Comments | aiglet: Uncluttering for Christmas

aiglet

Uncluttering for Christmas

Dec 18, 2007 11:10

My parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas the other day. After discarding the obvious answers, I plumped for a microwave. (Sorry, musique174, our power bill can no longer sustain the behemoth. Would you like it back?)

The problem is, the obvious answers were "nothing" and "can I convince you to take some of my stuff?"

gdmusumeci and I are in the middle of a ( Read more... )

Comments 16

dporowski December 18 2007, 19:35:16 UTC

"Have I touched this in the last year?"

See also: "What the hell IS this?" and "Where the hell did I get this again...?"

If you can't easily answer all three of those, you probably can get rid of it somehow.

vermilionsun December 18 2007, 20:04:56 UTC

Oh man, I am about to be in the same boat. Decluttering and reorganization is my resolution/project for the beginning of the new year. Because it would be nice to have an apartment that looks like a real home, and not like a college dorm room jammed full of stuff. (Packrattery is definitely in my bones and blood, unfortunately...)

The problem with packrats is that we DO remember the damn details about all the crap we accumulate. "Oh yeah, this postcard was from that great bar in the East Village with the good margaritas and I really like the Mexican sun design on it, so I'll add it to my pile of design inspiration clippings." (And meanwhile said pile is like 4 feet high...) Yeah. It's not good.

So I have no tips for you just yet, but I do have a TON of sympathy. And I may have more ideas as I tackle this problem myself. We're going to be using the Apartment Therapy book - even if we don't do the full 8-week "cure", we'll at least use it as a guide.

aiglet December 18 2007, 20:11:34 UTC

I've actually been really really good about getting rid of things from the boxes I've been hauling around forever. (Some of them I packed when I was 12 and haven't looked in since!)

But yeah... The emotional attachment to stuff is really problematic. Also, how do you get rid of books you actually like? (I've already gotten rid of the ones I don't like.) Or paper and pens? Those are *useful*!

Packrattery is hard. You'll have to let me know how the Apartment Therapy works out for you.

semy_of_pearls December 18 2007, 20:30:57 UTC

Good luck with the de-clutter. St. Vincent de Paul is also a good place to donate. :)

szasz December 18 2007, 20:47:54 UTC

what we need to do is move somewhere really really tiny

That's our solution! We're moving from a 2300sqft house plus a full basement and garage into a 1700sqft condo with only a small common storage area. It's going to force us to throw away most of our stuff, but actually, that's fine with me.

gdmusumeci December 19 2007, 09:49:10 UTC

You know, I've actually been thinking a lot about that option lately -- I think about a 1100-1400 sqft loft could be a really nice place to live for a while. It'd probably cut down on our rent, which would be nice....

I'm of two minds about it.

Maybe I'll comment more later, when it's not almost 0200 :-)

otherbill December 18 2007, 21:39:41 UTC

Do what I've done many times at work: Purge your caches.

Box everything up. Box EVERYTHING up. The only thing in your apartment should be you, huge stacks of boxes, and (optionally) furniture too big to fit in boxes.

If you need something from a box, take it out, use it, and put it away (for some definition of "away" other than "back in the box").

Over time, you'll shift away from living out of the boxes and towards living with the stuff you've already taken out of the boxes. (If you face a situation where something in a box would be useful, but you've already unpacked other stuff that will work well enough and you would rather not have to get into the boxes, then you know you're on the right track.)

Once you go a certain period of time without having to get anything out of the boxes, throw them all away. (If you ever would rather not get something out of a box solely because it would "reset your timer", then you again know you're on the right track.)

Okay, perhaps this works better when you're only talking about a 72 ft2 ( ... )

gdmusumeci December 19 2007, 09:44:27 UTC

We have a ton of computer parts, most of them old. What do you want? :-)

otherbill December 19 2007, 14:45:28 UTC

Oh, I was joking. As of next Tuesday, our household will be outnumbered by its PCs (three people, compared to one PC plus three laptops (four if you count my corporate-issue ThinkPad)).

Granted, I could use a half-height rack for our home A/V system, but I think that would be difficult to take home from my next SJC daytrip...