Reformed Clutterbugs--are you out there?

[frugalone]

Clearing my clutter away showed how much clutter left that really belonged to my husband.
That helped because then he could clearly see what he needed to do.
He also does have a spare room specifically for his stuff in which I'll dust/vacuum a bit but don't say anything about how he keeps it.

Don't get too frustrated because I think it really is a skill, some are born to it while others such as myself need to really, really work hard just to be average

I know it's one of the principals of recovery/AA that if one person changes, the other person has to change in some way, too. It's just inevitable. Maybe I just haven't made a big enough dent in my stuff for it to be noticed by hubby.

Thank you for your encouragement. I need to remind myself that we are all not the same in many ways--even keeping house!

[frugalone]

Still working on it all myself, so I'll be watching this thread - lol. As for "helping others" in the same household declutter - I've given up! I'm at the point where I will try to declutter myself and, hopefully, actions will speak louder than words.

Agreed! I will just work on myself for now.
The funny thing is, my spouse is really good at organizing/arranging/fitting things into spaces and places. My spatial relations gene does not work well. If I ask him to help me organize, say, my craft area, he's really great at doing that! But parting with stuff? Not so good. Neither am I. I confess that I have some craft stuff that I have not used in more than 2 years. It's items for coating collages with beeswax. I even bought an appliance to melt the wax, which he very nicely calibrated to the correct temp for wax. I still want to try doing it--and I feel guilty because he fixed this appliance to help me. But I keep forgetting I have the wax! Isn't that weird?

[frugalone]

I was going to keep replying to individual posts but thought this might be easier.
First I want to thank everyone for their input and suggestions. These are really, really helpful. Especially doing the "one drawer at a time" thing.

As far as each of us having our own area--I'm afraid that our stuff tends to spill over into the other's area. For e.g., I have a craft area, but quite often I work at the kitchen table, so I keep a few rolls of washi tape, glue sticks, and a paint brush or two on the table. I frequently apologize for this. As someone mentioned, everyone's got a different level of tolerance. The difference between us is: He doesn't seem to MIND if I do this. As long as the stuff isn't in the way of eating, or making someone fall down, etc. On the other hand, his stuff tends to be larger than mine, mechanically related (wires and tools) and harder to "stash" if company were coming over. He apologizes frequently for his stuff leaving "his room" but it doesn't change a lot. I know he's trying...but I think it's overwhelming for him. And there IS a lot more to keeping house than I ever thought. It's hard to just keep up with the "regular stuff."

Re: "Hoarders:" Never watched it--but I've seen some photos on the Internet of cluttered houses and I actually start feeling ill when I look at them. My head starts to spin. We're not THAT bad...hopefully never will be.

My goal is to throw out one thing a day. I surpassed it yesterday. I composted some moldy fruit (ugh), shredded some old papers, and put some stuff in the recycling area.

[awakenedsoul]

I've never been a clutterbug. My mother was an excellent housekeeper, so I grew up in a clean, organized home. My main mantra is, "No messes!" Today I cleaned up a small area outside that I had left untidy. It had some seed trays, a trowel, several empty pots, and gardening gloves. It wasn't horrible, but it was bugging me. It only took me five minutes to clean up and put away! That's always what I realize when I procrastinate...it doesn't take nearly as long as I expected! I had some ballet barres sitting in my bedroom for almost a year after I closed my business. I finally just moved them into my shed. It took 5 mins. I can't believe it took me so long! Now I have a clear passageway to the bathroom. It's getting to the point to where I like decluttering, because it looks so nice when you're done. I see it as a form of self care. Also, I get negative and impatient in a messy, disorganized environment. It's also much easier to clean.

Some of my neighbors have patios and driveways filled with junk and clutter. It's sad. They seem to be workaholics. I agree with the above statement about technology. I find it much more rewarding to create a beautiful home and garden than to surf the Internet. It takes time, care, and energy. Homemaking is an art, but it's very rewarding.

[try2bfrugal]

We went to a yard sale yesterday looking for a gently use bird bath. The house ended up being a hoarder type house where everything was laying around weathered, chipped and broken. The owners were asking absurd amounts of money for everything because they didn't understand most of it was junk they were going to have to pay someone to haul away. They were basing their prices on what they had paid for the yard decor decades ago. You could tell the grounds had been quite nice at one time but were too much for them to keep up and everything had fallen into disrepair. We had been interested in simplifying prior to yesterday, but afterwards we weren't sure we even wanted to add one more possession to our lives, not even a new bird bath from a discount store.

