I’ve been a little… not here for the last three days or so. The truth is that the house is on the verge of becoming unlivable to me. No, not in the sense that we need major renovations. (We do need to have a roofer take a look, but that’s something else.)
It’s more that we moved in a hurry for various reasons. (We were supposed to take six months, and spend a week each place, but health and weirdness dictated a pack everything, sort on the other end, strategy. (Never a good thing.)
And then I never really had time to fully unpack and sort, on top of which I spent the last year being sick and highjacked by a novel (not that the second part is much better now) and–
And for someone who most of the time can’t even and just throws things in the nearest available location, I don’t do very well in unstructured, much less messy environments. The house isn’t normally dirty, (there are weeks) but it is cluttered with totally random piles of stuff, to the point we can’t even figure out where things are, and sometimes have to rebuy. More importantly several rooms are unusuable: the living room was never unpacked and right now the guest room is full of stuff that needs to be sorted. The supposed to be hobby and art room has become a dump site for “drop things here” and … and I can’t live like this.
For reasons of “I have to paint the front door before I do the dishes” (You know what I mean. Sometimes tasks have to be chained, and it’s not even logical from the outside, but it’s how it has to be) I started with our bedroom. The idea being that we have a huge master bedroom, and very well lit and I need a place to sew. Right now the sewing stuff is making the guest bedroom semi-unusable AND can’t be used for sewing because it’s dark and cramped. SO–
So I’ll move the sewing stuff up, and put it under the bed, put the under the bed storage (not much. My wedding dress, my citizenship skirt suit and such) under the guest bed, and make our bedroom more useable.
Except the bedroom still had the last three unopened boxes, and a bunch of things piled on them because the closet is definitely inadequate.
Oh, there was also a bin that as full of random stuff, a chair that needed to be put on the curb and– SO MUCH STUFF. Among other things, what was under our bed included several bins of jeans that don’t fit me. These were things I unpacked and put under the bed in the last 3 years. WHY? I don’t know. I mean, these aren’t designer jeans or anything, just jeans that don’t fit me.
Took me two days to clean the bedroom.
In the process I did a rigorous evaluation of “will I ever wear this again” and took … well. Two back-of-the-SUV-fulls to the local goodwill. Next up is the hobby room which is unusable through too much stuff. It will probably start getting done after Christmas. (I still have cookies to make.)
And this brought up a curious thing: hobbies. I have supplies for more hobbies than I’ll EVER engage in. Hobbies and books.
I realized that I don’t really have time to do most of the things I have materials for, or even any interest in doing them.
Which brings up: Why the heck do I have them?
Well. That led to a trip down the rabbit hole.
Some of them I did for a while back in Colorado, some as long as ten years ago. Then for whatever reason lost interest or stopped having time. One of these was egg carving. I wanted to do egg carving, and continued trying until…. until I could do it. And then went completely cold on it. Just no interest.
Other stuff, I just used to enjoy playing with and now don’t because our life has changed. It was one thing to sit down where the kids were doing their homework and paint stuff, but now I really don’t have a place to paint.
Art… well, I could do it, but the drive to do it seems to have gone. I might at some point enroll in classes again, so not getting rid of all art materials.
However, at the bottom of it, what I realized was that I bought supplies, etc. for a lot of crafts that I’ve only played at, because fundamentally, at the heart I thought that writing was about played out. I think I’ve admitted I considered retiring in 2018. I was so burned out it wasn’t even funny, and I thought indie would never make enough money.
Well, crafting pulls from the same place as writing, so I could silence the stories and just make cute stuff.
This was never an expressed idea, but I realize now it was always back there, which is why buying craft supplies and learning new crafts was such an obsession. When it all blew up, I could get crafting immediately.
Well… How do I put this delicately?
No Man’s Land has changed everything. No, it hasn’t made me rich, even if it is a steady seller, but I’ve made more than I would from trad pub already. And more importantly, it “unburned” me. De-crispified me. And showed me what something can do if I do what other people would probably consider “mild” promotion.
So–
So I really don’t have time for crafts and for the last six months have felt guilty over how much I’ve spent on materials over the years and felt I had to do them so I could get rid of the supplies.
But my time is better employed in writing, editing, publishing, learning how to publish more effectively, and helping friends with their writing.
I mean, not just that will make me money (though that helps) but it is what I actually WANT to do.
Which I guess is why the hobby room has become so cluttered as I piled everything in it trying to hide it.
Yesterday I realized all those supplies have already served their purpose. No, seriously. Look, their purpose was to make me less anxious about what would happen if I couldn’t write anymore. And they’ve served admirably. BUT THEY DON’T OWN ME.
So, a lot of kids of huns are getting craft and art supplies. I’m keeping some art books, but honestly they probably can move downstairs to the library. I’m keeping the charcoals, the pencils and the pastels, because I’d like to go back to drawing portraits very slowly since I don’t have much time. I’m pretty much ditching everything else and about 1/2 the sewing supplies. (I’ll still sew, mind you, and might even make stuff to sell, but not…. not consistently and not as an obligation.) Most of what I’m keeping is stuff I can do on the sofa in the evening, when I’m out words: crochet and cross stitch and such.
