40 Hours Decluttering Using Flylady's Timer Method - March 3 - May 24, 2023

[ejchase]

Hi All,

I'm a teacher who is on a reduced schedule for about four months a year, mid-December through mid-February and mid-June through mid-August. I also have a REALLY cluttered home. In the past, I've had some success with setting myself a goal of doing a certain number of hours of decluttering during my periods of reduced work. I set one overall goal (usually 40 hours), then chip away at it in smaller increments of time. Some days I aim for an hour; others for four hours (with breaks!). I basically use Flylady's timer method described here, but with longer periods of time than 15 minutes:

http://www.flylady.net/d/getting-sta...ng-15-minutes/

Last summer (2022), I had to teach, so I was not able to finish my regular summer 40 hours until mid-February of this year. And this winter, I had a big work project which kept me from doing much, so I'm having to revise the timeline of these batches of 40 hours. Instead of completing a whole batch in winter this year, I am aiming to complete a new batch between today, March 3, and May 24, when my dad will be arriving for a visit. It will be hard to declutter much while I'm teaching, but decluttering has become so important to my mental health, I actually think I'm going to devote most of my spring break to it this year.

Though clutter is still an issue, over the years of focusing on getting rid of it, I've also discovered I need to spend time on making my home comfortable and pleasant which involves putting in time on things like repotting plants into pretty containers, picking out a nice bureau scarf and a "jewelry tree" to make the bureau in my bedroom pretty, and finding a nice tray for the containers of salt, pepper, and olive oil by my stove. I've learned that decluttering is not all it takes for me to finally enjoy my living spaces - figuring out what's pleasing aesthetically to me is super-important too - and really fun.

In any case, since I started these batches of 40 hours of decluttering in winter of 2017, I've made a lot of progress. My home isn't perfect, but it is MUCH less cluttered and MUCH more comfortable to me than it was six (!!) years ago. And recording my progress here has really helped.

I know for some people setting up a home is kind of second nature, but I've always struggled with it and always lived in cluttered, uncomfortable spaces, so these batches of 40 hours have been a real breakthrough for me.

In any case, thanks for "listening" and for the encouragement so many of you have given me over the years. Your support has kept me going and made a tremendous difference in my life and I think in my daughter's too.

And, as always, if anybody else wants to join in with a decluttering/homemaking goal of their own for a certain number of hours, that would be great!

[ejchase]

Yesterday, I had to have an upsetting family conversation in the afternoon, which I was really anxious about, so I decided to spend about 3 hours decluttering my office at school before that as a way of grounding myself. It really was as gratifying as I hoped. I got rid of SO much paper! And then, incredibly, today, as I was sitting in my now lovely almost spotless office (I do have 4 boxes stacked against a wall which I need to go through, but all other surfaces are clean), the new president of my college came in and chatted for about 20 minutes. SUCH GREAT TIMING! I would have been mortified if he'd come in before yesterday. Shout out to all of you who have kept me going on decluttering. It's because of you I now know how satisfying it can be.

Total: 3 hours

[ejchase]

The batch of 40 hours I completed in mid-February was fine, but it wasn't very focused. In that batch, I was mostly doing kind of maintenance decluttering, which isn't nothing, but with this batch that I'm starting now, I want to tackle some more focused decluttering projects which are overdue, so I'm going to make a little list of them here with an estimate of how long each will take:

Corner of Dining Room (4 hours)
Kitchen in general (4 hours to go through most cabinets)
Food pantry (90 minutes)
Refrigerator and freezer (90 minutes)
Upstairs hallway (3 hours)
My bedroom (4 hours)
My daughter's bedroom (4 hours)

In terms of making the house look better, I want to focus on these 2 projects:

Getting a new LR rug
Finishing the guestroom (get rug, get pictures hung, finish decluttering in there)

That's all I can think of for now.

[iris lilies]

Wow, great timing for your visit from the boss.

Our local garden club is having a sale of vintage, antique, and collectible items. I have nothing to donate because I got rid of it all in the last sake we donated to before we moved. It is kindacweird, being in this position.

