'Declutterization': The act of cleaning house and organizing as defined by Opa Fritz - don't look for that word in any KonMari work.
Have you ever heard of KonMari? It's basically the latest trend in house tidying and reorganizing as devised by Marie Kondo, the tidying expert and best selling author of a series of books on the subject. Now, that being said I haven't actually bought any of the books (I mean really, if I buy yet another book, aren't I adding to the clutter???) but have read a bunch of articles about her system. But then, I've been reading articles on house organization for many years. Here's my take on the whole thing: house organization methods are like exercise regimens, and diets - you stick with whatever works for you. Wellll, somewhere along the line I took this whole thing seriously and whether or not it was reading about the KonMari system or something finally "clicked" in my hard-headed noggin, this past couple years has seen a gradual acceptance that I'VE GOT TOO DAMNED MUCH STUFF! ahem, sorry.
But that's it in a nutshell. I've been a collector since childhood. Somewhere in me that old hunter-gatherer gene has been working overtime and with a passion from the earliest age. But when my main interests can't be enjoyed anymore because the hobby space looks like a scene from the TV show 'Hoarders' or when stuff gets tucked away in cabinets and drawers, and on closet shelves where no one even sees them, then something has to be done. In the past most of my misguided reorganization efforts have been hit-&-miss, tackling a single drawer here, a box there, from any room that happened to be in my sights at the moment. That kinda, sorta works but really you don't see any real progress after a while. Yup, that box, or that drawer is a little bit emptier but the rest of the house is still full.
Soooo, what practical advice have I been able to glean from all this? Well, ya gotta have the will to start and keep at it!! Just keep plugging away. Some days will be more successful than others, some times you'll suffer from re-organizing burn-out. Some decisions may even be gut-wrenching: letting go of what once was prized possessions. This past year or so you may have noticed a distinct decline in postings in large part due to me wanting to do other things and partially because if I spend time divesting myself of thing's I have no material for the blog. Another warning: this is not an overnight process for any of us with houses full of stuff. It takes time. Here's a tool I use to kind of keep my spirits up. I use a spreadsheet to keep track of things I've gotten rid of. It has four columns in two categories and is over-&-above what I'm already keeping track of for my on-line sales.
The two categories and column breakdown are:
A) Things I've given away (to friends, the thrift store, whatever)
-Column 1: Numbers only in this column as it keeps track of the amount ('1' for one item of whatever given away, '4' for four items given away, etc.)
-Column 2: Item name (clothes, toys, furniture of any sort)
B) Things I've thrown in the garbage (usually old clothes but 30 year old school papers from the kids are targets too)
-Column 3: Numbers only in this column as it keeps track of the amount ('1' for one item of whatever thrown away or perhaps '4' for four items thrown away)
-Column 4: Item name (clothes, toys, furniture of any sort)
Using the formulas in the spreadsheet I add up the amounts separately in column's one and three. Sometime's I'll count a bag full of ratty old clothes as a quantity of '1' even though there may be 6 pieces of clothing in the bag - hmmmm, maybe I should change that. The spreadsheet is not a hard thing do and only takes a couple of minutes to set up and keep updated but I can look at it and show progress (heck, a piece of paper with a hand-written tally will work just as well). I started this at the beginning of the year and so far have tracked over 260 things gotten rid of PLUS about 70 items sold on-line. That's nearly 350 thing's gotten rid this year alone. And now, I can actually see a little progress. My approach so far has been to concentrate on the kitchen and living room with all our cabinets full of chachkies with an occasional foray into the bedroom closet. Admittedly, a lot of the stuff is now sitting out in The Cave waiting for me to photograph and put it on eBay, but sometimes the hardest part is to look at a prized possession and say to yourself 'I don't need this anymore. I don't want this anymore'. Once that happens I have mentally divorced myself from it's possessive hold on me. I can look at it in The Cave as it sits there waiting for me to prep it for sale and think to myself, "Say 'Bye'!" - and it has no meaning to me anymore!
Well, there you have it. Throughout all of this Bettina has had to weigh in on what she still wants to keep so at times there is a sort of tug-of-war going on, but through it all we are on the track declutterization (a totally made-up word by me BTW). Can anyone out there relate to our struggles? Well, as this whole process continues I'll keep ya posted
Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina
