Round 3: Knock-Out!

Or to relieve your feelings, kick-out (the Marquess of Queensberry need not apply. Nasty fellow).

Today we are going to be executing a purge in that room of waking hours, the living room. I have never understood why FlyLady puts the living room in the fifth week of the month with her zones, thus ensuring that it almost never gets a full week’s worth of attention.

SadHousewifeI don’t generally need a whole week each month to declutter and clean my bathroom, for example. The bathroom in the house we’re moving to is about 2×3 metres (if so much) and contains one bath, one basin (hanging on the wall) and one toilet. Storage is limited to a small cupboard built into the wall, and the windowsill. Of course, since that’s the only bathroom in the house, I could call it the “master bath” (Zone 4) and give the living room some more time and why didn’t I think of that before?

The living room in our new house will serve us for workspace (we both work at home), relaxation area, entertaining area and book storage. It is the largest room in the house. It needs to be. Half a week is not enough.

Today, however, we are going to have a stab at the stashes of stuff that build up in that most-used of rooms. What you have in your living room depends on what you use it for. Besides furniture you may have books, “media”, games, hobby stuff, paperwork, collections, magazines/newspapers, and items left on display such as photos, china and little decorative doodads. And that’s before we venture into any storage areas the room might have.

Fibber McGee and Molly closet photo 1948So feel free to adapt my suggestions to suit your own circumstances.

First up, the media. CDs, DVDs, LPs, videos, cassette tapes… Yep, I have all of these, although I must admit that the older a technology is the more likely it is that I have recently pruned it. That said, I’m sure there are a few items I could do without packing, moving and unpacking again. Let’s see what fifteen minutes can do.

I scored: one DVD, one video, 4 cassette cases (no idea what happened to their contents), 4 CDs and 10 LPs. Total of 20, and a relatively painless extraction at that. Phew – and onwards!

Next up: the books. Of which we have a great many. I haven’t counted them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran into the four digits. A large percentage of them were bought second-hand, which should make them easier to move on – but on the other hand also makes them easier to acquire, because they cost less. Still, there’s no use keeping a book you aren’t going to read again, unless it’s the sort you don’t really read as such, like a dictionary. I have read encyclopædia volumes in my time; I don’t think I’ve ever been quite desperate enough for reading material to embark on a cover-to-cover dictionary-a-thon.

Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds 2Fifteen minutes on the clock….. and five books pulled out of the shelves, including philosophy, Elizabethan plays and the poetry of Robert Browning. Running total 25. Even if you don’t prune much, going through your library book by book will at least serve to remind you of all the good books you’d forgotten you still had and would now like to read again.

For the third course, following the light media appetizer and the rather stodgier main course of books, I thought we would end with a delicate bibelot or two – what my grandmother called “dustcatchers.” Depending on the level of decoration you prefer, this may take less than fifteen minutes, even if you wander into every other room in the house, but it’s worth doing. We get so used to seeing things sitting there on the shelf or the mantelpiece or the little end table that we stop consciously seeing them, which is a complete waste. You can also look at things hanging on the walls – pictures, paintings, posters etc. I would, but I’ve already taken ours down and packed them.

Fifteen minutes of knick-knackery, doo-daddery and decorative items – go!

Henry Treffry Dunn Rossetti and Dunton at 16 Cheyne Walk

I collected one clock (deceased), one origami crane (pink), one origami elephant (ditto), a vase full of peacock feathers, a small plastic dome with tiny flowers in it, a harmonica, a somewhat decorative box and a silver candlestick (badly tarnished). Total of 8; grand total 32 – more than the previous two weeks put together!

Putting them all together, though, I get 13 + 16 + 32 = 61! Sixty-one fewer items than I possessed a few short weeks ago, and all done in nine sets of fifteen minutes. For the statistically minded among you, that’s 135 minutes, or just over 2.2 minutes per item removed. So if you have five minutes to spare to consider your possessions, you can expect to find a couple to get rid of. Ten minutes, four items. Fifteen minutes, six items. Half an hour, twelve. A whole hour? Eighteen and a cup of tea.

All this is completely theoretical, of course – one person’s brief experience is hardly enough to base a rule on, even a rule of thumb (everyone’s thumb is different – ask Bertillon). But it’s worth remembering that even a short snatch of time can make a permanent difference. There are sixty-one things that I didn’t like or didn’t want or didn’t use (or all of the above) which took up space in my house and never paid rent or contributed anything – they just were. And now they aren’t, and I feel good about that.

so happy smiling cat

My Preciousss……

I love my books. I don’t think that will come as a surprise to anyone who a) knows me, b) has read more than a post or two of this blog, or c) has ever seen inside my house. I have even given careful consideration to the question of whether I am actually addicted to reading. I have not yet got to the point of piling them all in a heap and sleeping on my hoard like Smaug, but this is largely because books are not comfy to sleep on, and I’m bound to be seized by an uncontrollable desire to read one hiding at the bottom of the pile.

Book tower

But I do not wish to be controlled by this love of books. While the dream-houses I drew plans for as a child were largely bed/bath/kitchen attached to a large library, I do not want my life to be swallowed up in service to the books. This necessitates a control on the volume of bookage, and since I have no wish to Never Acquire A Book Again (sits down with head between knees until shaking passes) that means that some books need to go, to make room for the new ones.

I’m not going overboard, mind you. I am not the kind of person who gets rid of all but ten of their books, or (shudders violently) tears out the bits they like and throws the rest of the book away. The man who inadvertently started the 100 Thing Challenge movement (aim: reduce number of personal possessions to 100 or less) did not count his books individually; in fact, I’m not sure he counted them at all.

For the love of books

I do find myself looking at the shelves reflectively, and considering which books would make the cut if I found myself relocating to somewhere with less book-space. There’s the books I absolutely couldn’t do without – the ones I’d pause to grab if the house was on fire; the books I re-read so often it would be folly to dispose of them; the books I’d really quite like to keep if at all possible; and the books I’m not quite so sure about. Featuring largely in the latter group: books I keep meaning to read, but haven’t yet.

Since I am unlikely to live in this house for the rest of my life (not unless I die soon, and please God I won’t), I am getting a head-start on the inevitable and starting to downsize now.

In October, I pruned out sixteen books (with the assistance of the Caped Gooseberry).

pruning shears and gloves

There were:
three books about English history – a mix of fiction and fact;
two dictionaries (one Spanish/English and one English/English), along with a book of etymology;
four assorted books on learning Latin (including the classic “Caecilius et Metella in horto stant”);
three books of quotations (I used to collect them, but now I tend to rely on the internet instead)
and a couple of random non-fiction books.

(There was also one ring, which I’d had for so long I can’t remember where it originated, but never wore, it being neither the right size nor to my taste. )

There are now two half-empty niches on the wall of shelves in the study, out of a total of twenty. Okay, 24, but the top four aren’t used for books (too high to reach without a stool). To give you an idea of how big the niches are: one contains a 12-volume Everyman’s Encyclopaedia and both volumes of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary.
It’s a start.

Cannelle

If you’re doing some decluttering too, please do leave a comment on what you’re up to below. It’s always nice to have company, besides the company of books!