You would think it would get easier after thirty or forty days. But, unfortunately, that's just not the case. I began this project thinking that I would reach the end of my summer break with the most organized house in America...or at least in Springfield. Instead, I have a house that looks much like the one I started with at the beginning of the summer. Only now I have a big stack of books about de-cluttering sitting on my shelf, taking up space instead of offering advice on how to tame this monster.
It's not all negative, though. In the process of reading up on de-cluttering techniques and tips for organizing your home, I found that clutter is not necessarily my main problem. It has much more to do with a lack of space and money than my lack of organization. For example, I've mentioned before that I'm working with only about 800 square feet of space. Not nearly enough to house three people, three Yorkies and a suitable office area.
Another problem is that in order to do all of the nifty little organizational things that would help me make better use of this space, I'd have to spend hundreds of dollars on shelving units, storage bins, and other gadgets that help hide everyday clutter from view. In Good Housekeeping's Clutter Rescue, most of the tips involve spending money. Not that this is a terrible thing, but one hopes that straightening up their living area wouldn't necessarily require out-of-pocket expense. Especially when one is extremely cheap.
I've also been reading a book called, When Organizing Isn't Enough: S.H.E.D. Your Stuff, Change Your Life, by Julie Morgenstern. It's a pretty good book that deals mainly with understanding when something isn't working for you. For instance, one of my favorite quotes from this book is this one by William Morris, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." You'd be surprised at what this particular principle can cover. I have a tendency to hold onto things, long after they've proven useful or even beautiful. That's why it takes me so long to throw out broken knick-knacks. If someone gave me something, chances are I still have it somewhere. That begins to be quite cumbersome after thirty years or so.
The best part of this book so far has been in Chapter 3 where Morgenstern sites the Zen parable about a wanderer who comes upon a washed out bridge and spends several days making a raft. He could not swim and was afraid to try and wade across. He made a strong raft that carried him safely across the stream and was reluctant to leave it behind once he made it across. He said to himself, "This is a good raft--if there's another stream ahead, I can use it." He ends up carrying the raft for the rest of his life. The point being that although the raft had been useful for one particular task, it wasn't necessary for the man to carry it around for the rest of his life. He didn't need it and would have been better served by tackling each future issue as it happened instead of carrying the baggage and with that, some inkling of dread that comes with always anticipating a problem.
Too often, we forget that just because something worked for us in the past, that doesn't mean that the same solution will always fit the problems in our future. We grow and change and become different people and so will need to adjust the way we deal with our problems to fit the person we become. Carrying around trophies of our past struggles is not as uplifting as we would like to believe, and in fact, can become a symbol of wariness which will hold us back and prevent us from going ahead unencumbered in our future endeavors. If I've learned nothing else from this project, I've come to the realization that getting rid of the clutter will somehow free me to do more good in my life without always running back to my arsenal of crutches for support.
Stay tuned, I'm almost finished with this mess. Just sixteen more days until I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
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Thursday, July 30, 2009
De-Cluttering Project: Day 45 I think....Where the hell am I?
Friday, July 17, 2009
De-cluttering Project-Day 27 and no end in sight...
I'm beginning to think maybe I like clutter. I have come to this conclusion because I managed to find ways to stay gone all week and haven't done one bit of de-cluttering. I don't think I've organized a single thing...including a thought for the entire week. Of course, I have plans to organize things. I always have lots of plans. But my ability to put those plans into action has me feeling a little less than effective these days.
The whole de-cluttering thing is starting to feel like mowing the lawn. You take the time to go out and push the mower around and when you're done, you can see the results right away. The problem is that in a day or so, you look outside and the grass is there again. In much the same way that the grass grows back and waves at you, begging you to come out and mow again, the stacks of mail, magazines, and toys seem to find their way back into the places where you were just weeding through them. So it becomes a battle of wills. Who will cave first? Will you organize to avoid a catastrophe or will you let the piles climb as high as they can before they simply collapse into a much bigger mess on the floor in front of you? In either case, you lose.
