Life_is_Simple
7-15-12, 2:16pm
Recently I went to visit family.
Usually at some point I will go over to my sister's house, and help her declutter. Previously we organized her clothes into summer/winter totes, and surprisingly she will switch what clothes are out depending on the seasons. She doesn't declutter unless I am there to help, though she cleans in open spaces.
This time we picked one room which is partly an office, but holds all the overflow from other rooms including the kitchen. We also decluttered one kitchen cabinet.
There were 22 boxes of Ziploc bags. I received 2 boxes, as a reward for my helping ;) :cool:
Shockingly, my sister has continued to declutter since, which she has never done before, and is donating bags of items several times a week.
My mom, on the other hand, declutters in her house periodically. She unfortunately is the keeper of clutter from past generations, and from her children who left stuff behind. Somehow we were talking about relatives, and found photos of them in the basement. Then she kept handing me more photos, as I asked about ancestors. So I took a bunch of the family photos and organized them and put them all in one place.
While doing this, my mom would find clutter amongst the boxes of photos, and she got going on decluttering ;) She likes to declutter on her own, so I just did my work with the photos, and she did her thing with the decluttering.
We had a lot of fun with the photos - she would tell me about all the people in them. Some of the photos were in boxes that had never been opened, that she had gotten from her mother's house years ago. I scanned some of them and sent to cousins, who were really happy to get them, and had never seen pictures of some of their ancestors.
Also, we found a photo of my dad in front of his mother's house with 30+ garbage bags of stuff at the curb. This was after she died, and he (and some of us kids) cleaned out her house. I scanned that picture too, sent it to my sisters, and we use that as inspiration ;)
My mom and sister continue to declutter, and my sister will drop by on her way to donating, and pick up stuff my mom wants to donate. It's a good time to declutter, when it's too hot to do much outdoors.
Now I am back home, and feel I better declutter here myself, so as not to be a hypocrite. ;) I have 4.5 bags of clothes ready to donate, and will probably get more.
WHew!
Usually at some point I will go over to my sister's house, and help her declutter. Previously we organized her clothes into summer/winter totes, and surprisingly she will switch what clothes are out depending on the seasons. She doesn't declutter unless I am there to help, though she cleans in open spaces.
This time we picked one room which is partly an office, but holds all the overflow from other rooms including the kitchen. We also decluttered one kitchen cabinet.
There were 22 boxes of Ziploc bags. I received 2 boxes, as a reward for my helping ;) :cool:
Shockingly, my sister has continued to declutter since, which she has never done before, and is donating bags of items several times a week.
My mom, on the other hand, declutters in her house periodically. She unfortunately is the keeper of clutter from past generations, and from her children who left stuff behind. Somehow we were talking about relatives, and found photos of them in the basement. Then she kept handing me more photos, as I asked about ancestors. So I took a bunch of the family photos and organized them and put them all in one place.
While doing this, my mom would find clutter amongst the boxes of photos, and she got going on decluttering ;) She likes to declutter on her own, so I just did my work with the photos, and she did her thing with the decluttering.
We had a lot of fun with the photos - she would tell me about all the people in them. Some of the photos were in boxes that had never been opened, that she had gotten from her mother's house years ago. I scanned some of them and sent to cousins, who were really happy to get them, and had never seen pictures of some of their ancestors.
Also, we found a photo of my dad in front of his mother's house with 30+ garbage bags of stuff at the curb. This was after she died, and he (and some of us kids) cleaned out her house. I scanned that picture too, sent it to my sisters, and we use that as inspiration ;)
My mom and sister continue to declutter, and my sister will drop by on her way to donating, and pick up stuff my mom wants to donate. It's a good time to declutter, when it's too hot to do much outdoors.
Now I am back home, and feel I better declutter here myself, so as not to be a hypocrite. ;) I have 4.5 bags of clothes ready to donate, and will probably get more.
WHew!