Decluttering is a much easier task when it is a team effort. I can’t imagine what it is like when the effort is one sided or worse sabotaged with one person doing all the work while the other is under-minding their efforts by bringing more clutter into the home.
That said, I want to take the opportunity today to give credit to my husband for the way he has embraced my resolution to remove 365 items of clutter from our home this year. This would be a much more difficult quest if I had to do it alone and especially if he was not prepared to co-operate because the clutter is not all mine
It was his idea to start the blog in fact and he reads and edits it everyday. I am glad of that because I am guilty of a lot of typo and spelling mistake clutter and he is very good at removing it for me. I had no idea how to go about starting the blog which is why it was day 67 before it got underway as he was overseas due to work commitments.
This week I actually told him he needed to slow down a little as I am the one who has to come up with something to write about each day and it is not easy when I am not exposed to subject inspiration because he is doing all the decluttering. He took it in good humour as it was meant to be – but really love, slow down!
He is very good at revisiting areas that he has worked on before and being more ruthless at each pass. This is especially so with the sentimental items. He is also having some success with eBay having sold numerous items that would otherwise have gone in the trash or been hard to part with had there not been some monetary gain.
So thanks Love you are doing a great job. XXX
ITEM 143 OF 365 LESS THINGS
This robotics kit was one of those items I am sure my husband would have had a hard time parting with if he could not have sold it on eBay. He only got $105.00 for it but that was better than having sit in the garage where wasn’t being used.
I definitely do a better job decluttering when my husband is involved. We actually seem to purge more when we both look at something as opposed to each of us separately going “hmm, I might want this”. We make each other think, basically.
Your site is so inspiring to me by the way. I read it every day and it really keeps me motivated to finish purging. 🙂
Hi Lynn,
I am glad my blog has been a help to you and thank you for saying so. You are so right about making better decisions as a team when one is getting over sentimental or impractical the other can be more detached and make more rational decisions. ( And then we have someone to blame later when we suddenly decide we should have kept something, ha ha just kidding)
My husband decluttered a few items today! Yay! And me? More books went in the give way pile and I threw away a few old papers and mags.
Good for your hubby Willow say thank you to him for me. Good for you to, I am also working on books at the moment.
Don’t know if you read comments on posts so long after the original date, but yes, it is very, very hard decluttering when DH isn’t joining in.
He is very reluctant to let anything go, and seems to think any space I clear is for him to fill!
I asked him where he sees us in five years and his ideal would be to have moved out of town. It doesn’t occur to him that two garages and and a garden full of stuff (quite apart from his stuff in the house) will take an awful lot of packing, a task he has no idea how to do.
He has lived in this house for over thirty years, and has that many years worth of things ‘that might come in useful’ collected from friends, skips and auctions – except he can never find what he wants on the rare occasions when he needs to.
I am making a serious effort to cull my stuff, and nibble away at his as much as he can cope with. I don’t feel I can nag, cajole, plead, reason or beg him to get rid of things while I still have way too much. On the other hand I’m wary of making too much space for him to overflow into.
He is waiting for heart by-pass surgery at the moment so I understand that he is not very motivated, except he never is when it comes to tidying, sorting or throwing. But I would so love to make a bit of space and calm for when he is convalescing.
All I can do is proceed little by little, and try to show him how good it is to have a place for everything, and eventually to be able to find things when he wants them. Finally I have to get across is that this principle doesn’t work unless he puts things back in their alloted home – and that’s the hardest bit of all.
Hi Jacquie,
I wish I had some good advice that would just make this nightmare go away for you but I think you are doing all you can. The only thing I can suggest is to make sure he understands how sad it makes you to put up with this mess. He is a man after all and they often need to be told things straight to their faces before they understand what is going on when it comes to emotional stuff. He must know that it bothers you but he may not understand how deeply.
Sometimes when people perform undesirable actions that they keep getting away with without suffering from an equal or greater reation they will just keep doing what they are doing oblivious to the wake of misery they leave behind them.