Uncluttering My House

I am a tosser, a clear-out-the-excess-stuff kind of person (with exceptions, of course), and lately I've been doing more of that. My husband loves to go to estate sales, but he also likes to have an annual garage sale, so between the two of us, we manage to get rid of a number of things every year. With that in mind, I recently checked out a book that was hot not too far back. It's called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson, a woman who has, more than once, been faced with the task of clearing out a house after a person has died. Her suggestion is to avoid waiting and begin cleaning out one's own house now even if you're nowhere near to being old. This is to save your descendants from having to make tough decisions you can make now.

I'll be honest. I didn't read the entire book. A lot of it was common sense, but more importantly a lot of it dealt with things I already do. I don't do much gifting of things I own (because most of the things I own aren't valuable and I'm not particularly sentimental about things. I would be the worst kind of antique collector, and when watching shows like Antiques Road Show, I often think that I would have pitched the items in question rather than keep items that don't appeal to me. But that's just me.

But even given my propensity to add things to the garage sale box, the donation box, the recycling bin or--in a last case scenario--the garbage, there are still items I vacillate over.

1. One woman in a comment somewhere mentioned that she only keeps a few dishes, just what she and her husband use on a daily basis. I would love to do that, but...while I don't entertain frequently, I do have people over several times a year, so I have to keep enough dishes for those functions. In spite of that, I'm sure I have extra cookware and serving dishes I might be able to get rid of. Unfortunately, I've had difficulty doing this. Too many instances of thinking that I might need those things one day.

2. I do donate books, but those are difficult, possibly the most difficult thing for me to get rid of. So I still have lots of them and probably always will.

3. Paper. I have so many spiral notebooks left over from when my sons were in school, and I just can't get rid of those. Most are partially used, so I can't donate them to school supply drives. So, I'm very, very slowly using them up. Some I use in their original form, some I cut up and use as note paper.

4. Pencils (see paper above). I do use pencils, but I still have far too many, and the erasers are shot on most of them due to age. Still, I keep an art eraser nearby (Staedtler Mars Plastic ones are my favorites), and again, I am slowly (turtle slow) working my way through all those pencils.

Are you a saver or a pitcher? And what are the items you struggle with clearing out?

Best wishes. Happy reading and happy clearing!

Myrna

Making Time to Organize

A few weeks ago I decided to organize my office. This is where I stalled. I definitely need to do something about the bookshelves. I also really need to get more writing done. I'm working on two projects at once now, with another on the way, so...maybe I should just pile all the books (and other things) in a box. At least then I wouldn't have to look at it while I work. It's very distracting. Except...there are research books in the mix, quite a few of them (you can't see them all here. There are more shelves to the left). I need those for writing and if I put them in a box...well, that's just not going to happen, is it?

And there you have it. My office is always my downfall when it comes to cleaning. I'm not a horrendously neat person, but I usually manage to get to the main cleaning projects regularly. I can do dishes all day and never mind at all. Beds? No problem. Laundry. I rather like doing laundry. Dusting and vacuuming, not so much, but it gets done, albeit not as often as it should. The office, however, is always a different story. It requires lots of thought, lots of sorting and a will of iron to recycle, donate or toss the things necessary to really clean things up. I try to do it over a period of days, but when something pressing comes up, there goes the plan and I end up only halfway through. By the time I get back to it, I have to start all over again.

I'm not going to ask if you're neater than I am. Most of you must be. But surely everyone has at least one part of cleaning that they like less than others. What's yours?

Have a great day!

Myrna