The rest goes out. In boxes. With instructional books.
Just deciding that was enormously freeing. I CAN do stuff, but I don’t HAVE to do stuff. It’s not a job.
Because it’s important, sometimes, to not think in words, I can take a day a week and sew something or play with drawing someone. BUT it’s not mandatory. And if I succeed in reducing the hobby stuff enough, it’s 3 to 5 boxes when next we move (sewing is probably ten, mind you) and no big deal. And the hobby room with be useable for my art (and for Little Pickle to do her pricing and such which she doesn’t have room for in their place.)
I don’t need to feel like I HAVE to do things. Hobbies are not jobs. I don’t owe it to the supplies to use them.
Why am I sharing this? Because the last five years changed people’s lives. A lot. And probably changed all your lives too. Things and hobbies and ways of spending time changed.
Perhaps you too have a bunch of clutter in your house that you feel obligated to?
If so, don’t be afraid to part with it. Even the jeans that don’t fit anymore.
Look, I’m not a minimalist. I have tons of things that don’t spark joy but are needed. And besides minimalism is a luxury belief. It only works if you’re sure you can buy it again if you need it, no matter how suddenly.
BUT when you can’t find anything or use entire rooms in your house because it’s full of stuff you’ll never use again? Let it go.
It feels wonderful. It is however eating my life. After the New year I’ll make a goal of a room a week and take a couple hours a day to deal with things. (Except the living room/library. It’s going to take a month. But that’s life.)
This might be jumping the gun on New Year’s, but look around. What will free you if you let it go?
According To Hoyt 
This…is a very good post. Thank you. :looks at desks, and other stuff:
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I desperately need to do the same in my apartment.
Though I’d have more room if I finished the floor in the spare bedroom.
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I’ve scheduled a “house cleaning” for summertime – better weather, can use the garage to stage stuff etc. A local charity I really like will even come to a full garage and take all the boxes away for me. Sigh… It’s going to be a half house full as it’s mostly departed wife’s stuff that nobody wants, clothing and such. It’s a year in February so it’s time to work at it. I’ll know more once I get into it. The other factor is I’m having several tests to see what’s up with my health and some initial diagnosis include cancer (likely catchable and can be ‘fixed’) but not sure yet. That being involved also gives me a nudge to start working on my own “stuff” and sorting that out. I’ve got some things that will take some thinking and work but I am planning for that too.
Ah well… Merry Christmas to all! Oh yeah, the capper is I get to have my colonoscopy on the 31st so – Happy New Year! Yes, I plan to wear a New Year hat to the appointment.
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Just so long as the healthcare professional isn’t wearing a celebratory hat, too.
—–
When we moved in 2019, we were packing very slowly, trying to be organized.
And then moving day sprang upon us, and the last 1/3 or so was quickly packed by the movers. Try not to let that happen. The classic ‘they packed the garbage!’ is too close to real. So half my garage is still boxes. (I did re-arrange so our car could be in the other half.)
Part of that is that my wonderful wife never wanted to throw anything away; it was always recycle or donate. My attitude has always been ‘I want this gone. If you want something special to happen to it, I’ll help pack and load and move, but you have to initiate it.’ Domestic tranquillity was happily maintained, but stuff didn’t often go away.
Now, I have a similar task with all her clothing. I think about St Vinnies, but I don’t want to use the one in town; I don’t get out that much, but I fear if I saw someone else in something I recognize, I’d lose what little brittle composure I have.
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I really struggled with releasing my mom’s things aftwr she died because of sentimentality and also guilt over not wanting/needing things she gave me or my girls. She had given us lots clothes that were “really good still” but that were not our size, to our taste, etc.
One day in a fit of organizing fervor, I donated boxes of her things. Within a few days, I thought I would have to go into therapy from the guilt.
But, a few days later, while I was on recess duty the younger sister of one of my students came running up to me and yelled, ” Mrs. M. My mom went shopping yesterday and look at the beautiful coat she got me. Its so pretty and warm. Do you like it?” She twirled around so I could see.
It was my mom’s coat that I had donated.
I congratulated her on her pretty, warm coat and I realized that maybe I was just supposed to keep mom’s things for a little bit, until a new person was ready to be blessed with them.
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When we sold our house in 2003, we expected it to take a while. Murphy had a good laugh at that. We had 2 weeks from accepting the offer to get out. Rental on a truck, eventually 3 storage units, multiple trips to dump/Salvation Army, and to the auto wrecker for the not-totally dead pickup, and we were out.
We moved with a tent trailer and a full pickup. A couple weeks later, I went down to Cali to oversee the movers (they got two of the storage units; the other one was my shop stuff and things far too attractive to thieves), at which point we had lots-o-boxes. Moved non-essential stuff to the barn, waiting for bookcases and shelving.
Later that month, I moved the shop stuff, plus the freedom seed dispenser safe and contents. One last trip got the last of the machine tools, plus I did some shopping for stuff not available in Flyover County. Elapsed time from sale to final move, 2 months. Bemusement at loads of full boxes, huge. (One or two things went missing, none valuable. One might have been accidentally donated. I neglected to do the checkoff as they unloaded [MISTAKE!], and there were three loads in that truck, so somebody might have gotten the Tupperware. Oh well.)
