Poor Wendi over at My Heart is Always Home bared her heart this morning and shared a post on STUFF.
Stuff...material things...clutter...or, in my case, plain ol' JUNK.
I am covered up in stuff here. As I told her, I could try to say it's because we used to have a 2 story farmhouse and now I have a double-wide mobile home of only 1400 sq ft. And before that, I had an even larger farmhouse.
Or, we are 11 (well, right this moment in time, with Dewey and Chris gone working we are only 9) people living in that space.
Or we have accumulated materials for the home we will build.
I could probably find several viable excuses really, at least for some of the excess here. But the flat, hard reality of it all isn't any of that.
I just have too much stuff.
Yes, I am a prepper, basically. Yes, I am moving in the direction of more self-reliance from a homestead point-of-view.
But I have too much junk, period. I don't have any of it under control, or even remotely organized, and that's what makes it clutter instead of preps, or storage. I have so much stuff here it hinders a peaceful life. I live under a huge cloud of depression and stress, on edge most times, and it's mainly due to the junk we have accumulated.
Sure, there are mostly useful things in my junk/clutter collection -- I have tons of fabric and assorted sewing items. I have an entire schooling career of books, supplies and extras for 8 children to move from preschool learning right through high school. We have assorted animal needs, some for critters no longer in the homestead rotation here. We have tools galore -- could open my own Harbor Freight or Grainger Supply and still have more than enough for my own use.
Plain truth of it all is it's just too much stuff and it really is a hindrance to good, peaceful living here
:o(
So, the gist of my post (aw, c'mon now, you knew I'd get to a point eventually didn't you?) is this: I need to declutter, purge, clean out, organize, dejunk -- whatever tag you want to use. I wish it were as simple as just organization but I know it's gonna be more involved than that. I need to pare down even the seemingly useful things here. That takes being brutal in my keeping selection. I'm not really good at that. That inability is a big part of how I got to this stage in the first place.
Wanna join me? I know I'm not the only one sitting in life surrounded by just too much *whatever*. Dewey comes home for good in about 3 weeks -- I should probably plan for only 2 weeks, but hey now, Rome wasn't built in a day!
I want...I need...to sort down and remove stuff here. I need to be brutal with a great deal of it in order to get it done once and for all. I cannot just organize and move it around thinking it will make a difference. Good grief, I suppose I should share pictures of the mess and clutter before and after, too, heh? Given my sharings recently you might not know it, but I've got pride :o( another big hindrance, but it's there nonetheless. I don't know about the before pictures. I'll have to pray on those some.
Who wants -- needs -- to join the challenge? It's always easier to walk together.
Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
6 comments:
I will join you! We live in a smaller home and the clutter constantly feels overwhelming! I think that I can also say I am a prepper, and nothing is organized. What good will it do me if I can't find it? Maybe we should take pictures of the before and after. I will put a post on my blog also.
just realized you did say you would use pictures, sorry for my ignorance!
Welcome to the decluttering bandwagon! I began this years ago after I read Don Aslett's "Clutter's Last Stand". Good grief did I have a lot to get rid of.
The first time I read CLS, it hurt to read it. This man was telling me I had to get rid of all of my precious stuff! I didn't do it. About 2 months later though, I read it again and this time I was less irked and I began. Our double car garage was lined with deep shelves tottering with boxes full of who knows what and we went through everything. We hauled truckloads to the dump and good will. Then I hit everyone's closets and purged more.
1 month or so went by and I felt we could do even better, so we went through everything again and pared down even further. How did we ever get so much stuff? A lot of it was stuff people had given us in lawn and leaf bags LOL probably as they were decluttering, they thought it would be nice to share it with us.
What a blessing it was that we did this as we ended up selling our home and moving to New England shortly after my second tour through the garage. If I had had to purge all the junk when we were trying to move it would have been a disaster.
What I've discovered is there are a lot of people who want to declutter their own premises, yet feel guilty somehow about tossing their junk, so because we are a large family they think "Ah ha - I'll give this stuff to the Reed's." Groan. We are grateful for some of the lovely things people have passed on to us, but we do not really appreciate the gee gaws and knick knacks that others don't have the fortitude to trash.
I try to only pass things on to people that are in great condition and are useful.
Decluttering is wonderful. Once you get going, it's addictive. I start tossing and the family runs and tries to nail down their favorite stuff :)
Have you read Flylady's decluttering information? She's got a lot of helpful material on the subject.
Have fun! Keep us informed on how it's going.
I'm definately in. I've actually already began this. I am always reading books about pioneer days(Little House, etc) and I long to have their kind of simplicity. However, I've learned that unless I gather up the junk and take it immediately out to the van, and directly to the local shelter, salvation army, or goodwill, or even freecycle that it will somehow manage to creep it's way back into our home. For us the clutter is mostly paper, clothes, and toys. There's more, but those are the main problems.
So, how should we go about it? Room by room, or do a Flylady 27 fling every day, or just run about madly throwing stuff into a big black trashbag. lol. I'll post on my blog our updates as we go along as well, but I'm not sure about pictures. That pride does tend to get in the way, doesn't it?
sara
You inspired me. My 13 yo son and I just finished ripping a major food storage area apart, cleaning it all and reorganizing it. It looks so much better now.
I have been "fluttering" along as FL (Flylady) would say now for a year or 2. Sometimes months go by and I hardly do any FL things. However, over the year or two it has made a big difference. When I look over Kelly's missions, sometimes I can't even do them because there's nothing there to declutter :)
I can't even do 27 fling boogies anymore in any area of my house because we're mostly down to the stuff that we actually use.
I highly recommend the Flylady system, tailored to YOUR personal family's needs. Happy flinging as they might say.
I'm in. The Lord has bbeen laying it on my heart to declutter my room. I walk in and there is stuff everywhere ahhh!!! I will try to post on my blooger blog about this, I don't know the address but will let you know. Thanks Deanna.
Ruth Parkinson
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