decluttering – Page 4 – Deborah Makarios

August 12, 2016October 20, 2017

Putting It In Its Place

Some of you may be feeling somewhat disheartened by the amount of stuff that stares you in the face on a daily basis and flattens your soul whenever you think about doing a spot of pruning. I know I’ve certainly been there.

The stuff may be inhibiting your movements, as you walk crab-wise around the room to avoid it. It may be eliminating your options, as you can’t use the space it’s taking up. It may even be making you feel guilty for not being in control of it, like a large badly-behaved dog that insists on piddling indoors, in front of your guests.

Are you going to let a bunch of inanimate objects treat you like that? No, you are not! Today is the day, my friends, when we begin to put that stuff in its place.

That place may be one of five:
here (it does happen),
somewhere else (put it away),
a charity shop,
a recycling bin,
or the famous circular file, aka the rubbish bin.

Ready? Slow and steady wins the race, remember. Every bit is progress.

I decided to adapt FlyLady’s marathon cleaning approach, making it rather less marathon but using her maxim that “you can do anything for fifteen minutes.” Use a timer – it beats looking at a clock, or forgetting to. Let’s begin with fifteen minutes of going through our clothing and biffing out the things we don’t wear. I looked in my wardrobe, chest of drawers, bandanna bowl, coat stand and hallway shelf. I didn’t bother looking through the laundry basket, since by definition it only contains the things I actually wear.

Since I had a clothing prune in June, there isn’t much deadwood left to be removed. Interesting horticultural note: pruning live wood often results in a more fruitful plant. You don’t have to wait for it to start rotting to whack it off. If it doesn’t fit, doesn’t suit, or you just don’t wear it, move it on! Don’t worry about where it’s going just yet, just haul it out and put it aside.

Set your timer, and off you go! Good hunting!

Despite the recent prune, I managed to bag a couple of elderly undergarments and a rain jacket which does not suit me, does not fit me, and consequently is never worn. Why I had this is anyone’s guess. Total: 3. How did you do?

Set your timer again, and this time focus on your bedside table and/or dressing-table. Accessories, things in pottles or tubes, collections of bedside books you haven’t got around to reading… whatever’s there, interrogate it!

What did you bag?

I disinterred an old perfume, a lipstick (the only makeup I own, but I fear it has passed the statute of limitations), an assortment of pins etc for the long hair I haven’t had in years, and a hairbrush (ditto). Also a book of exercises which I don’t do. 5 items; running total 8. And that’s not counting the things which should have been somewhere else, or the random bits of paper for the recycle bin.

How are you feeling? One more, and we’ll stop for a cuppa. This could be a big one, but panic not! Fifteen minutes attacking a big job doesn’t take any longer than fifteen minutes of a small one. We now turn our attention to our hobby stuff – sewing, knitting, stamp-collecting, woodwork; whatever it is, spend fifteen minutes pruning out any unnecessary stuff. (If you have no hobby that involves stuff, you can spend these fifteen minutes doing whatever it is you do in your hobbyless free time, and feeling smug.)

I went through the yarn stash in July (one shopping bag purged full of little remnants and itchy acrylics) so I will be having a go at the sewing stuff this time. Attack!

In fifteen minutes of quick assessment, I pulled out a variety of cords and beads from the trim box (not sure what they are intended for, so v. unlikely to use them) as well as a couple of buckles and two historical sewing patterns which I’ve had for years and never used. Time for them to move on, I’d say. Also a large number of pieces of unrequired paper and odd bits of fabric. Call it five items; running total 13.

Now make yourself a nice cup of tea (or beverage of your choice) and congratulate yourself on your achievement thus far. Once you’ve had your cup of tea, you can put the ‘somewhere else’ items back where they belong and sort the remainder into the three outer destinations: charity, bin or recycle. If you fear you will become distracted, set a timer for this too.

Look at the list/number/photo of things you’ve pruned out of your life in less than an hour. Well done! Feel free to leave it at that for now, or to give these areas another pruning during the week, in as many fifteen-minuteses as you like. Let us know how you go, and do join us again next week!

April 1, 2016

Peeling Back the Layers

As habitual readers of this blog will know, I spent the best part of February decluttering and purging my home. The Grand Purge, I called it. Boxfuls of stuff left the house, destined for charity shop, recycling station or (alas) dump.

packing-24472_640

Then, with a sigh of relief, I got back to my main work: writing. (For those of you with an interest in things writerly, I’ve been focusing my rewriting work on my weak point: character, using Jeff Gerke’s Plot Versus Character). The job, so I thought, was pretty well done.

