DCOTD: Mostly Books

Today we got some of the stuff from the last post permanently disposed of, and I dropped twelve paperbacks in the "sell" box.

That is all.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTW: More Stuff

This decluttering was last week. And the stuff isn't actually gone yet. But in the front hall, awaiting FreeCycle listing or a walk to the dumpster, we have:

• Three trash cans. (Yes, the cans themselves are going.)
• One dead shredder head. (Detached from one of the three trash cans.)
• One dead electric kettle.
• One half-dead DVD player.
• One kitchen stool.
• Three boxes of small miscellaneous junk.
• One big cooler.
• Several rolls of gift wrap.
• Two keyboards for computer types that we no longer own.
• A big stack of cardboard.

Maybe I'll double that stack tomorrow. And take a walk or two to the dumpster.

Image: Howard Dickins. Wikimedia Commons. What does it have to do with the post? Not a thing; it just looks cool. Well, maybe it ties in to the gift wrap.

DCOTM: Stuff.

Decluttering Of The Month. Because I've been slacking off.

Searching my memory, in the past few weeks, we've gotten rid of:

• A big Playmobile dollhouse, to a friend young enough to actually play with it.
• A box of miscellaneous kitchenware.
• A big batch of curtain rods and other curtain hardware
• A bunch of DVD boxes.
• A box of paperbacks. (Well, they're in the car, but we've resolved that they're never coming back in the house.)

Image: By Chordboard. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Bulky Stuff and Miscellaneous

Last week and over the weekend, we (actually, Himself did the work) got rid of:

• Two twin mattresses and box springs.
• Two twin bed frames.
• One big plastic pallet that stuff was delivered on this winter.

Oh! And:

• A Stack O Shirts.

And in the realm of recalcitrant trash:

• Recycled a bunch of cardboard, including breaking down boxes that have been lurking for a long time.
• Gave a bunch of packing peanuts to UPS.
• Threw out a backlog of ripped-up bubble wrap and other unrecyclable packing material.
• Dissolved a herd of dissolvable packing peanuts.

Woohoo!

Image: By Infrogmation. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: Priorities, Post 1: Books and Perfume versus Beads and Teacups

In one way, the beginning of the decluttering process was easy.

Because at the beginning, I had a lot of flat-out junk. I had books that I could be pretty confident I'd never read, clothes that I'd never wear, movies that I'd never watch, papers that I'd never need to refer to again, manuals for household items that I no longer owned, and so on.

In memory, those decisions, such as the decision on whether to keep the breadmaker cookbook after we no longer had a breadmaker, look obvious and easy. Priorities were involved, but they were about the should-be-obvious decision of, do I give a higher priority to the stuff that I use, or the stuff that I don't? Now, it wasn't really obvious - if it had been, the clutter wouldn't have been there. But it looks obvious from a distance, now that some of the decisionmaking habits are formed.

Toward the middle of the decluttering, the decisions are changing, because I'm getting to stuff that I would use, if I had the room. The house is tidy enough to allow entertaining, so if I had a china pantry, I'd own a bunch of sets of goofy vintage dishes, and I'd use them to set a lovely eclectic table.  Similarly, if I had a walk-in closet, I'd own and wear a whole lot of clothes.

Except, actually, no, I wouldn't - if I had either a china pantry or a walk-in closet, I'd use it to set up shelves for my perfume collection, and I'd own a whole lot more perfume. And I'd stuff books into the space where the perfume is now.

And with that, the question of priorities comes up in this post a little bit before it was invited. I see a personal priority: I would prioritize an extensive perfume collection, and more books, above an extensive clothing or tableware collection.

And that's what the middle stage of decluttering is all about - setting priorities. I hate that phrase; it sounds so Judgmental Kindergarten Teacher, doesn't it? But it's true all the same.

Because pretty nearly everyone has more interests and hobbies and stuff that they want and could obtain - maybe used, maybe free, but still obtainable - than they have space. So after a lot of effort is put into mastering the skill of "I won't use it, so I'll get rid of it", suddenly there's this brick wall, this new set of decisions. I would use it, I do want it, but do I want it more than all of the other things competing for this space?

Suddenly I'm looking at making decisions about myself, about my potential, about what I'm most likely to do with the life beyond clutter. Am I a person who sets a beautiful eclectic table, or am I a perfume collector? That one isn't too hard for me - however much I love looking at tableware, the perfume collector persona wins out.

So let's move to something harder: Am I a book collector, or am I a perfume collector?

Oh, my.

