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You could also try the book "Does this clutter make my butt look big?" (or something similar).
You never start with "everything" when decluttering, you start with one small area like your closet or your dresser drawers or the top of your dresser or your junk drawer.
Thanks for the book suggestion! What I found interesting about the Marie Kondo book is that she insists on doing everything at once and suggests that doing a little at a time leads to failure. That approach seems overwhelming, but perhaps there's something to it.
Thanks for the book suggestion! What I found interesting about the Marie Kondo book is that she insists on doing everything at once and suggests that doing a little at a time leads to failure. That approach seems overwhelming, but perhaps there's something to it.
I think everyone is different, so what works for one person might not work for another. HOWEVER, I see some real merit to doing everything at once when you take on the project. It's sort of like moving -if you an physically handle it, I think it's generally better to just keep working till the whole thing is done.
We have a full house of stuff. I mean, there is not a single room that is "lean" - every room is fully furnished, plus we have a large kitchen. When we move, I basically don't stop, other than falling into bed at 2 am in exhaustion, till I have unpacked every single box and hung every single picture. Consequently, our entire house is 100 percent put together within 3-4 days and every single box is sitting out at the curb to be picked up.
I see a big cleaning project in the same light. Get in there, get ruthless, get down and dirty and gitterdun.
Then - for me anyway - cleaning and picking up as I go along is easier. I don't like to wait till the weekend to dust, mop, sweep, vacuum, do laundry, pick up, etc. It would take me at least half a day and I have better things to do. So I do about 15 minutes of cleaning a day. About once a week, I take on some sort of mini project, like cleaning out ONE drawer or ONE shelf or ONE cabinet.
One other thing I do is a big spring cleaning. I wait till a glorious day outside filled with sun and then I open windows and doors and get to work. I turn on some great music and that helps too. I drag every single pillow in the house outside - off beds, sofas, chairs, you name it - and let them sun all day. I take all rugs outside as well and if they're small enough I wash them but the larger ones I just beat the dirt out of and I let them sun as well. I move furniture and clean behind and under everything. I use orange oil on all the wood pieces. I clean the baseboards and the corners. I clean windows. This usually just takes one day with two people working on it.
So I guess I'm saying I agree with the author about making a really big push on a big project. I know that it always amazes me when someone tells me they've still got boxes they haven't unpacked a year after a move, or when they tell me they've been in their house for six months and they still haven't hung any of their pictures or paintings. What the heck?
Thanks for the book suggestion! What I found interesting about the Marie Kondo book is that she insists on doing everything at once and suggests that doing a little at a time leads to failure. That approach seems overwhelming, but perhaps there's something to it.
I have done that.
I have totally emptied a room, give it a thorough cleaning and a fresh coat of paint, then only put back into the room things that SHOULD be there. No junk, nothing broken/too small/too large/whatever, etc.
Then, that room is done... really and truly done.
And it would force me to deal with all the stuff that did NOT go back into that room (putting it into another room is NOT an option!).
I can understand the utility of getting it all done at once. I find that if I do it piecemeal, then things tend to migrate around more than actually get purged.
And I also think that the idea that you need to gather ALL of the like items in order to do it right is really smart. If you do one room, or area of a room, at a time, it doesn't really hit home that you have 12 vases and 17 black sweaters and 8 half empty rolls of tape. When you see all of one category piled together, it's a lot easier to really see how much excess you have and it makes it easier to get rid of.
I'm not saying I'm capable of doing things strictly this way - I'm a single mom who works full time outside the house, and I have some physical limits based on prior injuries and surgeries. So I have no choice but to work at it the best I can, knowing that it's not the best way. But I figure that any progress is good, and eventually, I'll have things orderly enough that I can start covering larger swathes of area as I go, because there will be a lot less to purge from.
So I guess I'm saying I agree with the author about making a really big push on a big project. I know that it always amazes me when someone tells me they've still got boxes they haven't unpacked a year after a move, or when they tell me they've been in their house for six months and they still haven't hung any of their pictures or paintings. What the heck?
Maybe it has to do with momentum. I agree with you - better to just get it all done and over with and not let it linger. I find it really easy to just let projects linger once I've lost the forward momentum. The longer you live with something that's not quite right, the easier it is to continue down that path.
And I also think that the idea that you need to gather ALL of the like items in order to do it right is really smart. If you do one room, or area of a room, at a time, it doesn't really hit home that you have 12 vases and 17 black sweaters and 8 half empty rolls of tape. When you see all of one category piled together, it's a lot easier to really see how much excess you have and it makes it easier to get rid of.
This is a good point. I stopped and counted my sweaters this year and couldn't believe how many I had. Just knowing the number helped me get rid of a bunch.
Maybe it has to do with momentum. I agree with you - better to just get it all done and over with and not let it linger. I find it really easy to just let projects linger once I've lost the forward momentum. The longer you live with something that's not quite right, the easier it is to continue down that path.
I agree.
I just finished painting several accent walls in my house. I got everything out to paint and then I realized I should just knock them all out since everything was out anyway. If I had had to clean everything up, put everything away, and then get it all back out each time I wouldn't have gotten nearly as much done. As it was, I did a wall in my dining room, in my office, my laundry room, the foyer, the stair landing, and then I painted an accent color behind some built in shelves. It took about three days but then I cleaned it all up and it's done and it's fantastic! I had been sitting around for months looking at those boring walls and suddenly I just decided LET'S DO IT.
One thing about our modern world that is so troubling is that for the effort done, say of a day, when one looks back, can one really see what has been accomplished? The modern world has become so small about individual items that they don't take up much space, but they do take up a lot of time, and there is just so many of them.
Yesterday, I was working to put my diaries (personal and acting) in order, in one location here and there. As it was, one of the things I had to do was go through and figure out what dates they covered. When I am writing them, I don't put down the complete date each day.
And then, I was also working some on my DVD's. So much work tied up in one little disk,
SIGH......keep digging, keep chipping, someday, one will be there!
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