-small kids clothes to sort out. The girl stuff will go to my niece, who is two years younger than my daughter. The boy stuff, for the first time, hasn’t been promised to anyone. We may sell it or donate it, not sure yet.
Anyway, I often purge when I’m in the ‘sick of it’ mood. I’m also working on rules for handling stuff as it surfaces. That is, the papers and art that come home from daycare, mail, gifts for the kids and the adults, new purchases.. The rules are all unique to each household, but if you don’t have rules about what you’re going to do with stuff, the stuff tends to accumulate.
It’s also important to have a specific and unique home for every thing or category of things in the house. There are no ‘junk’ drawers. There are no ‘overflow’ closets or ‘for the time being’ places. And yet, I have two small canvas boxes in my dining room, one for the kids’ stuff and one for the parents’ stuff, both marked ‘Put Away’. These are the ‘get it out of my way, I need to vacuum’ boxes, that get emptied regularly. I think the kids regard them as toy boxes.
Finally, you have to have rules around your storage places. If you accumulate so many ‘items to repair’ that the spot for them is jammed, it’s time to make some decisions about the stuff, or you can’t put any new stuff in there. I have only so much area for sweaters before a new sweater has to push an old one out the door.
blah, a long and rambling post to say, I agree with what you’re doing, I have done it myself. There’s still some stuff to purge, but not as much as there was before the move. 🙂
Kristina
I think every move winds up that way, Kristina. But at least you sort through the clutter after the move rather that shoving it away in a box in a cabinet somewhere (which I’m guilty of doing in the past).
You’re absolutely right, though. Getting and STAYING organized requires analyzing your habits and you life. It’s like any good business – you have to have a plan that encompasses all areas. If you don’t have rules for certain areas, you can bet those will be the things tat back up on you and cause you grief.
Thanks for the comment!
~Eva
I have been decluttering over this past few months. My house wasn’t cluttered to the casual observer, but WOW, a closet can hold a lot of junk.
It’s amazing, how few things we REALLY use.
What is unfortunate; to me, is the accumulation of things you like (or even love) but don’t need or use.
Like children or husbands.
Ok no just kidding.
The one thing that was like a lightbulb over my head, is how every SINGLE thing in your house must have “a home”. I read it, countless times, on multiple blogs, and thought “well yeah, basically I have closets and that is where things GO”.
Wrong!
Things need specific homes. Or dedicated closets for like items. Otherwise; you are left wondering where your stuff is. And when you don’t know where stuff is, that is…just NOT organized.
When everything has a home, there is no excuse to leave clutter on the countertops, or on the coffeetable.
Plus, once you designate a certain closet or shelf as “the place where ALL tools go” or a drawer becomes “the drawer for all giftwrapping supplies” THEN, when you are going around your house, organizing and decluttering, and you run across a tape measure? A random spool of ribbon? You know exactly where to put it. Exactly where to find it again! I have found once you get started, decluttering is rather addictive. It’s exciting to see your system working, knowing you are gaining control over your “stuff”.
Thanks for the comment, Minnie.
You know, I think I realized the concept of “every thing in your house must have a home” a while ago, but just bucked so hard against it because it seemed like so much work. What is now finally hitting home with me is how much MORE work is created by putting that off.
I think my biggest problem at this point will be to get everyone else to put things away in their “homes”. Can’t tell you how many pliers and scissors and rolls of tape I’ve gone through just because no one else seems to grasp the importance of this concept. The next step is a locking tool box and a sign out sheet.
🙂 Eva
Eva, I love the sign-out sheet 🙂
Seriously though, the home for everything is my biggest time saver. I of course take this to every extreme, like place on my hard drive for documents, folders, photos, etc.
But like Minnie said, it is so LOVELY when you can go EXACTLY to a place to find something. And QUICKLY!
🙂
AMEN! 🙂