[ejchase]

Our local garden club is having a sale of vintage, antique, and collectible items. I have nothing to donate because I got rid of it all in the last sake we donated to before we moved. It is kindacweird, being in this position.

I've heard other people here say they have "nothing left to donate." I look forward to getting there one day, even if it's just momentarily. At times, it feels impossible, but then I see how much I've gotten rid of in the last 7 years, and I think, "Well maybe."

[iris lilies]

I've heard other people here say they have "nothing left to donate." I look forward to getting there one day, even if it's just momentarily. At times, it feels impossible, but then I see how much I've gotten rid of in the last 7 years, and I think, "Well maybe."

I was pretty ruthless when we moved in getting rid of stuff. Now we have many pieces of furniture that I hate, and will never come to live inside my house, but those pieces of furniture belong to DH and he gets to store them in the garage, or the basement, his choice.

[ejchase]

I was pretty ruthless when we moved in getting rid of stuff. Now we have many pieces of furniture that I hate, and will never come to live inside my house, but those pieces of furniture belong to DH and he gets to store them in the garage, or the basement, his choice.

That sounds like a healthy truce between the two of you!

[ejchase]

Today's story: sometime during the pandemic, or maybe before, I stopped using my file system for incoming paper. It may have been because my one file box had filled up or because so many of the items I used to file, like bank statements, are now, fortunately, stored online. In any case, over the last couple of years, when there was a piece of paper that came in that I needed to save for some reason, I just put it in a stack on my bookshelf without filing and just trusted I could go through the stack when I needed it. I know reading this is probably making those of you who are good at dealing with clutter hyperventilate - I'm sorry!

So-o-o as of this morning, that stack of paper on my bookshelf had turned into about 6 boxes of clutter in a corner of my dining room! So I decided today to finally deal with them. I had gotten some Penaflex folders from someone in my Buy Nothing Group, and I knew where they were because I had actually, in a previous wave of decluttering, established a place for office supplies. And I had bought 2 attractive cloth fileboxes and a bunch of file folders. So it took me 4 hours to go through the 6 boxes, set up folders for items that needed them, and to organize them all into the 2 fileboxes. I also set up extra blank folders in the front of each filebox, so as new stuff comes in, it will be easy for me to establish new folders quickly and file things where they go.

Because I have a lot of other work I have to do this weekend, I didn't quite find a place for everything in the 6 boxes. I have one box left of recipes I need to organize, one half box of mementos I need to find a way to part with or find a place for, and one half box of things I need to deal with in some form or other (correspondence to follow up with, etc.). I just had to give myself a break and say dealing with those could be the project of another day.

And about 20% of the paper in the 6 boxes went right into the recycling bin which was obviously very satisfying. I guess not everything that ended up in those stacks was so important! I found a lot of junk mail, even though I thought I was getting better about recycling that stuff immediately.

I suspect if a year from now, I go through the fileboxes themselves, I will find things that i can store digitally rather than in those files, but I have to do all this in stages. I'm just so happy it will now be easy for me to file incoming important papers. I need to get my taxes done and I want to see a financial planner, and I couldn't do either until I knew where all the relevant documents were!

Work is about to get insanely busy, so it may be a while (spring break in April) before I can do another significant decluttering push, but I'm hoping these fileboxes will help me prevent the clutter build-up getting that bad again. We'll see!

New total: 7 hours.

[iris lilies]

I have very little physical household paper that needs to be saved. But of course I’m not the one that keeps Household bills, DH does that. And yes, he has piles of paper. Once in a while he will get rid of one of the boxes squirreled away in the basement. I’m not gonna tell him what paper he needs to keep for our household records but I do think he keeps a lot that is not necessary.

For my garden club stuff I have very well defined paper files and I keep only the minimum that is necessary. I have one statewide job for which I feel obligated to keep records in paper form because some of the records have to live for seven years and what if I have to hand the records over to someone else? They need to be in paper format if so but I do keep the bare minimum.

[rosarugosa]

I've heard other people here say they have "nothing left to donate." I look forward to getting there one day, even if it's just momentarily. At times, it feels impossible, but then I see how much I've gotten rid of in the last 7 years, and I think, "Well maybe."

Well if you get there and don't like it, you can always take a pottery class!