Then we went away for Easter weekend, and when I came back, I seemed to see with new eyes.

The house was still full. Cluttered, even. I’ve never thought of myself as being over the top when it comes to possessions, at least on a Western scale – our kitchen bench isn’t piled high with appliances we don’t use; the bathroom isn’t stuffed with half-used lotions and potions, and our sporting equipment consists, in toto, of one petanque set, a frisbee and a boomerang.

But it still seemed like too much. Much too much, in places. I realized, with sinking heart, that I had only removed the outer layer.

I found myself looking at the shelves and wondering what would make the cut if, instead of keeping everything that I didn’t dislike, I only kept the things I specifically wanted. Only the favourites. Immediately reasons not to leapt to mind: that one was a gift; this other one is part of a set; those ones there you might just not be in the mood for at this moment…

I had thought that I found getting rid of things easy, but it turns out that that was simply because I had far more than I actually even wanted, let alone needed. (Horrifying thought.)

I want to live a simple life, and the cost of that is getting rid of things. Even things which I quite like, in a way; things I’d be happy to keep having, but am not, in point of fact, attached to. Perhaps they are attached to me, though, because they’re quite hard to shake.
It is work getting rid of things. Not just the physical work of moving things from point A (your house) to point B (anywhere that isn’t your house), but the psychological effort of disrupting the usual, uprooting the habitual, and leaving only the intentional behind.

It’s frightening, in a way, and it shouldn’t be. Who am I without all these familiar things? The same person I am with them, surely, only with less stress and more space. Less stuff looming over my shoulder…

But since my work would undoubtedly suffer if I took another four weeks off to focus on de-stuffing, another method must be found. This time, I am thinking of working backwards: starting with the desired result, and doing what is necessary to reach that point.

Of course, this is slightly complicated by (still) not knowing what size house we’re going to wind up in, and therefore how much stuff will need to be removed in order to create the desired degree of spacious unclutteredness. And since I tend to be a big-picture vague-on-details person, I need to come up with some concrete specifications of what part of the work I’m going to do when, or it will only happen in fitful frustrated starts and stops – ultimately patchy and unsatisfactory.

But there we are. As Pasternak so rightly observed, “Living life is not like crossing a meadow.”

child-765749_640

March 4, 2016

Preparing for an Uncertain Future

No, I’m not suggesting that we should all become preppers. It’s a good idea to be prepared for whatever kind of natural disaster your area is prone to, but I don’t think it pays to mortgage your present for a merely possible future.

I have, however, been preparing for a change this past month. At the beginning of February it seemed distinctly possible that by the time the month was out we would have moved to a house half the size of the one we currently live in. And while that didn’t happen, I still needed to prepare in case it did.

Cue a major pruning. So major, in fact, that I gave up the idea of writing for the month (apart from keeping up with the blog, obviously) and didn’t bother with trying to keep a purge list, because it would have taken too long. The downside of that is that I have trouble remembering everything that has left our house (a sure sign that we had too much stuff).

There was a whole boxful of kitchen things, including the sole survivor of my first ever set of wineglasses (the other three leapt to a glittering end during the first Canterbury earthquake); there were more books, some cassette tapes and CDs, a variety of clothing (some so worn that it had to be binned), and half a recycling bin’s worth of stuff I’d been keeping in my desk. Also a whole bunch of what might be described as general stuff.

I’ve also been working on my stash of unfinished projects – important for peace of mind, freed-up space, and maintaining my Finishing-Person reputation. The crazy quilt was finished last year, it is true, but that still left me with the rose quilt (a project even older than the crazy quilt, if my memory serves me correctly at this distance), a pair of half-knitted gloves, a block quilt to be assembled, a cardigan to be knitted from recycled wool, and a large backlog of mending.

During February I made progress on the rose quilt, finished the gloves, and did most of the mending – there’s just one more waistband to be done and it’ll be finished. I am pleased with my progress, but also horrified at how much work there still is to be done. The Grand Purge is now mostly finished, and I’m back to writing (or rather rewriting) in March, but chaos, as ever, still lurks on the horizon.

Chaos, you ask? In a post-purge household? Well, yes. While we didn’t end up moving into the half-the-size house, we may find ourselves three weeks from a move at any time. This is exciting, but also somewhat stressful, particularly since we have no idea what size house we’ll end up moving to, and therefore whether or not a further Grand Purge will be required to fit. Because as much as we’ve got rid of, there’s always more that could be pared away. Like the rest of life, our simplicity is a work in progress – but the progress is feeling good.