Now, this doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing decision. So far, the answer is that I'm eighty percent book collector and twenty percent perfume collector. But the difficulty is in accepting that I have only so much space for books-or-perfume and, metaphorically, keeping those numbers down so that they total no more than one hundred percent.

(What about my entertaining self? That's an identity that I share with Himself, so it occupies a different space, both mentally and in terms of house room. My gardening self? That's out in the shed and the garage. Yes, this metaphor is getting complicated. Let's forge on anyway.)

The two things, books and perfume, go in a common set of spaces - the shelves in my itty bitty much-beloved den, and the top of my bureau. And to keep those spaces nice and pretty and therefore keep me happy in my den and when using my bureau, I can't allow myself to become, say, ninety percent book collector and forty percent perfume collector - I can't occupy more than one hundred percent of that space.

And that's hard. And what's even harder is that it means that I am, right now, zero percent seamstress. There is no room, no room whatsoever, in my den for sewing. Or beads. Or any of the other hobbies that I'd like to make room for.

Of course, those decisions about myself aren't permanent. I have the power to decide, at any time, that I'm forty percent book collector, thirty percent perfume collector, and thirty percent seamstress. Any time. Any time, that is, that I'm ready to give or sell away a couple of hundred books.

And, really, this limited space is not bad. Our house has enough space for a reasonable, rational number of hobbies. For a person with cluttery genes, a limited amount of space is a very good thing. Our house is the perfect size. Because the priorities aren't only about space - that's just what enforces them. Time is even more limited than space.

I have dozens of perfume samples that I've never thoroughly tried - it used to be more than a hundred, but I gave a bunch away. I have dozens of books that I've never read. Last time I did make space to sew, I had a dozen projects waiting for completion. I haven't made my vegetable choices for this year's vegetable garden, and it's May.

If I had enough space for all of the hobbies that I wanted to try, I'd never see satisfying accomplishments in any of them, because my time would be sliced into unusable fractions. So when I say that I'd "use" the stuff I don't have room for, it's a pretty narrow definition of the word.

But all the same, it's now, in the middle of the decluttering, that I have to tell myself, "I choose, for the foreseeable future, not to be a collector of vases, a stringer of beads, a maestro of table settings, or a maker of costumes or patchwork quilts."

And that's really, really hard.

Image: By Holly. Wikimedia Commons.

Rambling: A good home for the stuff? Or when to let that go.

Mals of Muse in Wooden Shoes mentioned this blog in a very interesting post about stuff and clutter and dreams. Which reminded me of how little I've been doing in this blog. Which made me decide, all righty then, get moving.

So, a quick ramble on a clutter topic that I've been thinking about:  The "good home" trap. And the trap of finding a home at all.

I've always thought that I have a reasonably immunity from the perfectionist extremes of the "good home" idea. The idea that you're going to keep that chair until you find a person that you know, and you know how they'll use the chair, and you know how they'll take care of the chair, and you know that the six people that you'd prefer to give the chair to really really don't want it, and so on. My attitude when presented with that problem has always been, "Just give it to the first person who'll take it!"

And, yes, I am free of that level of "good home"ness, but I'm not altogether free from it. How do I know that? I know that because I have things that I'm perfectly ready to get rid of, never want to see again, but they're not gone yet. They should be gone.

• The clothes? Nice warm decent-looking clothes; surely we'll remember to drive the car to the donation shop eventually?
• The kitchenware? I fell down on getting back to some Freecycle takers; I'll find their names and offer it to them. Maybe.
• The books? They're waiting for me to get around to selling them at the used bookstore.
• The driveway Free pile? It's raining today; I'll try to remember to put stuff out when it's dry.
• Those cleaners and that cutlery? If we put them in the driveway Free pile, some child or pet might hurt themselves.
• Those curtain rods? Did we ask the neighbors if they want them? If they said yes, we can't put them in the driveway Free pile. Did you remember to ask?
• Those chairs that are broken but could easily be repaired with a couple of brackets but we'd still have no use for them but nobody took them from Freecycle last time but they're perfectly good? How many times do we retry Freecycle?

And so on, and so on. There's a lot of stuff in this logjam. It needs to break. More extensive use of the Free pile, rather than spending time with Freecycle and giving to charity shops and selling used books, is one part of that. But I think that the second part is more extensive use of trash bags. I already trash dubious stuff, but I think that it's time to start trashing more of the Perfectly Good.

Image: By Hyenda. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Fabric and Magazines and Electronics, Oh, My!

So the decluttering is finally getting back into gear. In the past couple of weeks we've gotten rid of a box of fabric and patterns, a box of kitchen gear, a half box of cables and electronics misc, and a couple of hundred magazines. And, three boxes of books are waiting to sell to the used bookstore.

Woohoo!

But we need to keep it up.

Photo: By Jonas Sternerson. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Backlog

So! What did I declutter since Sunday?

• More envelopes.
• Empty cellophane tape dispensers. For some reason, I put them back in the drawer when they're empty. Maybe I'm under the delusion that I'll be environmentally conscious and buy refills. Not so much. So they're outta here.
• Dead frying oil. 
• Multiple bags of sunflower seeds, each with a bitty bit left in them.
• A whole lot of email.

A quick peer into the trash cans, and I think that's it.

Photo: By Nevena. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Mail

Today's declutter was the obvious trash from the Recent Mail Stack. A half-trashcan of envelopes and brochures, recycled.

Photo: By Archivaldo. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: The mess?

There was no perceptible decluttering this weekend. However, there was cleaning, sweeping, rearranging, dishwashing, and the washing of many loads of laundry. So I'm declaring success on the spirit of the thing, if not the letter.

Hey! Wait! Dead candy from last Christmas got tossed! And mail got recycled! Ta da!

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: ToDos that I no longer care to do

I use an application called OmniFocus to keep all of my ToDos and projects and tasks and such. It's been accumulating the usual dusty excess that ToDo lists accumulate, so yesterday and today I did a cleanout and a complete reorganization from scratch, and deleted all the "I really oughta do..." tasks that I'm not really going to do. I feel all spring-cleany.

Photo: By Niklas Bildhauer. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: The Format

I liked the whole Target/Casualties format when I started. I no longer like it. So away it goes. Foom!

But I still like pictures.

Photo: By Fought70. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Still More Leftovers

A repeat of yesterday. Leftover eviction, refrigerator cleansing.

Should it worry me that that picture is making me hungry?

Photo: By Marshall Astor. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD:

Sunday there was much tidying, including the eviction of a very large population of glass bottles that had been hanging around for weeks.

Target: General tidying

Casualties:

• Wine bottles, ginger beer bottles, beer beer bottles, Coke bottles, root beer bottles. Glassfest!

Bottles: Recycled!

Photo: By Paulame. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Tidying away the tree

The tree went away today, and all the ornaments into their tidy little boxes. It's sad, but there's more space in the living room.

Target: The Christmas decorations.

Casualties:

• Old tissue, broken ornaments, bent hangers, saved wrapping paper, etc., etc.

Christmas scraps: Trashed! (And recycled.)

Photo: By SOLOXSALERNO. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Christmas Chaos Again

Christmas isn't cleaned up yet.

Target: Packaging, all over the house.

Casualties:

• A stack of boxes and the packaging material (bubble wrap, those puffy things, etc.) in them. Flattened and recycled, and the plastic stuff trashed.

Packaging: Recycled! (Well, and trashed.)

Photo: By HornM201. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Un-excused absence

Slacked off again. Bad kitty. No sardine.

Photo: By Clavecin. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Aack!

11:30? When did that happen? OK, gotta find junk, gotta find junk... OK, there we go.

Target: Bathroom

Casualties:

• A tube of face cleanser that smells nice but made red irritated spots on my face.
• A concealer wand. I'm never going to use it.
• And, hey! I just remembered, I gave away the remains of a tiny decant of Fendi Theorema, because I bought myself a bottle.

Girly Potions: Gone!

Photo of cosmetics spoon by Rama. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Post-Christmas Miscellaneous

Not much excitement, but it's stuff gone:

Target: Post-Christmas chaos.

Casualties:

• Christmas package boxes.
• A gift bag. We tend to keep these until summer and then declutter them; this time, I decided to eliminate the delay.
• Yams and duck and brussels sprouts eaten. Seriously. We have a bad habit of keeping leftovers until they turn furry. So I'm giving myself credit for eating these before the fur arrived.

Pending:

• Three self-help type books.

Lessons Learned:  

• If you know from experience that it's going to go, dump it before it gets dusty or furry or buried deep in a box. It's much easier that way.

Guilt Rejection:

• I've never yet found gift bags when it was time to use them. So, feh. Toss 'em.

Boxes: Recycled!
Gift Bags: Trashed!
Food: Eaten!

Photo: Kelvin Kay. Wikimedia Commons.

DCOTD: Excused Absence

We threw another party! Woohoo!

I still consider the fact that we entertain at all to be a major accomplishment, and perhaps also evidence that we've been taken over by aliens. So I'm pleased, and disconcerted, at the same time.

Photo by Tama Leaver. Wikimedia Commons.