It took a couple of years to finish disposition. Some books/tapes went to the library, old appliances to various places, and I built $SPOUSE a small shop, intended for weaving and sewing. Weaving turned out to be a bust, as did my attempt at ceramic tiles. Still have the loom, but the prototyping kiln is in a trailer to get dumped. Never bought the production kiln, once we figured that Oregon businesses were at the mercy of TPTB in Salem, and would consume more money and time than we wanted to spend.
I have stuff for hobbies, also. The RC plane kits didn’t get built, and technology says major things would have to be changed. The telescope mirror has been at the rough-ground state for over 30 years, and my vision is getting interesting. Might consider doing one just for the sake of having a finished project. The shop/barn is full of building supplies for outbuilding upgrades that couldn’t happen until my knee was better. Next spring/summer, I think. As time permits, I’m trying to clean up around the piles. It’s slow.
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“Hobbies are not jobs. I don’t owe it to the supplies to use them.”
I recognize this feeling. It’s funny how we personify these things, isn’t it?
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Decluttering is needed at times………. Sometimes it’s really, really needed. I know all too well, still have a large part of my late mothers stuff in the basement I need to deal with. Hoping to retire next year (have been putting it off till my wife retires) and that will be one of the first projects to be tackled. Good luck, free up your space and time so you can do what you really want….. Write those stories!
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Oh, I so feel this … but a lot of it in my own house is that my daughter and her son have so much stuff stashed everywhere, in the expectation of her having her own home. I honestly feel like I have been living in a hoarder house for the last decade … and I’m not even the hoarder!
The garage is packed so solid that I cannot get to most of my tools and supplies, so that I can tinker with stuff and repair/refinish various bits of furniture. But the house she is buying now after five years of planning and working toward is under contract, and we’ll spend most of January getting her stuff and Wee Jamie’s stuff all moved into it.
(It’s a lovely two-story house in a nice neighborhood north of town, in the school district that she wants Wee Jamie to go to school in. For me … I’ll be glad to have my house back…)
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I was going to say something profound and insightful, then my muse jumped up and pointed to what I was writing and told me a love scene, ya that’s going to work. You can only do what keeps your muse at bay, and I think her and my guardian angel on in cahoots with each other and my tequila is missing again, they’re up to something. Until I find out I’ll pray for you all. Happy Holidays.
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We share similar events – the parting with stuff. For me it’s more as I age there’s stuff I can’t or won’t do anymore, and neither my kid or kids in law would want any of it. Besides they’re over a thousand miles away. But, but, I still might need it. Finally started to laugh more at that part of myself. Then there is all the family stuff handed down a few generations. Again, not much interest in family descendent for this stuff.
sigh
My gift to myself is a new laptop that will be dedicated solely to working the book that brings all the pictures, news clippings, mementos and stories together for my progeny as a reference for when someday they are stuck cleaning up whatever mess I haven’t dealt with before I pass. So I can be busy not getting rid of it first.
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I think there is a lot of cultural clutter that happened in the Biden Fraudocracy. The stress caused the whole country to try anything and everything to survive. Now that there is some hope, our minds are getting decluttered and we now notice the lesser physical clutter around us. May the Lord give us simple wisdom to rebuild our lives and nation.
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It’s on hold for the holidays, but I’ve been doing the same thing, decluttering, saying good-bye to things I know I’m never going to do. I’m hitting the low hanging fruit – articles I’m never going to read, papers that need to be filed or shredded, little cheap toys I bought as quick dopamine hits (I did a lot of retail therapy in the past few years, between the world news and family loss). A lot of coffee mugs that I don’t use, but aren’t favorites enough to keep for pens and pencils. Old electronics, articles I’m never going to read, even jewelry. I’m taking photos of the things that are more painful to part with.
Giving away is much easier. Throwing away is hard, especially old stuff that served me well for years. I was helped by watching Youtube videos of professional cleaners with the give-away piles and the throw-out stuff (which goes right in the trash bags).
And yes, getting rid of the supplies I’ve collected for years for projects that aren’t going to happen, that’s hard. It’s not the stuff itself, it’s facing my limitations – I only have this much time and I have to choose. And yes, drawing stuff and cross stitch is staying, things I can pick up and put down easily.
It doesn’t help that I’m a comfortable clutter person to begin with – I need the stimulation – which drives my more minimalist family members crazy because it’s too much stimulation for them.
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My wife has recently been clearing out and getting rid of (and driving me a bit crazy) these past few days, and there are some crafts in there, and jeans that don’t fit, and –
and I do the same thing, so I get it. It’s amazing we’re still together, because we are so freakily alike in so many ways that you’d think we’d hate each other.
I finally read No Man’s Land, and haven’t done a review yet because I’m not a real reviewer type. It feels like a book report. But I just realized that I am waiting for the next book (thanks for the chapter!) and that’s something I can write about. Some things in the book were real hard for me to grok, you get that. But when I realized I was anticipating the next, well, then, it was apparent that I was being overfocused and let’s ride!
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It’s a weird book….
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We’re a weird audience, so we appreciate it!