I was reading one of my de-cluttering books the other day while I was waiting at the doctor's office. I was almost inspired to do a few of the things in the book until I realized that much of what was being done was simply moving your piles of crap to other areas of the house and calling them something different. My magazines would become my idea files and my bookshelf would become my reference library. Could I possibly fake being stupid long enough to convince myself that renaming these things had made a significant difference in my clutter?
As it stands, I have almost thirty days left to get in all of the de-cluttering that I wanted to do this summer. My last day on this project will be August 15th. Barring any unforeseen calamities, I should be able to at least manage to hold a yard sale before that day arrives. If I can't manage to do that, I shall have to declare this project a failure. I'm not going to make myself feel bad if I do fail. There's something to be said for making the effort. As a matter of fact, I could just rename my clutter and call it something like "assets" or "valuables." I'd be stretching the truth, but at least it wouldn't be "clutter" anymore. I'll worry about that on August 15th. Whatever will be will be...
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
De-cluttering Project: Day 22-25 Ways to keep yourself from finishing your de-cluttering project...
It's official, I'm the best procrastinator in the world. The positive in all of this is that it has given me lots of ideas for my writing such as this wonderful list of 25 ways to prevent yourself from de-cluttering. Enjoy!
25. Start a new project. Hey, why not? You're ambitious enough to start de-cluttering, so how can you not go ahead and tackle some more crap?
24. Put together a photo album using all of the old pictures you just found while working in your first box of junk. You'll get back to de-cluttering later.
23. Bake a cake. It just sounds like a good idea.
22. Eat the cake. Well, you can't bake a cake without at least having a piece of it.
21. Exercise to work off the cake you just ate.
20. Call your mother...or someone else's mother. Depending on which one will keep you on the phone longer. Sometimes, dragging out all of your old stuff makes you feel nostalgic and you just feel the need to call your mom.
19. Take a Youtube break. Some funny videos will surely motivate you to get back into what you were doing. About two hours later, you'll get to that second box.
18. Go househunting. The biggest problem you have is a lack of space. That's what's been creating the clutter, so why not attack the problem at the source. Just find a bigger house.
17. Tweet! You owe it to your followers on Twitter to let them know how you're doing with that big de-cluttering project. Just a couple of tweets and then you'll get right back to it.
16. Decide that now is the right time to rearrange your cd collection by style and then alphabetically by artist.
15. Move your furniture around. Maybe your feng shui is off. Moving the couch just might help things look less cluttered.
14. Call a friend. You just found your old high school yearbook and it brought back lots of memories for you. You'd better call your friend before you forget how much you really want to talk to them right now. It's only been ten years.
13. Plant something. You just unearthed (no pun intended) three packs of seeds and it's such a beautiful day outside. Why not go ahead and plant these while you have them in your hands? It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so you can do more de-cluttering then.
12. Listen to your newly alphabetized cd's in order. Music helps you work faster doesn't it? As long as your dancing breaks are kept to a minimum, it really shouldn't interfere with anything.
11. Re-connect with old friends on Classmates. That song you just heard reminds you of the time you went to that dance with your friends and everyone was acting crazy, but having so much fun. I wonder where they all ended up.
10. Look for that cd you couldn't find when you were alphabetizing earlier. I know I had a Rob Base cd. But where the hell is it? Did I loan that to one of my friends? Was it really twenty years ago?
9. Listen to your husband read the newspaper out loud. Sit and roll your eyes as you politely tell him that you can't concentrate on what he's reading to you right now.
8. Have a quick discussion about what you're working on and why you don't have time to read the newspaper right now.
7. Make yourself a snack. It's been a long morning and all of this de-cluttering avoidance has made you very hungry.
6. Take a Facebook quiz while you're eating lunch. Why not? They're fun.
5. Answer a few e-mails.
4. Fix that problem on your website that you just noticed because of an e-mail that someone sent you. It won't take long to do this.
3. Take some books back to the library. You just found that book that should have gone back two weeks ago. Shit, that's gonna be a big fine.
2. Write down the idea you just had for a short story that has something to do with a woman who was found dead under a mountain of cardboard boxes filled with Happy Meal toys, books, old magazines and yes, one containing that Rob Base cd.
1. Blog. You forgot to do this earlier and what the hell, you've managed to completely waste the rest of your time today. Try it all again tomorrow.
Until next time...
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Tuesday, July 7, 2009
De-cluttering Project: Day ??-We Interrupt This Program...
to de-clutter. I've had alot on my mind recently. More and more I have set my thoughts on what my life should look like and how I'm going to get there. This project of de-cluttering is only one of the things I need to do to reach my destination.
The older I get, the more meaningful it becomes to have "me" time. I have recently (within the last two to three months) started making time to walk in the evenings and also to write every day. I had been doing these things sporadically, putting them aside whenever others seemed to want me to do so. All this managed to do was piss me off. So, I decided that I was going to adhere to my schedule no matter how much some people don't want me to. It is so important that I stand my ground on this particular issue. Otherwise, I get entrenched in a kind of clutter I really don't want to deal with; emotional and psychological clutter.
It is so very important to do the things that mean something in your life. For me, there are three things I must do regularly to feel like myself. These include: meditation, walking and writing. Without these things I feel disconnected and I can't even make simple decisions without feeling overburdened. Looking at these things it may seem like I need alot of relaxation, but in truth, I have never been able to fully relax in my life. There have been a couple of occasions when I got really close to it, but I don't think being under the influence of anesthesia or epidural counts.
For those who don't know, I also run a Women's Blog called 2 Higher Ground. On this blog, I talk about things like relaxation and getting in touch with your spiritual side. I also like to post tips over there for how to improve self-esteem and things like that. This blog is the embodiment of all of the things I enjoy and what makes it possible for me to enjoy them. The ability to express what we like and what we don't like is our right and privilege. And if people feel the need to make you feel bad or inferior for doing so, then you need to seriously think about whether or not they should be in your life.
That said, I'm not sure what all this has to do with de-cluttering other than to show how much time one can waste when their thoughts are cluttered by worries about what people think, what people might say if you do or say certain things, or even whether or not people will love you if you change. So don't ever be afraid to express yourself. If being who you are doesn't sit well with those who are supposed to love you, then maybe you aren't loving the right people.
Next post, I promise I will have done some actual de-cluttering in the house. But for now...the de-cluttering of my mind will have to suffice.
Until next time...
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Friday, July 3, 2009
Day 13-Decluttering Project-Why I Hate Happy Meals...
So I've been moving right along with the de-cluttering. I actually took a few hours the other day to clean out the three bookbags that I often carry with me to ensure that I never miss an opportunity to work on any of the fifteen projects I have going should the spirit move me to do so when I am in transit. I successfully whittled their contents down to where it is contained in one tidy little bag. My shoulder thanks me.
From these: 
To this: 
It has been a rough week and I have to admit that I didn't spend much time on decluttering due to some personal things that were happening. I did manage to work with my daughter on some of her clutter and that was a major chore. She's five and already she consistently finds ways to avoid working on her room. What we found during the course of this journey into the world of the pre-schooler was that we have way too close a relationship with McDonalds and Burger King. I found an entire box full of those silly little toys that they like to put into their kid's meals to entice children to eat their chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers. Check out this picture: 
This tells me that we really need to cut back on the takeout and get her focused on some other things. Granted, it's not like this is a week's worth of toys, but still, I really don't want her collection to grow much past what it already is. She did manage to let go of an entire bag full of toys that she doesn't want anymore. I was proud of her for being willing to let go of it. At least she's on the right track.
