A decluttering story from Debbie from Alberta Canada

I came across your website last year and proceeded to read backwards through the archives. I follow several blogs on minimalism; but yours has really helped me the most with my steps towards minimalism. One thing I thought I’d share is my ‘ah ha’ moment last year when our house we had listed for sale here in Canada took a long time to sell.

It was at an overwhelming time for us as we had purchased a great house in a great location that we were renovating while we were trying to sell the house we were living in. In order to declutter our house to get it ready to sell I was moving lots of stuff from one house to the garage of our other one. It seemed like I was constantly moving things around in the garage and covering things up so they wouldn’t get covered in sawdust etc. Each time I’d move something I’d think of getting rid of it; but felt the guilt etc of reasons I shouldn’t that you have covered many times in your blog – paid too much, my college age kids may need it when they are settled on their own, a relative gave it to me, I could eventually sell it and get $___ for it, I may need it in this house. I got the house we were still in ready to sell and our realtor commented that ours was particularly clean and organized.

Well a month went by, and lots of showings – but nothing. The problem was, we had renovated and moved houses several times over the years, and it had never taken us more than a month to sell a house. My kids would cringe when I would give them the drill that we had to keep everything in it’s place; but if we did the hard work we’d sell fast. Well this time was different, the housing market wasn’t what it was, and it became frustrating. Two months went by, then we took the house off the market for a while. We would concentrate on finishing our other house in hopes of finding a better time to list.

Without the stress of worrying about showings, one day I had my ‘ah ha’ moment. I looked at my house listed for sale and realized how much less stressful it felt living in this ‘staged’ house. Living in this house with less clutter had made it much easier to keep it neat, everything had a place, and I had developed a habit of putting things away right away when I was worried about getting a call from our realtor for a showing with short notice. I also began every morning of another habit of making our bed, something I’m embarrassed to say I rarely did before. I realized living in this neat, clean, decluttered house was the way I wanted to live in our newly renovated house.

I had started the tough first steps of decluttering before; but this was the defining moment when I realized I had to get rid of the clutter. We listed our house again last fall and sold in the first couple of weeks it was listed. Since our two houses were only a few blocks apart we moved everything on our own. It was at one point that my husband said, ” Boy we have a lot of stuff!” That was all I needed to get him on board.

Your postings on how you’ve overcome issues with decluttering have really helped. One example – I had received an old trunk from my grandmother several years ago. She has since passed and it wasn’t going to find a spot in this new house. Sure I could have found a spot for it; but not in a decluttered ‘staged’ house and it didn’t suit our decor for this house. As the oldest of 5, I sent out an email to my parents and siblings that it was up for grabs (and to be kept in the family according to my dad) and I ended up doing a draw as 3 people wanted it.

We moved into our renovated house, and although we have some painting and trim that didn’t get done in time, we are concentrating on getting all the rooms decorated first ( I know, sounds backwards ) and have steadily been selling and donating items that aren’t going to work in this house. We would have been constantly moving things around if we had tried to finish absolutely everything first. When this stuff is out of the way we’ll have less to cover up and finish the touch ups.

Today’s Mini Mission

Fridge Declutter ~ Since everything is clean on the inside and out why not move the fridge out of it’s position today and clean underneath it. Perhaps if it is an old fridge it might be an idea to give the element on the back a bit of a vacuum.

A Guest Post by Cecily Paterson

365 Less things has inspired Cecily to begin her own decluttering journey. She lives in a small town of 1500 people and last month started a column in her local monthly newspaper called 123 Out, all about getting rid of unneeded stuff. And this is her story…

When I first started on my decluttering journey I thought that it would be a simple matter of removing items from my house. I was wrong. Getting rid of things I don’t need or want has been an exercise in truth telling.

I had an idea that when I came to a pair of jeans that have been sitting in my cupboard for three years, unworn and a size too small, I might have to bite the bullet and admit that I am too large for them. When the little voice in my head reminded me that I might fit into them next year because I am thinking of getting fitter and losing a few kilos, I had to tell the little voice that the reality is that I don’t want to be fitter and I am not going to do the work to lose those few kilos.

I might think that being fit would be a good thing but the fact that I sit on the couch more than I get up to walk shows me pretty clearly my higher priorities. After I told the truth I could get rid of the jeans.

It was a little bit harder to deal with the urn in my pantry. I bought this three years ago with great intentions of inviting lots of people around and serving lots of cups of tea. Unfortunately it broke after its first use and it has been sitting in the bottom of the pantry ever since.

“I’m sure I can fix that,” I said to myself back then. “It would be a waste to get rid of it.” Three years later I still haven’t bought the glue with which to fix it. I have had to admit to being lazy and unconcerned. The image I like to carry around of myself of being someone who fixes things has had a slight denting. Still, now that I have told the truth I can get rid of the urn. (By the way, I am donating it to a charity shop with all its pieces. Hopefully someone with actions rather than just intentions might fix it and use it.)

Even more galling to my pride has been dealing with my craft cupboard. I have more unfinished craft items than I care to admit to. I have had to tell the truth about time and my use of it. It’s not good enough any more to say, “well, I’m planning to finish that when I get time.” The simple fact is that I use my time for other things and craft is coming low down the list of priorities right now. I can say now that I probably won’t ever finish some of these unfinished items, and just by saying that I have found the freedom to let them go.

The act of physical decluttering has made me do some work in emotional decluttering and telling the truth. It has been surprising but very worthwhile.

