Does the clutter ever end?

[Niftybergin]

I can't stand clutter. A couple times a year I do purges in which I designate items for goodwill or the trash bin. I'm too poor to shop much these days, so that helps keep the clutter down -- nothing much coming into the house -- but still, some periodic cleaning and organization protects my sanity.

My parents have been living with me for the last 6 months, and their clutter/stuff has really tested me a time or two. They do a great job of keeping it out of the living room and dining room, but they've taken over the kitchen, the laundry room, and the foyer. Ugh. Get rid of it! Put it a way!

I totally embrace the philosophy that if you haven't thought about it/used it in the last 6-12 months, you probably don't need to be hanging onto it. I also believe that a lot of people live in houses that are too big for them, and so they fill them up with stuff without even noticing it at first...until it's gotten out of control. (I'm thinking of my brother and SIL and my parents here.)

[grimace8]

i try to use large zip lock (technically slide lock) bags to group stuff together then hide it. the downside is they're basically impossible to stack due to their irregular shape after filling but the upside is that stuff is grouped and contained together.

i dread decluttering because it forces me to face issues (sometimes deep ones) e.g. why exactly am i holding on to xyz item?

micro decisions .. ughh

[Niftybergin]

Originally Posted by grimace8

i dread decluttering because it forces me to face issues (sometimes deep ones) e.g. why exactly am i holding on to xyz item?

My mother says this, too -- and she has TREMENDOUS clutter. Maybe it's a blessing that I don't have a nostalgic bone in my body. There's very little that I have that I hold onto purely because it represents someone or a certain time in my life.

I'm also not plagued by the conviction that I can't throw something away because SOMEDAY I might need it again. I have a really good spidey-sense where that is concerned. I can pick it up and make an instant decision. If I waver at all, I put it in the keep pile. But mostly I donate or throw away. And I don't look at anything I own and think that it's still worth X. One of the reasons my parents won't throw anything away is because 10 years ago, they paid a hundred bucks for it. Yeah...and that money is long gone, and you no longer use the item at all, so it's just taking up space. If you sell it in a yard sale and get $10 for it, then that's NEW money. (I can't tell you how many times my mother has gone through my "goodwill" and yard sale stacks and pulled things out because she can't bear to see me give them away. So instead, they just sit at her house, unused, taking up space. I warn her all the time that she needs to do something about her clutter, because if it's left up to me, the solution is going to be 1-888-Got-Junk. I'm ruthless.)