(For the Bead Soup Blog Party click here.)
I had a wee bit of a sit and think this week about why I find it so hard to get motivated to de-clutter. There is always an excuse - too tired, too busy, someone's sick etc. and while all of these things may be true (and often all at once) I am not so run off my feet that I can't fit in an hour of de-clutter a week.
I've actually known for a long time what the main reason for my prevaricating is. It is this room:
This is so filled with clutter that I get disheartened.
I get geared up and ready to go and then I stand at the entrance to this room and don't know where to start.
I know that anything I try to remove, whether its broken, disliked or never used, has to be approved by five people before I can find a new home for it.
FIVE PEOPLE. My son, my daughter, my husband, his Mum and to a lesser extent, his Sister. It is beyond disheartening, it's thoroughly depressing.
Every single tiny de-clutter I do is met with critisism. And despite my (very) thick skin and "like it or lump it" comebacks to these criticisms it makes it so much easier to find an excuse NOT to tidy.
To add insult to injury my other half has started nagging me to "get-rid of" my craft stuff (which incidentally I can barely get to due to the mountains of clutter in the nightmare room).
Get rid of my craft stuff!?!?! That's fighting talk!
Out came the black sacks. NO-ONE gets to look inside. NO-ONE gets to comment. The response to ANY queries later down the track about where a particular item is will be "it's probably been tidied away" and no further explanation or justification will follow.
I picked a corner:
I set a timer for 20 minutes.
I put broken things in one black sack.
I put donate things in a secong black sack.
I put 'keep' things in cupboards, not worrying about neat or tidy. Cupboards can be tidied by all of us later.
After the first 20 minutes:
I had a cuppa, got my Zentangle stuff out and chilled for half an hour then set a second 20 minute timer.
Looks like less of an improvement after my second session but there was a LOT of small fiddly stuff.
One black sack straight in the bin. One black sack straight to charity. One black sack filled with things that would still get used if we knew where the rest of it was (my "bitsa" sack).
Once this room is finally clear we will hit the cupboards AS A FAMILY and then go through the "bitsa" sack. If those bits don't become a whole unit by the end then they WILL go.
Yes there was complaining, crying and yelling but I put my super-kevlar-thick skin on and responded "TOUGH TITTY".
Then I hid in a very hot bath for two hours.
Kudos to you. My apartment looks the same, and I have no one to fight me on it. I just can't bring myself to do it because I'm so overwhelmed. I like the idea of setting a timer. I could handle 30 minutes. Thanks for the inspiration.
ReplyDeleteIn areas like that, if you disposed of something, those who would complain likely wouldn't know it was missing. Even if they went looking for it and couldn't find it, you could say you aren't in charge of their things, and walk away. They may just give up and figure it will show up eventually. Hey, I lose things all the time, even when they are right where they are supposed to be. In the meantime, you did make a good start on it, which is more than I can say so far this week. Oops...it's Friday, and the week had evaporated!
ReplyDelete