Today’s Mini Mission

Not too many people I know have an empty fridge/freezer front. There are usually photos and kids drawings, invitations and a notice board. Clear off everything that isn’t essential and try living with a clear fridge for a while.

Today’s Declutter Item

This seemed like a good idea at the time but in truth it tended to count two or mare steps for every step I took. I like things to be a little more precise than that. I think I used it for about a week before I was over it. Sadly I must admit that was about five years ago. The step it took was to the thrift store.

Pedometer

“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” Brother David Steindl-Rast

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow

Andréia’s Declutter Story

I must confess I am a pack-rat. I used to keep all sorts of papers in my office and home. When I got married we rented this three bedroom house. There was the master bedroom which is ours and two other single’s bedrooms. We both moved out of our parents house, have never lived on our own. So he brought all his stuff, that was kept in a 8square meter bedroom to a 90 square meter house. I did just the same. Oh, the space to be filled!!! That was in 2003.

We filled the entire house with furniture, old computer parts, papers (lots and lots of it), and all sorts of clutter. The two spare bedrooms were our throw away stuff place: throw away and close the door! They were filled with boxes, old books, VHS tapes, two monitors in one, three old CPUs in other, and old furniture my husband brought from his parents house. The bedrooms were so crammed that sometimes there wasn’t space to walk into one. I managed, one or two times, to empty one of the bedrooms, but the other, well…let’s just say that if the clutter wasn’t going out, it had to go somewhere else.My garage was also packed, we couldn’t walk acroos it. I always thought I had too little storage space. No, I had too much clutter, but I didn’t want to throw anything away, because I might need it sometime later on. I never threw away old magazines, nor articles because sometime I would get around to read them. The time never came.

The house was a mess. I never wanted anyone to come over because cleaning involved so much work that I would spend two or three days cleaning before the house looked acceptable. And I had to hide the clutter somewhere. So the living room looked ok, the kitchen was fairly clean, but ALL the bedrooms were packed with stuff, that I had removed from “ok rooms”. It was very stressful. I wanted to get pregnant, but how I was going to have a baby living in this mess? Then, one day, in 2007, I read an article in old Reader’s Digest magazine whose title lay on the front in big capital letters: “CLUTTER? GET RID OF IT, NOW!”. Shea Dean wrote it in 2002 about her experience with a personal organizer, and how it solved her paper clutter problem. So I read the article over and over again. I had found my solution!

One night I went to my office and started sorting through the mountains and stacks of papers everywhere. I got a big garbage bag and went to work. At first I filled only one bag. A few weeks later I discovered I was pregnant. That is when my decluttering really began. To have a baby I needed to have a tidy house for him. So I had to declutter so my little baby could have the space. Clutter was taking the room that would be my baby’s room. My husband thought it was some kind of “pregnancy hormones craziness”, because I wanted to clean, throw rubbish away, get the room painted, get brand new furniture for the baby, and have clear floors so my baby could play, just like I did when I was a child. At the end of the pregnancy I had a whole room decluttered and just some old stuff in the other room. I took out of the house about 7 or 8, big (100 liters) garbage bags FULL OF PAPERS AND CLUTTER! But by no means the clutter problem had ended!

I still didn’t have any idea how the clutter got generated, so in just over 6 months, after the baby was born I had clutter problem again. The second bedroom was still there, empty, just calling my name to store clutter there and forget about it. And store stuff I did. On my son’s first birthday, I had a party at my house. No one could go into that bedroom, because I cleaned the rest of the house and threw everything there. I can’t remember what most of it was, but there it was taking up a WHOLE ROOM IN MY HOUSE! I didn’t know what to do. I read that article about clutter again. But I felt overwhelmed by the mess. One day I was at a virtual magazine and found a link to a blog about happiness (The Happiness Project), and there had a link to Unclutterer. I went to the blog and just browsed looking for inspiration.

Well, inspiration came slowly, but, as I got pregnant again decisions had to be made. So I decided that I had decluttered one bedroom for one baby, I would declutter the other for the coming one. First of all I took everything out of the room and cleared it to be painted. I decided that nothing that had been there would go back. Everything went into my bedroom. I swear I felt like I was in one of the “Hoarders” episode. The room was packed. But I had to sleep, and soon I would be heavily pregnant so I got a person to help start the cleaning and purging process.

As before I was single minded and focused. I wanted a nice house. I wanted my babies to be able to crawl, walk and run without risking injury because of clutter. I was ruthless. Everything I thought wouldn’t be used ever again, good, rusty or broken, was recycled, donated, thrown in the rubbish. I took me two weeks to get my bedroom looking normal again. But there were still clutter spots. Last year I bought a car. I cleared the garage so I could park it inside. Before I discovered 365lessthings, I found the courage to recycle all my teens magazines. It was odd, and I realized how old I was. I mean River Phoenix was still alive when I collected those magazines and he’s been dead for ages. So that’s how my house went from “for God’s sake never come here unannounced!!!(with three days to spare)” to “sure come now and let’s have some coffee!”.

I am, by no means, finished, but now I can afford baby steps, going and sorting out one cupboard, one drawer, one small space at a time, and seeing how things get better. I struggled with items that have a special meaning, but because of decluttering I can analyze and decide with care what goes and what stays.

Thanks for continually supporting my journey, because no matter how far I have come there’s always space to go a little further.