An Experiment
I began this year participating in a de-cluttering experiment. Please read more on the January 12th post -- Challenge: De-Clutter http://staletoast.com/home/2015/1/12/challenge-de-clutter
The de-cluttering experiment has two basic rules:
Rule #1 -- Each day, I find one item that I no longer need. This item finds its new home in either the trash can or the giant bag in the garage headed for Salvation Army when it can't hold anymore.
Rule #2 -- Any newly purchased item should replace something I already own and be necessary. Just the other day, I shopped online for new school clothes for my two boys (because I am one of the few women who hate shopping). Before buying anything, we went through every piece of clothing they own. Anything that didn't fit went in a pile. When I receive our package of new clothes in a few days, I will move the same number of clothes to the Salvation Army bag as the number coming into the house.
So . . . it's now been a little more than 7 months. How am I doing?
When I started this project I thought I might make it halfway through the year before I ran out of things to get rid of. I'm not a hoarder; how much extra stuff could I possibly have?
Let me first say that I have always loved to organize things. When I was a young child, I loved to organize my books by the color of the binding. My bookcase looked like a rainbow of color. I loved to organize so much that I wouldn't let my friends help clean up after playing in my room (not that my friends complained about escaping this dreaded task at the end of a fun playtime). I didn't want them to mess up my color scheme.
The problem is once I find the perfect spot for something, I often forget it's there!
I started with my clothes, relentlessly pulling out anything I wasn't crazy about. As it turns out, I am crazy about very few clothes. Shoes, on the other hand, were a little harder to part with. At least I ditched all of the uncomfortable shoes I kept that were so cute I kept hoping they might magically become comfortable over time.
When I finally moved on from our clothes and shoes, the real fun began. I discovered "perfect spots" for all kinds of things all over the house! I found old jewelry which had turned green, knickknacks I hated but kept out of guilt (generally a gift gone terribly wrong), and electronics missing wires and/or remotes that had been replaced by newer technology. I doubt that even a thrift store wants a DVD machine from 15 years ago that refuses to fast-forward, but I held onto it "just in case" the newer one was a dud. Crazy, right?
I have to admit that this experiment has been so freeing. I have been on the receiving end of such wonderful generosity over the years, particularly from other moms when my kids were little and any extra money in the budget was swallowed up by more and more diapers. Now I get to be the giver. Of course, some of what I find is junk that I wouldn't force onto my worst enemy, but most still has value. So I give each item, praying it will be a blessing to someone else.
While I have spent more than half the year in this experiment, there is no end in sight to ridding our house of all of the excess. We are a little on the lighter side, though.
Let me know if you're interested in Creative Memories products. I spotted some I have left over from the month or so I tried to be a consultant . . . 11 years ago. Who knows why I've been storing them all this time?