While I continue to deal with some emotional clutter, it became increasingly evident to me this week that holding onto things is not a good substitute for growing solid relationships with the people you love. I lost my grandfather this week and he was someone whom I loved very much. I was looking around his house the other day and noticing that he didn't have what I would call a great deal of clutter. He lived very simply and he only seemed to keep things that were functional or had real sentimental value to him. His possessions did not amount to much, but if you knew him, you could tell that he was indeed a wealthy man. Wealthy in a sense that he knew who he was and was comfortable with being that person consistently and without apology. He was a great man and I could take lots of lessons from the way he lived his life. As I continue the process of dis-entrenching myself from this lifestyle I've become reluctantly accustomed to, I will keep this in the back of my mind. I've always known and believed that the stuff isn't what's important, so the sooner I can adhere to my own beliefs, the sooner I will reach my goal of being clutter-free.
Until next time...
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
De-Cluttering Project-Day Four...There's this and then there's that...
I'm noticing how difficult it is to try and do serious de-cluttering when you have a husband and a five year-old. Perhaps this is why the clutter started in the first place. I don't remember having so much crap when I was single. I'm noticing that there are two types of clutter in my home: Daily Use Clutter and Other Half Clutter. 
Daily use clutter is the stuff that we use on a daily basis that seems to be in the way even after you've put it away. Whether this is because you know that you are going to have to haul it all back out again the next day and so you still see it there even when it isn't or because you simply leave it out so that you can get to it more easily. A perfect example of this is my laptop. I have tried putting it away every night, but found it to be a big hassle to keep getting it back out when I want to do my writing in the evenings. 
Yes, I could use my desktop computer, but I find it much easier to do the bulk of my work on the laptop. Or, my daughter's tablet and markers. She is always writing little notes or drawing pictures and she refuses to put the tablet away. Perhaps she is just imitating her Mommy. I have a hard time enforcing the "put it away" rule with her when I have trouble putting my own writing tools away each day.
Other Half clutter is not exactly what you might think. Yes, most of it is generated by my other half, my husband, Robert. Note, I didn't say better half. 
This type of clutter is the stuff that your husband gets out to use for a certain task but then doesn't quite get to the other task and so the items stay out until he makes it the rest of the way to the garage, kitchen, basement or wherever this project might be. The other half of getting the project finished is to actually do the thing so that you can put the stuff associated with the project away. For example, there is a bottle of Gorilla Glue staring at me from my bookshelf as we speak. Now, I know and you know that a bottle of Gorilla Glue does not, in any way, qualify as a book. So, why is it resting on my bookshelf? This is the question of the day.
So, now that I've determined that there are two different kinds of clutter in my house, how am I going to address them? For one, I'm going to go down to the library and get that book on how to organize your stuff. There's a really good one down there that I started reading before. I think that if I can just set up some kind of system for daily projects and once in a while stuff, I might be onto something. I will post the name of this book later, after I've gone and picked it up. I would post it now, but my mind is so cluttered with daily stuff and once in a while stuff that the name of the book has escaped me. That's a whole other category of clutter that I'll have to tackle later.
Keep watching the blog to see if I'm making any progress. Until next time...
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Sunday, June 21, 2009
De-cluttering: Day One=Procrastination
As promised, here are some photos and a few words about my progress on the big De-Cluttering project that should have started yesterday...note, I said "should have started."
It looks harmless enough, right? But this is just one piece of a mess that is much more daunting in real life than I could ever capture in pictures. This is why Day One of my De-Cluttering project was spent visiting my father in Kentucky instead of cleaning up and putting things away. I'll get to it, eventually.
It's not as though I haven't attempted to put everything in its place. I've spent lots of time over the years trying to develop a system that would keep all of my papers safely put away and all of my other writing paraphenalia out of everyone else's way when I wasn't using it all. Hence, the bins.
What I have never been able to get a handle on is the clutter that comes from everyday life. My daughter's bag for school, my bags (which are another project in and of themselves), mail, trash, all of the stuff piles up day after day unless you have a system for dealing with it. Granted, my daughter is no longer in pre-school and she won't need to have a bag lying about. I think I can probably tackle that issue without much trouble. 
