No Hoarders Live Here!

Today is the day I clean house; figuratively, metaphorically and physically.  It's time to get rid of all of the things that are collected, stored, saved, taken up space, distracted me from more important things, set aside for when I might need it and make room for other things to emerge.  There are so many people that struggle to make enough to feed their family, to pay their mortgage and replace socks with holes in them so why should I have so many things in my house that I haven't used in months; maybe even years?!  How many times have I already missed chances because I was surrounded by distractions, preoccupations and "stuff"?  Yes, today is the day I set aside to de-clutter my house and my head.


It's been on my mind for a while now.  I've talked about it and knew I needed to do it but I hadn't taken the time to actually do it so last night when I thought about it again I started to make a plan.  I put a few notes down on how I was going to tackle the project in one day by my self and what I needed help with.  I'll designate parts of the house for different things like Donate, Sell and Store as I go through each room.  So after I wrote it down, I slept on it.  It was good to sleep on it because then I could start out the day with a fresh start at the job that I knew would take all day.

8:15am Saturday morning

I first started by cleaning a space in each of the "pile" rooms and hung up a reminder for what goes where.  The things I planned to drop off at Goodwill or post on Freecycle went in the room closest to the door.  This made it even easier to load up the car and if I ran out of time or energy today it would be a reminder every time I left the house.

Goodwill or Freecycle?

There are quite a few things that I expect will be worth selling like the laptop stand and the Dell laptop but I have a rule that an item has to be worth more than $15 to be worth the time, postage and fees to do it so I'll be selective and realistic before I finalize the SELL pile.

Small pile with electronics, bags and manicure sets

There are quite a few things that I expect will be worth selling like the laptop stand and the Dell laptop but I have a rule that an item has to be worth more than $15 to be worth the time, postage and fees to do it so I'll be selective and realistic before I finalize the SELL pile.


10:46am 
I took a few minutes to get some pictures posted and then began working on the spare room to clear out anything that wasn't going to stay in the room after the cleansing was complete.  I did the same to the dining room where I'll put all the donation items.  I've already found a few things that I'll sell and a few things that I might store away.  I'll go back through the store pile again after I'm done.  Moving on to the master bath and the hall closet.  I might have to take a late lunch at this pace!


1:35pm 

That's a lot of junk to throw out!

Wow! This takes a lot more time than I realized.  Master bath is done and I'm still working on the hall closet. There were tons of expired medicine and lots of duplicate stuff like two packs of nail files,  and ace bandages that I tossed.  I have a bunch of manicure sets to give away now.  I even made more room for towels from both bathrooms now.  Whew - ok back to work.


4:28pm Saturday afternoon

Not thrilled but not scratching anymore either

Both bedrooms and bathrooms done. Hall closet done. Office started but then I stopped for a late lunch and a dog wash.  I had empty packages from jewelry, office supplies, photo frames, label makers and things I was planning to use as gifts at some point.  This is a time consuming and hard to believe I couldn't get all the way through the house in one day.   Guess that means I had a lot of stuff!  I think I have enough of a pile to load up the truck with the donation pile and I'll start taking pictures of the items I want to post on Freecycle and Craigslist.


I can't reward myself with a light shopping day just yet since I didn't finish the job.  I'll pick up again tomorrow or next Friday to finish the office and then move on to the kitchen which should be a lot quicker since I donated a bunch of tupperware to last year.  Fingers crossed that it doesn't take all day!