Personal clutter demons (long)

[VeloVT]

I highly recommend David Allen's book "Getting Things Done." It's about productivity, not decluttering/organization, but I think many of the strategies he advocates are useful for reducing clutter as well. For instance, if you have a partner, make sure each of you has a work station, and mail/other items get put into the correct inbox, so you are responsible for your stuff and he is responsible for his stuff, and there's no random unassigned floating "stuff."

I also go through my closet/dresser every six months or so and come up with a bag to go to Goodwill or consignment (stuff that I don't wear but is in pretty good shape), and if applicable a bag to be trashed or made into rags.

I have sold a number of things on Ebay, but mostly it's been bike parts with very little wear. I usually set a fixed price a bit lower than I actually think the item is worth. All of the bike parts I've listed on Ebay have sold. Other items have been more hit or miss... I went through a ballet flat buying spree last summer and bought a few pairs of shoes that I realized after only 1 or 2 wearings weren't right -- I sold one on Ebay to a happy customer but the other wouldn't budge. If you're pretty sure what you have is marketable, it's worth the effort -- if you're not so sure, it can feel like a waste of time and listing fees.

When I "clutter", it's usually a sign of some emotional issue I'm avoiding. But that's just me .

[Cataboo]

Ebay fees for fixed price listings ahve gotten pretty cheap & you get 5 free listings a month now or something. I don't ebay anything that I don't think will sell. If it's a large item like a kayak or bike, it goes on craigslist... If it doesn't sell on craigslist, it might move to ebay, but I'm more likely to just list it again and again on craigslist and eventually it will sell. If you set the price low enough, it'll sell on craigslist quickly.

Smaller items I'm more likely to put on ebay as a buy it now or best offer, the listings last 30 days and I can just renew them if they don't sell. I basically will go through the ended listings, see who's had the same item & what they sold for - then I'll list at sort of the medium price for buy it now.

Electronics or books, I tend to just put on amazon marketplace. That works pretty well.

You guys inspired me to tackle my guest room closet. It has been my "returns" closet for the last year or so... Anything I need to mail back to bonktown, backcountry, wherever has been stashed into there. Steepandcheap/chainlove/bonktown moving to 30 days only for returns has pretty much killed any urge of mine to actually order from them lately - so that's been good for curing that "addiction" I watch those sites much less and I only buy if I absolutely know I need it.

So now I have a huge box of returns to go back & I just need to get packaging tape to tape it up & drop it off at UPS.

[sgtiger]

SlowButSteady, I have had similar issues with clutter. I'm a pack rat by nature and tend to accumulate stuff and it doesn't help that I'm a procrastinator too. I'm still working on my clutter demon but I've gotten so much better.

Here are the steps that worked for me:

1) Identify most common clutter traps. Find a system to deal with those, like sorting the mail over the recycle bin that someone else suggested, so that you don't add to the existing clutter. For me it helped to ask my neat freak friends about their habits and observe them in their homes.

2) Restrict what comes into the house. This may be hard to do since you're not the only one who's responsible for the clutter. And you've already mentioned that the other members of the family are resistant. You can't force anyone else around you into change but you can work to change yourself. Let them keep their man cave to do what they want with it. It's the one room that you don't get to criticize. Just ask them to keep the door shut to it and respect that you are trying to get the other parts of the house clean and to please not clutter out there anymore. Someone already mentioned that before you bring in anything into the house that you have to get rid of something first. That is a great idea. However for the clutter situation that you described, you might want to start with letting go of three things for every one item that comes in. Once you're into the maintenance stage you can do go down to 1:1.

3) In the beginning, work in 1' x 1' sections. It is overwhelming to take that kind of clutter as a whole, so work in small sections. As you get better you can work in larger sections. It helped me to lay down something that I could use as a border for the section I was working in, like an embroidery hoop or a small box with the top and bottom cut out. Sort the items by keep, throw out, and giveaway/sell. It helps if you have bags or boxes at hand while you sort. When you're done, you have to find a home for all the items that you've decided are staying. It was very difficult for me to do this in the beginning. My natural inclination was to put many of these items in a new pile in another part of the room, so the piles where just moving around. Ug! Sometimes the part of the house the items belonged is was so cluttered that there was no space to put them into without cleaning out that first. If that's the case put them into a box or bag and keep them in a place where you can easily pull them out once you're ready to organize that space. Plastic see through bins are nice because you can view the contents, but the cost of those can add up quickly if you need a lot of those. I used a lot of paper grocery bags since they can stand up by themselves and I could write down what was inside. Keep a container for each room or category of items. Keep like with like. It's so much easier to see if you have multiples of the same thing. I also kept a box for those items that belonged to Dh that was placed outside his explosion room and asked him to put those items away. If they stayed in the box over a week than I assumed that it was alright to throw out. I felt like that was a reasonable amount of time for him to either take care of it or pull the items into his man cave. I did make exceptions for the things I knew he would miss eventually and placed them into his space. That way it was on him if he couldn't find them: "I placed it on your desk, honey. What happened to it after that, I do not know." He never missed the items I threw out. He probably forgot he even owned them.

4) Or for a small space, such as a bathroom or linen closet , pull everything outside onto the lawn. And only bring back things you need or want to keep. For the items that are not a necessity, ask yourself when was the last time you used it. If it's more than a year or two then reconsider your decision to keep it. If you can't get yourself to part with some of those thing, put it into a box dated six months in advance. If you haven't used those items in that time, then chances are you don't need it. Get rid of it.

5) Before starting a new section, maintain the section you've worked on first. It takes getting used to but it's so much easier to do maintenance once an area is clutter-free.

Remember that it's easier to replace a bad habit with a good one than to break yourself from a bad habit cold turkey. If you find yourself feeling guilty or playing the shoulda, coulda, woulda mind game with yourself, that is the time to just do the thing that's on your mind instead of beating yourself up about falling into old habits. Another thing I do is to watch shows about dealing with clutter. They show homes that are way worse them mine which makes me feel a bit better about my mess. And are a reminder of what could happen if I let things go too far. I pick up tips in the process. My favorite is How Clean Is Your House produced by BBC. I don't watch it often, but every time I do, it makes me want to scrub down all the surfaces in my home.

[Geonz]

++++1 on the "stuff in organizing books is for people who are organized."


Flylady was way too much for me.

I've had people say they were going to try to help me get organized, but they always forgot. If I were organized, I would have reminded them, but that's the point. HOnestly, it wasn't self-sabotage. I can't tell you how many times I've found the evidence of a sorting system or memory system that I forgot I'd started. I do remember to clean out my dryer lint and pencil sharpeners... I think because they scream "fire hazard!" at me. (Or maybe because I'm a closet pyro and really want to collect it all and burn off all that clutter )

So, given that, For *me* craigslist or ebay would be too taxing on my lack of organizational skills. Keep track of pictures of the stuff? Ack!

However, if you don't like the clutter because it keeps you from getting organized... then organize the sale, get rid of the stuff, and keep your simplified life more organized. Simplicity has its value

So... I *do* somehow find a way to blog. So I started a "clutterblog" a.k.a. a "CLOG" after my brother's wedding end of May. It's inspired me to *start* cleaning several times and of course, if somebody wnated to join forces and mandate "No, you need a picture of the target area every Sunday night," hey, I'd be game because yea, abotu now (last posting was 7/5) it may die off... http://clog-theclutterblog.blogspot.com/

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

If you can hide your clutter in the closets or in the attic, you don't really have a clutter problem.
If you can put all your disorganized papers into a big box or a filing cabinet, you don't have real clutter problem.
If you can get rid of your clutter by putting it on Ebay or carting it off in the trunk of your car, you don't have a real problem.
I grew up where there were only 1 foot wide trails that you could pick your way through the rooms on...everything besides that was piled halfway up to the ceiling. God help you if those 6 foot tall stacks of NY Times fell over on you. Clean clothes?...what a joke- go pick the least dirty thing from that five foot tall mound of dirty clothes in the middle of the room and wear it. Where's that big spaghetti pot? Oh yeah, it's still got last year's thanksgiving turkey stew in it and it's somewhere under that shapeless mound in the corner over there where I 'think' the radiator is...and I think I remember the old green recliner chair is under there somewhere too. Want to pull up the shade and open the window for a little daylight and fresh air?...sorry, can't get anywhere near it. Plus, you're not allowed to touch the window shade because it will disintegrate if you move it, like the one in the bedroom did a few years ago. Only we can't get into the bedroom anymore so we stopped worrying about the shade in there letting the daylight in. And don't get me started on what kind of 'food' we kids had to eat.
This is how I grew up, and it was pretty oppressive. My mother, whom I loved very much, had a little issue or two.

The idea of trying to deal with clutter by Ebaying or Craigslisting one's way out of it only works for people who don't have a really serious hoarding/clutter problem. Self help books with 'organization systems' won't work either. They cannot 'get organized', they cannot let go, they cannot face it or solve it no matter how many books they read or pep talks they get from well meaning friends.
It reaches a point where it just becomes beyond self help. At that point only real physical intervention by caring and efficient people can help, best accompanied by therapy and support. Not support to make the hoarder 'better organized'...but merely to reassure and comfort them while the traumatic intervention is happening...while they are losing so much of what they feel they simply cannot live without.
There are many levels of having a 'clutter problem'. I'm not really sure what level the original poster is experiencing, but I do know that it can become progressively worse year by year. It can become a real sickness, the seriousness and hopelessness of which many of us more normal people simply cannot comprehend.

[Tuckervill]

Oh Lisa, that's just terrible.

Yesterday, I decided to "declutter" some stuff I had put in the garage for the garage sale that never happened. I was fed up, and it requires a permit to hold a garage sale and of course on Saturday city offices are closed. I just decided to give it all away.

I made a sign that said "Free! Christmas Shopping" and put it by the main street. Then I spread out two tarps and put everything I could find to part with out on those tarps by the wheelbarrow load. It took a good 2 hours before I got the first customer, and boy was he enthusiastic! He went home and got his wife, and I kept going in and out of the out buildings and finding more stuff that didn't need to be sold.

Eventually, I noticed that several people were sitting in their cars WAITING for me to come out with the next load. I could barely get it through the gate before they were on me. It was incredible. I left the stuff out there all night, and only about 10% of 20 loads was still there (some of the stuff that went early was lots of furniture, most of it broken!).

Two realizations:

• Some of these people had to be hoarders.
• None of them took the home organization books that I had collected in frustration over the years.

I feel so free!

Karen