The biggest part of what I'm dealing with is a lack of space. Our house is only about 800 square feet and for three people and a huge amount of crap, that's just not enough. I think we do a fair job with what we have, but the object of this project is to be able to get through the day without feeling like I constantly have to pick something up and put it away. Right now, I'm simply putting off the inevitable until I can get motivated enough to really get into the project. I've got a couple of books that I need to read before I jump in and really start to "de-clutter." I'll be posting more as time permits (hopefully each day, but likely to be a few times during the week).
De-Cluttering/Organization/Goal-Setting Resources
When Organizing Isn't Enough by Julie Morgenstern-Using a program she calls, SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life. I'm currently reading this one and trying to pick out the pieces that will work for me. I'll share more on this later.
The Power of Less by Leo Babauta-A good book to start with if you're looking down the barrel of a project that seems too big to undertake. This book claims to help with breaking down goals into manageable tasks, creating new and productive habits, and focusing on only a few tasks at a time. I'm in desperate need of some guidance here and hoping that reading this book will help me figure out the best way to tackle some of the problem areas in the house and in my life.
Hang in there with me as I attempt to rid my life of chaos and clutter...this should be interesting.
Until next time...
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Sunday, June 14, 2009
Searching for Al Green...
For about six months now, I've been turning my house upside down trying to find my favorite cd. It's an Al Green compilation of his greatest hits and it's one of the best cd's I owned. I've asked everyone I know who might know where this cd is and no one has seen it. It's quite the bummer when you lose something like this and you know that you didn't really take it anywhere, yet it is gone. Since I've been really wanting to hear the cd, I just broke down and ordered a copy of the cd on Ebay and can't wait until it gets here.
Why am I telling you all of this? Well, it ties in with this big decluttering project that I'm going to be working on starting next week. I'm quite sure that the minute I receive the new cd in the mail, I will miraculously find the other cd in a box or under something in a closet. That's the way it usually goes.
Stay tuned to see what progress I'm making. For starters, I've started checking out books from the library on de-cluttering and that sort of thing. I'm going to start by trying to find some good tips on how to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. There are lots of resources out there, but finding one that will motivate me is the trick.
If anyone has any suggestions for good books on organization, de-cluttering, making life easier, etc. e-mail them to me and I will check them out. I'll be back next week to post more about this big project...
Until next time...
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Getting Organized...the project!
I would love to be one of those highly organized people who has a place for everything and has everything its place. Unfortunately, I am the type of person who has a place where things should be and lots of things where they shouldn't be. This is not ideal for a mother, wife, elementary school librarian, and writer. At any given moment, I've got twenty things going on and I usually know the general vicinity of the things I need to lay hands on in a given day, but some days it seems like I'm pulling my hair out trying to remember where I put that ink pen or what happened to that permission slip from my daughter's pre-school. Short of calling the crew from Clean House, I'm not sure what to do. In light of this, I'm designating my first ever free summer to the pursuit of getting organized.
Of course, I'll be writing and promoting during the summer to get ready for the release of Keeping the Faith on September 25th, but the bulk of my time is going to be spent trying to reduce clutter; both emotional and physical. By the end of this year, there won't be ten things standing between me and that note pad I'm always searching for when I need to write out my grocery list. I will be journalling about the process of de-cluttering over the course of the summer and hopefully, after doing lots of research and trial and error, I'll also be giving you information that will help you to de-clutter your own life. Day one will be on Saturday, June 20th. I hope you'll tune in to join me in my quest for a clutter-free life.
Oh...and, yes, there will be pictures. As much as I hate to show my weaknesses, in order to know if a true transformation has taken place, I must do the whole before and after photo thing.
Until next time...
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A Little Bit of Mystery: Short Mysteries to Confuse and Amuse
