Last week I missed my weekly decluttering updates to post about the basic rules to get rid of clutter.
I gave a lot of thought to that post, trying to convey the lessons I learned this year on my decluttering journet and, at the same time, keeping it as simple as possible. Since the purpose of decluttering is to make your life simpler, a post about decluttering should, in my opinion, follow those same lines.
But, tips and rules aside, these past two weeks have been very productive at my house in what decluttering is concerned.
I cleaned out my daughter's closet and removed a huge pile of clothes to donate. Mostly they are summer clothes that I'm sure will not fit her next year, but a few are leftovers from her baby years that I saved as mementos. Well, I went though that box and found that most things had yellowish spots on them and were, honestly, just turning old. I decided to keep a few still, but others I washed to get them wearable again and decided to pass them on to a friend who just had a baby girl. Maybe I'll take pictures before sending them away, but ultimately I prefer to see them being used than just getting moldy in the back of a closet.
In addition, I also cleaned out my clothes closet and my shoe rack and I decided to toss a lot of things too. It took some effort to do it, to just turn my mind off and avoid convincing myself that maybe I could use that particular sweater once more before getting rid of it. But I lived through it. And, to avoid relapses, I took all the tossed items out of the house in that same day. I'm decluttering. There's not going back.
Finally, I also donated two large bags of house linens. It wasn't in my original plans to do this, but then I was invited to participate in a charity event to help the refugees crisis in Europe and they were requesting donations of bed linens and kitchen items. I didn't have time to go through the kitchen stuff, but I was happy to have an excuse to declutter the linens as well. Can't say no to decluttering for a worthy cause!
Well...and after all this...there's still clutter around. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to tackle next weekend, but I'm seriously leaning toward the home office and the bookshelves. Let's see how it goes, and I'll update here again next week.
Happy decluttering,
Sounds like you are making good progress! I've done a few house cleaning jobs for people, and de-cluttering is indeed something a lot of us would do well to try! "Things" just accumulate over the years. One lady I helped pack for a move had spices in her cabinets with due dates from the 70s and 60s! It is so nice/wonderful that you could donate some of the linens for the refugee crisis in Europe. It's heartbreaking what people are going through.
ReplyDeleteDecluttering is hard work and we often find other priorities and clutter just piles on...but i'm getting a lot better at going through closets and cabinets periodically to avoid accumulation...anyway, thank you for visiting!
Delete