The fail proof way to declutter your home:
1. Make a list
of every room, and closet in your house.
2. In your
schedule book, dedicate 15 minutes for each day in a week per room.
3. Each day,
spend 15 minutes (timed!) going through the room and making a pile of things
that you can get rid of. Be brutal. If you don’t love it, wouldn’t wear it
tonight, or haven’t used it in a year. Get rid of it. If you have a significant
other, have them help you be honest about what you need.
4. Determine
what to do with your pile of clutter. If you don’t desperately need money right
now, and you’re hopelessly disorganized, I honestly suggest throwing it out. If
you attempt to sell it or donate it right now it will sit in a pile in the
corner of your house for months, possibly years until you give upon it. If you’re starting to get on the right track, try donating it or selling it. If you sell
it, try to pick out the items that will sell for the most to maximize return
for your time.
5. After you
finish decluttering each of your rooms, you can go back to your schedule book and
write in a new room per week Spend 15 minutes per day organizing what’s left.
Once everything is gone, organizing will be very easy.
In my pre-flylady life, I probably donated 30% of my salary
to organizational “stuff”. Every major cleaning project at my old house would
start with a trip to Staples, Walmart, or Target. I would spend a fortune, convinced
that the dividers, bins, and hooks would be the answer to my prayers. After
several long years, I can tell you with certainty that organization does not
come from Target, Walmart, Staples, or Bed Bath and Beyond.
Think of a simpler time in our history. If you lived in the
past and you had a small one room house and your only possessions were things
that you made or traded for, organization wouldn’t be a problem. Your cooking
pot would go in the section of your table reserved for it. You would clean it
after every use because you needed it for the next meal. You would only have
the things that you needed to live comfortably. Possessions that weren't
necessary to live, such as jewelry or trinkets were treasured. Fast forward to
modern times- We've become so overwhelmed with stuff, that we can’t possibly
use it all or take care of it appropriately.
My house has at different times contained: A craft room entirely devoted
to an enormous amount of crafting supplies, ham radio equipment that has been
used a handful of times (including putting a hole in the attic to get better
reception), cross country ski equipment, fire torches to juggle, fly fishing
equipment, camping equipment, three Xboxes, a Wii, bikes, two motorcycles,
rollerblades, enough clothing to dress our entire community, soap making
equipment, beer brewing equipment, lap tops, computers etc. How far we have
strayed from when our possessions were well used and cherished.
Flylady taught me that you can’t possibly organize these
things. More importantly, you don’t have enough time to devote adequately to
use and take care of all of these things. To me, a happy life involves a few
simple pursuits that I enjoy and can focus my time on. I no longer need a house
filled with hundreds of distractions. I choose the hobbies that are important
to me. Mine are crafts (thank you Pinterest!), reading (almost exclusively from
the library), and this blog (which requires no “stuff” and actually makes me
money instead of requiring money to start.)
Now Jon was a different story. Jon believes in perfecting as
many hobbies as he can possibly cram into his life. It’s important to me that
Jon isn’t forced to alter his beliefs to fit mine just because we’re married.
Within reason, I want Jon to choose the path he feels most comfortable with.
Does that mean I’ll empty my 401k to fund his home brewing projects? Absolutely
not, but it does mean that I’ll do everything feasible to make it possible for
him to accomplish his goals while I work on mine. When given a limit and
options of how to spend his money, Jon chooses to invest in his current
favorite hobbies by selling equipment from his previous favorite hobbies.
Let’s say you love brewing beer. If you buy all of your beer
brewing equipment second hand and in a few months decide that you would rather
build a motorcycle, you can sell your beer brewing equipment and begin to
purchase motorcycle parts. You will have lost almost no money. If in a year,
you change your mind and decide that you miss beer brewing, sell your
motorcycle (probably at a profit) and buy secondhand beer equipment again.
The only way to organize your house is by decluttering and
reducing the things in your life. There are a few ways to do this. You can do
this “flylady” style by spending 15 minutes a day in different rooms and
throwing out anything that you don’t love or that you haven’t used in a year.
You can sell 10 things from your home on eBay each week (this requires a time
dedication of it’s own, since you have to spend a significant amount of time
packaging and shipping.), or you can make a huge pile of stuff you want to
donate and make a free pile outside and list it on craigslist. We did this once
and loved the results. I was excited that my stuff was going to people that
would appreciate it and I firmly believe in karma, we’ve received so many
needed freebies, or excellent deals on craigslist that I’m happy to list for
free when I don’t have time to sell.
**Head over to flylady.org to learn more about combating clutter.**
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