Good morning! Did you wake up to the same dream I had? It involved a cat, staring down at me. Shaming me for still sleeping?
It was more the voices in my head saying, “Today is the big day, it’s time to get your sh*t together and get stuff done! Those damn tax papers and receipts that need finalizing are done waiting. GET UP and get to work!”
BUT I DON’T WANNA
Before I head off to do all.that.fun.kind.of.stuff, I re-read my post from last year to see if I had made progress over the year. Last year, I was right where I am at, at the exact same time as this year. Dammit. I thought old dogs could learn new tricks?
WTH? Did I miss something in my lessons from last year? What did I do wrong?
Let’s pause for a moment, sympathize together. It’s a lot to take in when we realize we didn’t change as much as we hoped we had. Let planets realign, feel the love in the universe.
Take a deep breath and remember we’re getting stuff done now because it is GFTH-GFTB. We will feel better, and our brains will feel less stress. Last year, I was f**king ecstatic to be done with tax prep before February 6th. I wanna be there again, I loved that feeling, so today I will get s*it done!!
No, I’m (we’re) not procrastinating (at this particular moment)! We need to gather our thoughts and gear up for another one of our clutter clearing adventures of a lifetime. When you’re 50 something (53 like me, or young enough to know you haven’t learned enough yet to know you don’t know enough yet), you’ve had lots of practice at this, don’t be shy, don’t look at the piles everywhere, just admit there’s work to be done.
Confessions are a healthy part of the process. Really, they are!
We cannot go on an emotional adventure without mentally preparing ourselves. We need to stand tall (or sit tall) and feel pride in our abilities. Go ahead, puff up a bit!
De-cluttering, finishing up tax prep work or whatever it is that you’ve put off doing is hard work, especially since we have loved our clutter and have pride in our ability to selectively neglect tasks for a really long time. We are PROS baby, PROS!
Seriously?!?!
Hmm…maybe loved is the wrong word? Perhaps tolerated or been comfortable with or, yeah, I think my favorite description is we’ve mastered SELECTIVE NEGLECT! The technique used to get us where we’ve gotten ourselves.
In order to free ourselves from clutter and tasks at hand, we have to be ruthless and strong. We cannot be tolerable or comfortable, and we can’t let ourselves walk around that box on the floor anymore!
Before we make decisions, unraveling the puzzled manner in which we let this happen in our lives is a good launching point.
Clutter does not grow on trees. – Shelley (aka, ME the Dubious Minimalist TM)
Tolerating or being comfortable with status quo of our stuff, prohibits us from seeing items as clutter or undone tasks.
During our lifetime, we can sympathize with each other knowing we’ve organized and rearranged our stuff multiple times. Be it just starting out in life, getting married, having kids, changing jobs, losing loved ones, re-emptying the nest, you name it, we set ourselves up for accumulating clutter at every life event.
Life events lead us down the tolerating or being comfortable not dealing with clutter path. When we take that path, we simply lose track of how much has accumulated along the way.
I betcha we all can admit that we have a box or two stored somewhere? Often times with little recollection of what is in it or why we stored it there in the first place? Why do boxes like that still reside in our homes?
Ponder THAT for a moment!
We did organize the stuff into a nice box at some point in time. We clutter bugs love to organize items into cute little containers making items legitimate. Organizing before reducing items contributes to our clutter.
Cubby containers cause cantankerous copious clutter. – Shelley (aka, ME the Dubious Minimalist TM
Hot tip #1: Do not decide how to store stuff until you have reduced the number of items to purposeful amounts. Always gather items together in a pile before sorting. You must be able to see the sheer volume of what you have accumulated in each category to recognize the magnitude of it as clutter.
Seeing is believing. I’m totally serious about THAT!
Are you ready to no longer tolerate or be comfortable with clutter or the tax papers and receipts that need finalizing?? YES!! Now that we know why it has accumulated, we are ready to divide and conquer as we touch every item in our house (or in that tax paper box on the floor)!
Hot tip #2: Only attempt one of these categories at a time. I’m here to tell you a dubious approach about this is healthy. We only live once, if you’re not having fun while you’re doing this, you’re doing it wrong!
The Top 5 Big Stuff Clutter categories:
- Papers and anything to do with handling them, including pens and pencils
- Books, magazines, or reading materials
- Clothing or wearable items
- Broken items or unfinished projects, aka, junk
- Memorabilia – save this category until last! Keep a box handy to toss this stuff in as you go along. Sort at the very end of the process.
Use 6 P’s to determine an item’s purpose in your life:
- Practical (is it?)
- Permanent (do I have to keep it indefinitely or use regularly?)
- Pending (do I have to do something with this or not?)
- Producing (does this help me on a regular basis?)
- Preventative (do I need this just in case…!?)
- Precious (would I grab this if the house was on fire…?)
I confess I’ve been puzzled by clutter most of my life. I’m getting better, and am way less tolerable of it as I age. Selective neglect works when you have to prioritize life. But it can come back to bite you – a quick clearing produced 31 unusable writing utensils that had blended into the background of my desk. I had no clue they didn’t work. (I’m not sh***ing you!) I’m convinced sorting into like categories first reduces accumulation of multiples, is paramount in the process of de-cluttering, and the impact is immediate, rewarding, and GFTH-GFTB!
I’d love to hear your tips for de-cluttering or your struggles too – I’m here to sympathize with you! If you’ve blogged about this, do share your link in comments below!
I now keep a box in the bedroom so I can throw miscellaneous unusable things into it – from clothes to books to dvd’s. Once it’s full, I take it to a local donation center. It helps!
That’s a great idea! I need to implement doing the same thing! Thank you for sharing :-)!
My clutter is so bad, some would consider me a hoarder, but I am not, it is all good stuff right? Don’t we all say that. Maybe I’ll try your way and focus on one thing.
Thank you for stopping by! I think even The Minimalists have some level of “clutter” in their lives :-)!
For now, only reacting to 1st sentence. My cat would stare at a place on a wall where she once saw a tiny spider for 20 minutes without moving. Some cats live to detect the slightest movement! Yours is watching to catch the exact millisecond you begin waking up (and of course shaming you for not getting up as early as she/he did).
Now I’ll read the rest about decluttering.
Ellen, I love how you know so much about cat behaviors :-)!
Very useful thanks!
Thank you for stopping by and for sharing your thoughts! Take care!