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As your recent article over on CF’s blog and your recent CH chapter show, there’s a lot more depth and thought in Elly and NML than is immediately evident. I’m very glad to hear that it’s doing well for you, especially in light of all the stress of finishing and publishing it.
If NML and the Elly books don’t become classics … well they should. They shoud. Lutefisk can’t compare.
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I think you mean Feglieri. And yes, there’s a Valhalla book (Valhalla is for Heroes) in the pipeline. At least one.
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Oghi Boshgi Babalet!
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It got a lot easier for me to declutter when a friend invited me to stuff swaps, as in you bring stuff, stuff gets sorted, everybody takes stuff, and stuff untaken goes to charity. At the moment, the hard part is that the swaps invariably get scheduled when I’m out of town.
Our lock is more about staring down the huge pile of stuff to be sorted. Part of which was not stuff we bought, but which was given to us (by the literal van-load) and which we never used, and which is impacting our garage.
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Yeah. We need to let go of a lot of crap.
Iâm starting small next week. Going through the closet and anything I havenât worn in two years is gone.
>
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I am currently assisting my lady friend in moving a buncha stuff from one storage situation to another. 12 X 25 packed to the ceiling with stuff, mostly in Banker Boxes in various states of serviceability. On repacking some of the most decrepit boxes we discovered boxes (and boxes . . .) of things like Time magazines featuring the travails of President Nixon, local newspaper sports pages tracing the MN Vikings’ path to the Superbowl under Fran Tarkenton, etc. From that limited sample I’m guessing a good-sized dumpster would be an excellent investment, but a good portion of this stuff was collected by her late mother and that provides some emotional land mines I don’t need to tickle.
Not that I am in any position to throw stones – when I returned to The States after my sojourn in the Pacific, I had a 1,000 pound shipping allowance. I used it all, plus a little more on my own dime, probably 90% of it books. All gone now thanks to the house fire, a brutal but effective method of downsizing . . .
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I’m in a similar situation for frighteningly similar reasons. I joke that I’ve been curating a museum of everything anyone in my family ever owned. And the clutter that I used to barely notice is starting to bug me. So I’ve been removing crap and looking at things thst have always just been there, and asking myself “why?”
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Isn’t it weird to suddenly realize “I’ll never ever ever use this.”
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Yes. I remember going to a crafter’s yard sale a long time ago and just Not Understanding when she said she was going through her stash with life expectancy in mind. I understand now!
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“I now have so many projects I can never die,” is a crafter’s joke for a reason.
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I am a crafter in STABLE condition. STash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy.
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Last spring I had a plumbing problem in the back bathroom. Figuring this out necessitated pulling up all the carpet in the back bedrooms and pulling out a wall. The tub came out because I wasn’t sure about the floor under it…
I just finished redoing the first floor, but everything that was stacked in those bedrooms is now spread out around the house providing shelter for mice. Lots of mice. In working on the mice I unpacked all but two of the boxes from my move three years ago.
Seeds, gardening supplies, and food storage are stacked to the point I can barely navigate around them. All that was initially in one of those bedrooms.
I got rid of most of my books before I moved. No way I’m giving up my writing or my garden, and most of my old hobbies are long gone.
Cleaning up is the next order of business, and it’s going to be a big one…then the next floor replacement. Maybe. If no other emergencies happen in the meantime.
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I have a few days off after Christmas; after I get a bookcase put together, decluttering should be on the list.
The bookcase will hopefully help decluttering by giving me someplace to organize all the books currently in book-project use!
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One of the valuable things that FlyLady cleaning taught me back in the early 00’s was to pick one focal spot in the household that I could easily clean (Shine that kitchen sink), which wouldn’t require painting the door and six other things besides to get done. This way I could have one point of calm amidst chaos.
The second thing was to just crank the music and pick a point, and clean that point for at least two songs. Setting a timer is often beyond me, but I can do anything for 2 songs. So crank the music (or these days, start a podcast playing on youtube), and start folding laundry. .. which inevitably leads to taking all the stain-treated shirts that didn’t quite get clean in the wash and starting a load of laundry, which leads to… cleaning by Brownian motion.
But I also learned that cleaning by Brownian motion, as I bumped into the next thing to be done, and the next, and the next, rarely gets one single point cleaned and free of visual chaos. So while the whole house is cleaner, I don’t feel like I got anything done. So that’s when I start a Done List. Instead of To-Do, this list records everything I’ve done, so I can see it grow, and convince my gut that I did things, and made headway.
If I have emotional and physical energy enough, I switch over to a bullet-pointed to-do list called “recurrent chores” that I can simply go down the list and do the next thing, and the next, of stuff that’s supposed to be a habit (catboxes, mopping floors, laundry, file the to-file pile, shred the shred pile, dishes, clean the microwave, dust the fans, change the air filters) and yet never manages to be so.
After that, there’s the Project List, for things I want to get around to. Maybe I can sneak one in now and then, and those I get to erase when done. Brilliant feeling.
But failing all else, there’s shining my sink… and then looking around my desk, and filing the paperwork, so one piece at a time, I have visual peace and order in my world.
