I see a lot of references to decluttering on social media. Perhaps it's the circles I'm in; plus, of course, as soon as I clicked one link on the topic, I was inevitably going to see a whole lot more similar posts. Clutter is something of a divisive subject. There are people who like collecting a lot of things, and are comfortable around boxes, bags and other unsorted items. There are people who would like to be organised, but have difficulty finding spaces for things, or who don't have sufficent time and motivation to do anything about it.
There is also a third category of people who somehow manage to get things away, and tidy, without any apparent effort. I aspired to be one of those as a young adult, but was firmly in the second category. The spirit was willing - well, mostly - but I was working full-time, and then had small children. It was far more important to spend time with them - and they seemed to acquire a lot of stuff, too, mainly gifts from generous friends and family - than to keep the house tidy.
Moving to Cyprus in 1997 forced us to be quite radical about our stuff. We donated some things to charity shops, although we had a large room and a couple of closets full of things we had stored, in addition to what we brought out. We also stored a lot of things in a friend's garage. In subsequent years, we moved more and more things here (mainly books), and when we sold the UK house, we gave away a lot of things that we had not used for nine years, and evidently didn't need.
Our old rental house had large rooms. I did try, on the whole, to keep it tidy, although we had a lot of shelves with a lot of stuff on them, not just books:
When we moved to our current house, in the summer of 2006, I was determined to be better organised. We were going to have homes for everything, and either use it or get rid of it.
Or, of course, we could put things in the downstairs part of the house, which is used regularly as a guest flat...
On the whole, we've managed to keep the main part of the house reasonably clear, and have regularly sorted and upgraded the guest flat, as funds permit. Having Roomba robot vacuum cleaners keeps the floors clean, and has the added bonus that we don't leave random things on the floor for them to chew up.
But there are a lot of built-in closets, and we have tended to put things away: out of sight, out of mind.
Neighbours have been doing some radical sorting of a house where an elderly man used to live. Over the course of a few weeks they have filled up two entire skips, and many more bin bags of what I assume is rubbish. It got me thinking about reducing at least a few of our unwanted items and clearing a bit of space in my overcrowded closets and shelves.
For instance, in my study I had a lot of empty folders:
I also had my old photo albums which I don't want to get rid of, even though I've made photobooks of most of them. They were in several different random places.
I had a whole shelf of old handbags and small bags, some of which we'd been given and never used. They used to be played with by visiting small people, but not for many years.
Then on my shelf of useful wrapping paper, birthday cards etc I had a large number of cards which I knew I would ever send: not my taste, or not a sentiment I wanted to pass on.
I regularly buy cards from the UK as there's a much bigger selection than there is here, but we've also been given some, over the years, some of which I have used and others will never use. I've also probably picked up packs of them at times, using a few and rejecting the rest.
By the time I'd collected the things which I knew I would never use, I had rather a lot of bags:
Thankfully, the local thrift store was happy to accept it all as donations.
While Richard was away earlier in the month, I got out the stepladders and sorted the top closets in my study. I didn't do the drastic decluttering I've heard of, where everything is either given away or thrown if one isn't actually using it. I have a cupboard full of jigsaw puzzles, for instance; I haven't done a jigsaw for some years, but I might, one day. I have some unsorted stamps from various collections, too. One day I hope to pass them on to someone who might use them. And I now have all the old large photo albums in one high cupboard.
On the other hand, when I found about a hundred old jiffy bags (I'm not exaggerating!) taking up most of a cupboard, I took more drastic action. I threw most of them away, although a friend was willing to take about twenty of them. And I did keep some, easily accessible, as they occasionally come in useful for broken glass or other sharp objects that need to be binned:
When he got back, we went through some clothes we had put aside - about a year ago - to donate to the local organisation that helps refugees and asylum seekers. And we went through our closets, discarding some clothes we had been given but had not worn, some which we had worn a few times but didn't particularly like, and some which appeared at some point, but we've no idea how. We don't buy clothes very often, but we both seemed to have a lot of things that we don't wear: a large number of quite smart shirts for Richard, for instance. I had some tops which I didn't like, or didn't find comfortable, and there were some dresses and skirts which I don't even remember.
I was pleased with the results of the main closet in my study when it was tidied and sorted:
But I didn't feel the sense of elation one is supposed to feel after getting rid of surplus stuff. And the empty shelf on one of my bookcases is quite disturbing, even when I put some useful folders on part of it:
No doubt we'll acquire more stuff and fill up the shelves, and we still have stuff that we really don't need. But I think I've had my fill of decluttering, at least for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment