DECLUTTERING

[KenveeB]

I countered with, 'Brother and I have CDO.  It's like OCD but with the letters in alphabetical order, as they should be!'  I love that line.  And my bookshelves are alphabetized by author and then by title, if it isn't a series.  The series' get kept in order but if the author has more than one series, those are alphabatized by the name of each of the series'.

You say that like it's a bad thing. My bookcases are the same, except they're first sorted categorically. Can't have sci-fi, romance, and nonfiction sharing the same shelf-space! (Oh, and my series are sorted chronologically, not categorically.)

[Sophia]

I countered with, 'Brother and I have CDO.  It's like OCD but with the letters in alphabetical order, as they should be!'  I love that line.  And my bookshelves are alphabetized by author and then by title, if it isn't a series.  The series' get kept in order but if the author has more than one series, those are alphabatized by the name of each of the series'.

You say that like it's a bad thing. My bookcases are the same, except they're first sorted categorically. Can't have sci-fi, romance, and nonfiction sharing the same shelf-space! (Oh, and my series are sorted chronologically, not categorically.)

Much better than my husband's method.  By size.  Between us we have a lot of books, and the ManCave basically became the Library.  The shelves are adjustable, so many of the shelves are adjusted paperbook high.  I can not find anything.  (Sigh)  But I can't complain because I just ask him for it, and he finds it.  But it does mean that my Travel books are on 3 different shelves.  Some of the books are double-depth too. 

[Lynn2000]

For CDs, I ripped them all onto my computer, as that's the only object I use for listening to music these days. Before that, I removed them from the jewel cases and kept them in binders, often with the liner notes in one pocket and the CD in another (essentially taking up two pockets per disc). I did generally keep the jewel cases, though, because the idea was that someday I would have more space and I would put the two back together. However, I could keep the jewel cases in inaccessible places.

For DVDs, I'm trying to do something similar, though I'm not technologically at the point where I can have all my movies be digital. So, I still have a lot of DVDs/Blu-Rays. I'm trying to put them into binders, and then I keep the cases in an inaccessible storage location, because someday I would still like to reunite them and display them on a shelf. I have one DVD tower where I still have DVDs in their cases, and unfortunately it's now become kind of a value judgment... Like, oh, this is one of my favorite movies, I'll keep it in the case on the shelf! But I have so many favorite movies that this doesn't really work.

I have all the Sean Bean Sharpe movies on DVD, for example... That's 14 individual DVD cases, I think. I should just put them in a binder, get those cases off my shelf, and free up some space for the DVDs trickling onto my coffee table.

[Lynn2000]

Oh, on another topic, I've been doing the thing with my closet where after I've worn something, I turn the hanger around when I put it back in the closet, so I can see at a glance what I've already worn. It appeals to my sense of fairness where I want to wear all of my clothes the same number of times. It also makes sure that everything in my closet gets pulled out and worn at least once, so I can see how it's holding up--some I haven't worn in years just because they were stuck at the back and hard to get at.

I've gotten rid of a couple sweaters so far. One, after I wore it for a day, I saw that the sleeve had ripped out at the seam sometime during the day! It would be easy enough to fix, but on the other hand, I am looking for reasons to discard things, so out it goes. Another one, weirdly, was starting to discolor around the cuffs and hem. It was a lavender sweater and the edges were getting kind of yellow--I don't know why, I don't wear lotion or anything that could be staining it. Oh well, guess its time had come...

[violinp]

I've finally decided to get my room clean. It has looked like a pigsty for far too long.

My progress so far:
- I've thrown away a goodly amount of junk - papers from long ago, cheese wrappers, what have you
- I've washed and put away almost all of my clothes, put the out - of - season clothes in my storage box, and decided in part what clothes I'm giving to charity.
- I've cleaned out under my bed for the most part, and my storage boxes fit under there nicely!
- I've pulled my junk out of the closet, and put my dad's storage box (long story short, my parents have to store some stuff in my room) in the closet.

I'm hoping to clean up the floor, move most of my books to backpacks (don't have enough room to put them all on bookshelves), and put my Christmas ornaments in the closet in the next week or so, since I don't work most of the "normal" workweek. Then, I have to decide what I'm going to do about re - arranging my room, because it doesn't really work in the way I need it to right now.

[Tierrainney]

Inspired by the thread on Not Wanting her 30 year old baby clothes, I decided to go through the clothes in the attic. Since the youngest child is now 8 years old, I don't anticipate that I will need them again, and probably won't be wanted when the children are older, either.

So far I have brought down 4 plastic storage bins and condensed it down to just one. I just can't make myself give up any of the clothes with Winnie the Pooh and friends on them. Otherwise it would probably be 1/2 of a bin.

I am only up to 18 month clothes, so I have a few more to go.

[violinp]

I've finally decided to get my room clean. It has looked like a pigsty for far too long.

My progress so far:
- I've thrown away a goodly amount of junk - papers from long ago, cheese wrappers, what have you
- I've washed and put away almost all of my clothes, put the out - of - season clothes in my storage box, and decided in part what clothes I'm giving to charity.
- I've cleaned out under my bed for the most part, and my storage boxes fit under there nicely!
- I've pulled my junk out of the closet, and put my dad's storage box (long story short, my parents have to store some stuff in my room) in the closet.

I'm hoping to clean up the floor, move most of my books to backpacks (don't have enough room to put them all on bookshelves), and put my Christmas ornaments in the closet in the next week or so, since I don't work most of the "normal" workweek. Then, I have to decide what I'm going to do about re - arranging my room, because it doesn't really work in the way I need it to right now.

Very late update on this, but I got it all done! I can see all the floor that doesn't have furniture on it, and everything is clean and/or put away. Yahoo! I ended up filling the trash and recyclable dumpsters with all the junk I had in my room, and that's saying a lot, considering they're almost the same height as I am.

I even ended up finding my dad's novel that he'd tried to get published more than a decade ago (my room used to be my parents' office for several years), so that's been cool reading and connecting in another way with my dad, since I, too, have aspirations to be a writer.

[Lynn2000]

I was going to go digging for this thread in a week or so, glad someone else bumped it! I am almost done reading my backlog of magazines and getting rid of them. I have another week's worth to go, and then they will all be gone. I have been working on this for over a year--I could have just thrown them all out right away, but I felt like I wouldn't learn anything from that, so instead I've been reading the magazines and tearing out only the articles I wanted to keep, then recycling the rest.

I feel good that I've (almost) accomplished this, and I think it's given me a certain discipline as well, so that I won't let the magazines pile up in the future. I actually really love magazines and look forward to subscribing to more once I get rid of these back issues, and I think I will now be more aware of them piling up and not let that happen (either by getting them read, or canceling the subscription faster).

[Bijou]

I am glad it got bumped, too, since my house is getting out of hand, again.  Especially the kitchen.  Ugh!  I want to plan a day to go over it from top to bottom and not only declutter but repaint the cabinet inside and out.  (I hate painting so maybe I can get DH to do that).

[bloo]

Thanks for starting this thread, Bijou! I just discovered it.

I ruthlessly decluttered my kitchen of all the tools that I haven't used in a year. I am not looking at the empty spaces with an itch to fill them. The empty spaces are quite calming to me.*

Artist William Morris said, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." I've personally amended that to "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful. Bonus if it's beautiful." Just my personal mantra that is setting me free in my own home.

I'm having a massive yard sale in May. My DH is getting rid of his/my hunting stuff, his ice fishing stuff and a few other things of his. I'm getting rid of my canning stuff, my wingadingdingy Francis book collection (in fact my entire library), all my unused kitchen tools (this is a massive amount of stuff), clothes I haven't worn in a year, office supplies unused for years, and actually the list could be endless.

*I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy looking at modern or transitional houses on www.Houzz.com so much. The clean, uncluttered lines are very peaceful. Houzz has a fun app for phones or tablets and I'm creating the most interesting ideabooks with it!

[siamesecat2965]

Thanks for starting this thread, Bijou! I just discovered it.

I ruthlessly decluttered my kitchen of all the tools that I haven't used in a year. I am not looking at the empty spaces with an itch to fill them. The empty spaces are quite calming to me.*
 
 

I need to do this as well. Its on "my list" I have one drawer, that came off the thingy that holds it in place, a good 2 years agao. have i called maintenance to have it fixed? NO! I keep saying once i go through the drawers, and empty the cabinet below, AND my hosue is clean, none of which seem to happen at the same time, i will.

As for magazines, i just chuck them if I haven't read them. I figure if they've been sitting for that long, i won't read them, so they need t ogo .

[Tierrainney]

I finished all the bins in the attic this weekend, up the one that younger child hasn't used yet. I have condensed all sizes of Newborn to 6X (about 11 bins) down to 4 bins total. And have 6 or 7 bins of clothes to donate. I made the mistake of letting youngest child see the larger ones and she was miffed at me giving away all her clothing. She felt better seeing I was keeping the fancy stuff.

Next I have to go through my closet again and get rid of stuff.

[Lynn2000]

I am done with my magazine backlog!! Well, it's a little anticlimactic because I have a few new magazines that I haven't read yet, so I'm not letting myself subscribe to more until I finish those. The New Yorker has been quite good lately and rather hefty--it's a lot to read each week, much denser than my Entertainment Weekly for example. But the two new magazine subscriptions I want to start are monthly so they shouldn't really interfere. If I can't get them read within a month something is quite wrong.

Even just tearing out the few articles I really liked and want to keep, I'm getting quite the collection of random paper bits. I wonder if I should go through them and scan them, then throw the paper away. Then I think, duh, I could probably just go to the magazine's website and get a PDF of the article if I want to save it electronically. Would that be more trouble or less, I wonder.

And would I ever read them if they were electronic only? I have this idea that someday I could have binders with the paper articles that people could browse through, kind of like coffee table books (if I ever had room for such a thing). Maybe that is just silly, though.

[Amara]

The New Yorker is a great magazine but no matter how many times I've thought that I can do this--read it when it comes, then toss it--I fall behind. The last time it was almost three months, but I got to that "oh, I'll read it and next week's together" stage. I have learned my sad lesson. New Yorker = Clutter. And there's no way around that for me.

[siamesecat2965]

I am done with my magazine backlog!! Well, it's a little anticlimactic because I have a few new magazines that I haven't read yet, so I'm not letting myself subscribe to more until I finish those. The New Yorker has been quite good lately and rather hefty--it's a lot to read each week, much denser than my Entertainment Weekly for example. But the two new magazine subscriptions I want to start are monthly so they shouldn't really interfere. If I can't get them read within a month something is quite wrong.

Even just tearing out the few articles I really liked and want to keep, I'm getting quite the collection of random paper bits. I wonder if I should go through them and scan them, then throw the paper away. Then I think, duh, I could probably just go to the magazine's website and get a PDF of the article if I want to save it electronically. Would that be more trouble or less, I wonder.

And would I ever read them if they were electronic only? I have this idea that someday I could have binders with the paper articles that people could browse through, kind of like coffee table books (if I ever had room for such a thing). Maybe that is just silly, though.

I'v learned, through experience, i can save all the articles I want, but I have never once gone back and looked at them again. So I just don't keep any. and sometimes when my magazine pile gets too overloaded, I just chuck them, and honestly, never miss them.