As for getting rid of crap… there’s a clothes donation dumpster on the way to my allergy shots once a week. And there’s a bin for garbage outside my door that if I drop it there, I don’t have to look at it or fret again, it’s just mentally gone. If something is too overwhelming to deal with, I try to grab one to five things and toss ’em (even if it’s into a grocery sack in the back of the car for donation) before walking away and leaving the rest to deal with later.
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I like the “Brownian cleaning” phrase. That’s how I do it. It can be frustrating, but at the end it’s almost magic as the entire house is suddenly clean, all at once.
The thing I like most about having downsized from 3000 to 1000 sq feet is that I can clean the entire house in a couple of hours instead of a couple of days.
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–
Same with programming.
Between careers I got into crafts. Name it and I probably learned how to do it. Some I already knew, just needed patterns (knitting, crotchet, needle crafts, *sewing). Others like macrame had to learn. I’d make items, someone would like them, give them away. I made dozens of baby quilts. My son had none. Why? Started programming. Crafts come from the same well.
I had all kinds of embroidery thread. Two boxes of multi colors, none the same (not even white or black). Mom has them. She makes t-shirt quilts (blocks out of t-shirts). Themed ones. Uses the remain (plain) t-shirt sections to make wedding and great-grandchildren themed quilts with embroidered blocks. Current one is for the newest great grandson due early this summer.
Rest of the supplies, most I’ve gotten rid of (Salvation Army). Still have some to give up.
I went through my closet and dresser a few years ago. Criteria was? Can I wear this? Will I wear this? Either was a No? Then it went away. Amazing both have room. Only a couple of things were stored (son will have to dispose of); Wool sweater from Ireland, and Wool kilt from Scotland (can’t wear either: size and can’t wear wool).
Hereditary items? We try not to be the depository for legacy items. Really do. But we do have a few. Biggest? Art work. Grandpa’s oil paintings, and great-grandmothers chalk & charcoal scenic drawings. Just rescued three of the latter from aunt (long story). Worth anything? Financially? No. Without grandchildren, there won’t be anyone to send items on to. Do have other family, but will leave it all up to our one son.
(*) Never got clothing down sewing. Yarns? Cannot wear knits … Who knew?
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I have a modest collection of a couple of Nikon cameras plus lenses of various ages. Much was bought used, but it was pretty versatile. Would love to make use of it; not fond of cell-phone cameras and the budget says no DSLR. There’s no way I’d go back to chemical film processes (did slides back in the ’70s, some home-developed), but I heard of a 35mm digital cassette.
I just looked up, and the relevant people are apologizing for introducing a joke (concept advert launched April 1), but they’ve shown there’s a market.
I’m hanging onto the old camera gear for a while…
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So I think strictly fitting into shape and volume as some of the film dispensers is not possible, but that there are digital sensor adapter kits.
I do not know for sure, nor about the search terms.
Anyhow, I do /not/ know enough about optics to understand the trades in swapping film for the sensor.
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Hubby could have used the Pentex film lens with a Pentex digital body. But every action would have to be 100% manual. He perfers the Nikon SLR digital stuff more.
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Hubby donated all his Pentex film DSL’s to a local HS with a photo club. Have one older Nikon body with basic lens to donate somewhere. Photo is a serious hobby for hubby. I used to carry a point and shoot, as well as the video camera (tape). But I’d rather shoot a few shots, and watch.
We’ve gone through all the print photos, slides, and home tapes, and converted to digital the surviving and not retaken in digital, or won’t convert well. Spent about $1000 (some I did as they came in or cost would have been higher). I’ve joked before that a huge cost difference between 2001 and 2005 national BSA jamboree was the cost to get film developed afterwards. I converted the 2001 photos after we got them printed. All the tapes, except one, I converted (took forever … conversion = tape length x 3 1/2. There were 35 two hour tapes.)
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I can so relate to this post. I live in a 1200 square foot house that’s so cluttered I probably only really use less than 1/2 of it. Hobbies I’ve started and continue intermittently, stuff for my “next” home when I move to the country and build a homestead, boxes that I never unpacked from three moves ago and the list goes on. I’ve got more kitchen appliances than I have cabinet space for crying out loud. My pantry is full of mason jars full of herbs and spices, at least that part of it that isn’t serving as a liquor cabinet. Of course, I have more bottles of Scotch scattered all over the house and probably more than I can drink in this lifetime. At least it won’t turn to vinegar before my grand kids (that I don’t have yet) get a chance to taste the good stuff.
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House is in pretty good shape.
We had had the bad habit of taking in mail and setting parts of it aside ‘to do later’. You’ve heard that story, I’m sure. That’s what absorbed a lot of our packing time in 2019, and I needed about a week to clear out a small-ish area here when I could bear to do it.
These days, quite a lot of my mail hits the recycling bin as soon as I walk in the door with it.
When our house was being built, I had them build a wine-storage cabinet: 4 sets of 7×7 bottle cubbies, and glass-doored cabinets above for my scotch and other liquor. We had been members of several wine clubs, and I was dropping out since I was getting more wine delivered than I could drink; now belong to none.
10 years ago and more, we’d have wine with dinner 2 or 3 times per week, and I’d have about 2/3 of the bottle, wife would have the rest. Then we got older, and wife started Weight Watchers, and both frequency and volume of intake dropped.
So I seem to have about 4 years of wine in the house. I do buy a little white, but the wine club shipments were predominantly reds. Maybe drink one bottle per week – split it with my son when he comes to dinner on Mondays, and it’s still about 2/3 for me.
We cleaned out my wife’s parents’ house, my parents’ house, and then our own. Some of mother in law’s stuff is still in storage, in care of the other daughter. Father in law used to say folks should move or have a fire every 5 years or so.
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There’s a joke-not-a-joke in my family about a house built with no horizontal surfaces to stack stuff on.
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Ah, the geological filing system!
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Lies! You always have the floor! Yea, ask how I might know that. Early in my adulthood (physical, the mental side I’m at 14) had an apartment with so many boxes of books and comics. Was interesting doing the archeology dig of “ooh I forgot about these books” when I moved out of that place.
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You’re fourteen? I’m eight.
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Unless I’m hanging out with older son for more than 2 hours. Left unsupervised for more than two hours BOTH OF US become 12 year old boys.
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My sister’s house. I have no idea how big the house is (not small). At least one unfinished storage area under the main upstairs bedroom. There is no room, none, zip, in the garage. A few narrow lanes to access whatever. They have not one, but four floor to ceiling built in shelves, full of books and magazines. A few smaller sections of bookshelves (like the “pantry”) also full of books. The only reason why the storage room is not full is because it has flooded twice, due to leaks from the main bathroom, little salvageable. Honestly? I feel better about our little storage hoarding after we’ve visit. BIL has a *”collection problem”. Plus they tend to inherit antiques from his side of the family (they have furnished two homes, plus their three children are furnishing their homes with some of it).
While we still don’t regularly park in the garage, it isn’t because we can’t get at least one car in what should be a two car garage. Cannot get both because of the invading stairwell for the add on room over the garage (not guilty, came that way). We are guilty of the shelves and cabinets, along either side (don’t stick out beyond the garage door edges, but make it impossible to get out if both cars are in the garage and get out of them). Back benches and saws don’t count because garage is extra deep. Garage storage is just garage stuff (not even most the camping gear, tents, packs, etc., have a closet location).
What saves us is we have very few large places for storage. Spare bedroom and it isn’t packed. I need to do a reorg. There are things that could be donated. Some I am not ready to let go, yet.
(*) Actual collections. How valuable? No clue. Do not care. OTOH not typical ewwwww hoarding you see on TV.
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Here’s an idea why not do a promotion where you picks some of your books that aren’t selling and offer to throw in a Craft item with a purchase of a particular level.
If a person does that craft it’s a bonus
If a person has a friend who does it’s something they can re-gift next year or at once (twelve days of Christmas you know)
If it’s a fanatic fan they can say “This was Sarah Hoyt’s xxx!” and keep it
Either way your house gets de-clutters, the craft stuff serves a purpose and the expense of it becomes a tax write off.
No charge
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I’d have to mail them. And it would take forever. I have kids ( littles through teens) to send them to.
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I cleaned up my ex-wife’s hoard. It was best described as daunting, but necessary to turn the house I received in the divorce into something I could sell. I spent some moments in shock when things still in the original bag, with the price tag, were found ruined under piles of just about anything.
After that, dealing with my mother’s house to satisfy the demands as executor was my next daunting task. It was a neat hoard, but the amount of things stashed away into boxes, on shelves, and in closets was almost astounding. The help of my wife, and her family, made it possible. Doing such things while working, and dealing with the long hours required, would have made it all impossible.
Clearing out clutter requires a starting point, refusing to stack clutter to find other clutter, and plenty of trash boxes. If it’s been hidden for a long time, and it’s not valuable, or an heirloom, it needs to go. Reminiscing is a waste of time, and when spaces start to appear, the feeling of satisfaction is great.
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I got a job helping a widow clean out her late husband’s very organized hoard. We’re still working through it. He saved everything, including receipts. It gave me an appreciation for ruthlessly getting rid of expired paperwork.
Will I still stockpile certain things, such as lightbulbs and food? Yep, sure will. But I at least attempt to keep my stash tidy and rotatable.
My mother, on the other hand – well. Health issues meant that she couldn’t declutter the way she’d like to, but she’s always insisted that she would, eventually, and ‘eventually’ never came. She’s had a series of strokes, and it looks increasingly likely she’ll not be coming home soon, if ever, so I’m going to start going through closets and drawers while she’s gone, and hopefully get more of our house into usable condition. We have whole rooms that are just wasted space at this point . . .
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Same.
When I retired I pulled out all our tax folders. Saved seven years worth. Everything else got trashed (a lot of burning and the shredder got a good workout, almost 40 years worth). We are down to being able to keep seven years (plus, not always good about pulling 8th year when new year filing) in one spot in the document safe (have been standard deduction forever now) for both ours and son’s tax filings, both federal and state. Helps that we have most everything digital (even the medical summaries, which is mostly copays and duplicated by the insurance). The bigger stuff. They have their own file (warranty, and eventual proof of work done for house sale). OTOH we do have a tendency to say “don’t need this anymore” then “what year did we?” Sigh. Roof was one lately.
I keep receipts barely, just in case of returns, since I monitor everything online and through Quicken.
Trying to get mom to do the same thing. Sigh. Seventy plus years of tax filings and monthly receipts are in our (siblings & I) future. Everything will have to be double checked. Don’t think she’s stashing money anywhere. All the house stuff should be in one place (so she said), but …
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Mom and Dad were audited 3 times in the first three yrars of their marriage. It made him paranoid (is it paranoia if they’re really out to get you?) so he kept everything.
She died after 46 years of marriage, he 5 years later. I swear they hadn’t thrown out a single receipt. I got the joy of cleaning all that out. Also the many filing cabinets and boxes of Mom’s genealogy research.
A bonfire would have been large enough to be dangerous to the neighbors.
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We were audited for 3 years. Had the receipts. Know that the receipts did absolutely no, zero, nada, net, good. Not when the auditor is an idiot. Got it solved by switching to a different auditor through (least favorite now, but brand new then) congress member. New auditor was not an idiot.
These days we put in the numbers for the deductions, but they don’t add up past standard deduction. Haven’t now for a couple of decades. So the Feds never see them.
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Um. I used a wood stove. It was winter and fire was going anyway.
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That’s my husband… He has receipts going back to the 80s
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“Reminiscing is a waste of time”
Well, depends on your goal.
My sisters and I had always (as adults – as children, some drama!) been reasonably close. While we were going through our mom’s house, we did a lot of reminiscing; that truly dragged things out an extra couple of months but it was ‘family building’.
To dispose of the stuff we didn’t immediately toss or take (throwing away books just hurt so much, but no room at my place, and a lot were Reader’s Digest condensed books, 5 or 6 per volume) we hired an estate sale firm. Not much sold, but they finished clearing out the house.
It’s sobering to realize we bought things we like and enjoy, but the things are of no interest to our inheritors. We used to have dinner parties; we have nice but not wonderful china, similar glassware, a bunch of Waterford, a set of sterling silver, and we’d use all of it.
My son is unmarried and likely to remain so, and my daughter isn’t the ‘formal’ type. I expect she’ll become an Ebay seller for a while. I’ll be in no position to complain!
And photographs! Who are all these people? Didi I ever meet them? Parents’ pix all got tossed, except for their wedding. Fortunately, it was digital camera time for our vacations, and almost all of our pictures exist only as electronic representation. Not hard to throw those away. My kids will not care what I thought of the stuff from Musée de l’Armée in Paris.
Well, ’tis 2105 on Christmas Eve – Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
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My Mom needs to declutter so we can relocate her closer to one of her two daughters. She’s in SoCal, I’m in Florida and my sister is in rural New York state. Not a good situation. She’s left it so long she can’t really do it herself now.
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For the last 4 months, the Reader has been dealing with his late son’s inability to declutter. We finally have his house about empty so that we can bring in a handyman to deal with a list of projects and realtors to discuss getting it on the market in the spring. The lesson the Reader takes is that once a week something his leaving his abode. We envision moving late in 26 or early in 27 and the Reader would like to make that as painless as a move can be.
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We have a gut feeling we’ll move around then too, and same.
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I need inspiration to get the boxes out of my garage. It’s been four years since I moved here. Clearly anything in a box for four years is not required. But it’s December! Usually your posts are so timely but not this one. Repost this in June – when the weather is nice and the garden work complete.
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I cannot practice properly nor even play an instrument when there’s something I HAVE TO remedy in my home whether it’s laundry, dishes or raking leaves. It bothers me until I do that task. Once I’ve gotten rid of the home’s dangling participles, any leisure or music comes out much relaxed and with better concentration.
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Yes. I’ve been trying to ignore things, but it’s got to the point I can’t (I have to ignore things. I was raised by a woman who cleaned tile grout with a toothbrush every week. There’s always stuff to do in the house. So I built in a threshold.) But this is why when I wanted or needed to push a novel through I used to go to a hotel. Except hotels have doubled in price since covid, so….
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With so many stories of hoards, I’m beginning to suspect that Here Be Dragons local #67 has far more members than publicly known.
…Possibly among the guilty, here.
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Well, I am a dragon, I think.
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Since my avatar’s name is Dragon … *flicks claws, wiggles one* I plead the fifth.
We need a Hun Convention book swap, with left-overs donated to a library or research facility for young writers. (Like High Hallack, but one that will outlive the founder.)
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Thank-you! as I look at the tons of stuff surrounding me, except the cross stitch which I packed up when I started going to school with my kids (Christian school – they needed help, I needed reduced tuition). You are getting things done at light-speed compared to me, but you are an inspiration! Merry Christmas and Happy de-cluttered New Year!
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But but… I can’t throw that out! I might need it! [Big Crazy Grin]
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LOL.
Sarah, we have the same problems. You could walk into my home and think it was yours.
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Back in the fall, Sib-in-law vented about helping move an older relative out of a vacation home so it could be repaired, and the relative live somewhere that driving was no longer required. Said relative had four or more of every kind of garment, all the same brand and color. And when this was pointed out, insisted that all were needed, “Because they are [brand]!” Except it was not a high end brand, and the new apartments had no space for four of everything.