Seeing the clutter on such a massive scale at the yard sale house made me realize how much we need to declutter even though it is a much smaller issue for us. I started boxing things up for the used books store and Goodwill as soon as we got home.

[Maxamillion]

I grew up with a parent who was a hoarder (just like what you see on TV), and everything I know about cleaning and organizing, I taught myself. I still struggle a good bit with it but have slowly gotten better over the years. I can't stand a lot of clutter and still have dreams sometimes where I'm stuck back "home", sometimes even sorting through and bagging up all the junk that was in the houses we lived in and trying to get it cleaned up! Those dreams are kind of annoying lol. Moving a lot over the years has really helped me get better too. Finding a home for everything helps, even if it's just a plastic bin (I'm fixing to buy another small one for all the mail cluttering my table and keep the mail in that till I decide what to do with it; I can get the small clear plastic bins with lids for $1, they're especially great for organizing craft stuff).

I just recently started doing another downsizing with my books, which are one of my biggest weaknesses. It's still tough but as I was going through them I kept thinking about when I moved last year and how much I hated moving all those books. I also think about how great it feels to have less stuff. Some of them I'll try selling online and some I'll give away to friends and family or Goodwill.

[awakenedsoul]

That's great, Maxamillion. I did the same with my books. I sold most of them on Amazon. It was really easy. The rest I donated to the library. I almost never buy books anymore, since I can get almost anything from the library.

try2bfrugal,
It's really sad when it gets to that point. I am still surprised by how much time and work it takes to maintain a home and garden. It's definitely easier with less stuff!

I like to do a couple of clearing jobs each week. The other day I cleaned out my trunk of my car. It had all of my old dance memorabilia from the dance studio I closed. I brought it all in, dusted it off, and hung everything up in my cottage. It looks so nice, and there are so many photos of great people and happy happy times! Now I just have my jumper cables, spare tire, cloth shopping bags, and some stockpiled t.p. in my trunk. I feel so much better!

[flowerseverywhere]

We have gotten rid of over half our stuff in preparation for a move- we are probably approaching 75%. DH was difficult at first, but I would make a pile and go through it with him. As time went on he became more willing to part with stuff.

Here is the good side of it. Every room in our house is so nice and decluttered, you can sew or do woodworking or cook without having to move anything. And as a plus if anything happens to us our kids won't be faced with piles of junk to go through.

I have no advice other than to clear maybe one room and see how nice it feels. It is great to hang clothes in a sparse closet, to eat in a kitchen that has clean counters and nothing on the table but your place settings. Or to go into your bedroom and see a neat bed, bureaus without anything on them and clothes neatly hung in a closet. It becomes infectious.

this is the first week in the last few months that I don't have half a dozen garbage bags to put out and a trunk full of donations. It feels great to know we made it.

[try2bfrugal]

Flowerseverywhere, seventy-five percent is an amazing amount of stuff. We are just getting started on the whole preparing for downsizing process. I am looking forward to getting rid of all the junk.

[flowerseverywhere]

Yes try2b, it is an amazing amount of stuff. We tried to rehome as much as we could. I would put the word out what I had to get rid of and a lot was claimed by friends- some we sold for a small amount and some we just gave away. We sold over $5500 on craigslist over time, only a few items over a few hundred dollars. Sometimes someone would be picking something up they bought and end up buying something else. I have two college age neices and boxes of housewheres and lots of furniture went to them. Much went to goodwill and salvation army.
We sold a bunch of books, and donated bags of books to the library for their sale. All my cheap outdoor furniture was given away, we have some handcrafted adirondack wooden chairs we'll keep. All of our remaining furniture is high quality handcrafted wood that would be impossible to replace for less than a small fortune (and we love it), except for the spare beds that are on frames only. All of my kitchen plates, bowls and mugs are beautiful handmade pieces, as well as most of my baking items.
I had a lot of pieces of fabric and batting and last winter I made piles of quilts for the linus project. I tore the pages out of the huge stack of quilting magazines of any projects I might actually do, and brought about 24" of magazines down to a 2" binder.
We took pics of whatever we had left of the kids stuff and if they wanted it we took it to them. If not, out it went.
We also shredded tons of paperwork, you really don't need thirty seven years of tax returns, but it was fun to go through papers and see how much life has changed. We kept a box next to the shredder and took turns shredding.
All of our photos came out of the albums. We scanned all of them into the computer and made discs for the whole family of every single picture. So they all have copies and the originals fit into a plastic box instead of piles of albums.
So this was a huge undertaking but we did it. I will tell you , though, I will never buy anything new again after what we had to sell our stuff for.