I am looking at my various stashes. Why do I have three pair of those jeans? Because they were discontinued, and they fit, and the new edition stinks. I am working my way through the hoard as things wear out. I also had a much larger disposable income then. Now? Nope! Other things are given away to people and places that are delighted to have them, and will use them.
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I am somewhat operating in a space that is decluttered compared to how I previously worked and lived.
However, I do projects, and when I finish I come out of whatever tunnel vision I used to avoid wandering off.
I used to not do notes, but I got tired of all the time wasted because I did not know what to do, or had forgotten to do a necessary earlier step. My note process is still very chaotic.
I finished a project a month ago, and caught up some on cleaning up enough. Still very cluttered, and many notes of the ‘but I could use it for something!’ variety.
Anyway, has been educational for me, and I am learning to do better the things that I need to manage.
On the mental/electronic note side, I saw something years ago on condensing/focusing inboxes. I have gotten pretty bad on that stuff again.
Thinking through what I might want to say this comment has helped me clarify my choices a little for my own next steps.
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related: software and ‘organizing writing’
Markdown is a text file format that is intended to get converted to HTML files. It is basically designed to require fewer keystrokes, and to do the basics. It can be done with a text editor in .txt files, or in .md.
Obsidian and QOwnNotes both use a folder, subfolders, and .md markdown files to create a personal wiki with an in app GUI interface. One intended use case for these is to have the base folder on the cloud, and then use apps on your machines to access it from everywhere.
I hate clouds, and also will do very awkward things with my computers so that I might feel safe and in control. It has taken me way too long to accept that I don’t need to do a bunch of separate experiments on the same machine, and can just navigate to my wiki folder, and open the files inside with a text editor. (Which I have an excessive range of choice to select from, and have also done silly things overpreparing.)
QOwnNotes will read obsidian vaults (base folders) but I think the file names and ways they are represented are not entirely the same. I think also that if you have both open and editing the same file at a time you could probably cause problems.
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I am absolutely on a ‘let it go’ kick right now. I have to reduce all the junk I have. It’s just getting to be too much. It’s really helping my peace of mind.
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Keep, or donate/recycle?
Box it up. Label with contents and date of boxing.
If X years pass, unopened, drop off at charity/salvage/dumpster.
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I am taking a week off in January, once I am safely done with Year End (when people who have never run a payroll get bright ideas like “No Tax on Overtime”, people who work with payroll systems get grey hair and develop nervous twitches). I will spend a large part of that week finally turning my guest-room-that-never-housed-guests into the-room-with-all-the-books so I have a place to hang out while hubby watches sports and such.
Fortunately, I have an office that is large enough to also house my sewing space, and the rosary making supplies fit in a smallish toolbox. And all the book nooks will go in with the books in the aforementioned book room (not a library, because that implies organization).
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I wrote a long post about dealing with my parents’ house last year when they moved to Philly, but decided to post it on my semi-defunct WP blog. Here’s the abbreviated version. (And WP won’t let me log in at ATH, but I can do it just fine in Reader from my blog, which uses the same password. WP delenda est?)
I found that even though the house sold in February, the photos are still up on Realtor. Go to pictures 14 and 15 to see the bookshelf in all it’s glory. (Most of the length of the house, and floor to roof eaves. Mum designed the house, and daddy designed the bookcase.) And those are just the books that no one wanted to keep (anyone need a 1950s 1st year physics text book?). All us kids grabbed stuff and the parents took a few with them. (https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/49-Homestead-Rd_Ledyard_CT_06339_M34679-22827) Photo 19 was mum’s crafting area; between the loom and the sewing machine and all the supplies for them, you could hardly walk through sometimes. The basement (photo 30) was full of the only used occasionally stuff and all daddy’s rowing paraphenalia, including at least 6 rowing shells. The estate sale folks and the realtor did a fantastic job.
Our house is smaller, but there are two rooms we can’t use they are so full of stuff, in and out of boxes, parts of others are in the same condition, and the basement includes boxes that my husband packed before his tour in Hawaii, which was before we were married. We just celebrated our 32nd anniversary.
I need one of those companies which specializes in helping hoarders clean out. Between the concussion and old age, neither my husband or I are great at physical work. We need to seriously Swedish Death Clean, especially since we aren’t going to have any grandchildren. I don’t want either of my girls to have to deal with anything like moving the parents last year, and there were three adult children to help then.
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My hobby-pocalypse was digital: I’d clung to 3D dabbling (Daz|Studio user since their beta versions 20+ years ago) far longer and with far less return than the effort I dumped into it. I had TWO external drives for my laptop essentially dedicated to the hobby and it’s content-horde, and was nearly done with the ultimate shader-product for one of the online stores. Then within two or three months both of my exo-drives (1Tb and 2Tb respectively) died on me—I was able to save the project files themselves from one of them, but nothing on the other, with the bulk of my content-horde—and one of my biggest freebie-crack sites (ShareCG) closed its doors.
Then word came that future Daz|Studio versions would not even include the 3Delight renderer any more and my project was obsolete before it saw daylight. So if anyone still uses D|S 4.24 and wants a versatile halftone comic-book shader, let me know where to send the files, and it’s yours to enjoy. I’ve got stories to write.
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