Moving: Time to Be Clutter-Free

For at least a few years now, we have talked about how we'd like to move. The house we are in was supposed to be our "10-year house"; we are a couple months short of having been here 13 years. The interest rates right now are great, house prices steady, so we finally decided, hey, let's see what we can do.

Of course, this means getting the house in order. And to sum that up in one word: Oy.

Fortunately, we haven't found a house to buy that we love yet because the process of decluttering is taking a long time. The amount of stuff that builds up with kids, running an in-home daycare, homeschooling and life over 13 years is quite extensive. Even though we had been giving some stuff away over the years.

FlyLady was a great tool for me in the past. Actually, as I type this, I am reminded that I turned to her the last time we moved, asking for advice! If you are not familiar with FlyLady and would like some help in getting your house organized, clean and just managing it, do check her out. She helped me a great deal! And I go back to certain principles all the time, even though I've never been able to quite hop on board 100% with her approach the way many others have.

Image from http://www.flylady.net

But anyhow, I started doing my decluttering without referring to her. This time, I simply decided I was going to work on a single room, the living room you see as soon as you walk in, until it was "ready", which, it turns out, appears to be somewhat what she recommends. But what is "ready"? I saw I didn't have a clear picture in mind and was slowing down and still seeing how much else there was to do around the house. This just left me feeling a bit discouraged. I changed my mind and adopted her Crisis Cleaning tips to working 45-60 minutes at a time on decluttering. Instead of coming back to the kitchen all the time and taking a break after 3 rounds of 15 minutes of cleaning, I just tackle three different areas, the ones that seem to need it the most, and if I feel up to it, will do a 4th session before stopping for the day (or that part of the day). So far, this is helping me a lot because I'm seeing how key problem areas are improving and it doesn't feel as much anymore that there are so many other rooms "left to do". They're all being worked on and improving. Bit by bit, we're getting clutter-free.

I would post before and after pics, but truly, some of the areas are rather embarrassing and moving is a very good excuse to finally take charge of them. (And I forgot to take a before pic before starting to tackle one of the worst areas...) If you are moving, or just deciding to get your house clutter-free, let me know in the comments! We can share our daily progress and help each other stay motivated. :)

Declutter Challenge! TOMORROW!

The Happy Herbivore on Facebook is hosting a Declutter Challenge! https://www.facebook.com/events/205255342997541/ It will be tomorrow. You are invited to take a picture before and after your decluttering and if you post them on their Facebook page or tweet it to them https://twitter.com/happyherbivore.

Take this opportunity to make at least one little corner of your house clutter-free!

Freedom from Stuff

I'm watching "You Live in What?" on HGTV. One of the featured properties is a guy who renovated a 1973 Airstream and is living in it in a trailer park in Santa Barbara. One part caught my attention, when he talks about not questioning whether he can afford something, but where he would be able to put it. He then said it was the freedom from stuff.

This phrase, "freedom from stuff," is sticking in my head. I did an online search with the phrase in quotes and without quotes and the number of people writing about this topic, and helping people or encouraging people to at least work toward freedom from stuff, is incredible.

On the one hand, this is very appealing. Less stuff means less clutter, less to clean, less to clean up and organize. But less stuff also means less "doing" sometimes. What do I mean by that? Well, I have a whole bunch of Stampin' Up supplies. Without those things, I can't sit down and enjoy making cards. I love to read and have many books, many of which I do reread or are mine from my childhood and I hope to pass on to grandchildren. We are a homeschooling family and so there is a lot of "stuff" to cover the different subjects in ways we find enjoyable. Etc.

At the same time, I must admit that I do feel there is too much stuff in our hosue. My husband says it often, although he's not much of a "doer" when it comes to things in the house. I can see from where I'm sitting school shelves with some materials on them that haven't been used in ages and likely won't get used again. But I find myself attached to them, unwilling to pass them along. There are "what ifs" in my head: What if my nieces (who come to my place after school) would use them if I just showed them more often? What if I just kept them and passed them along to my kids when they have kids? Some of the materials are things I made or modified. And then there's the sense of waste by getting rid of all kinds of half-used colouring books and anything that has been barely used, to be honest.

I don't know where this "freedom from stuff" motto will lead me, but it certainly has inspired me to tackle what I perceive as clutter. The clutter is definitely stuff that is no longer useful nor desired. And I realize, too, there is such thing as too much stuff in my mind, too much stuff for food... One particular corner with unused school items may just find itself somewhat emptied out today!

How about you? Do you feel you have too much stuff? Does the idea of "freedom from stuff" appeal to you?

Getting Clutter-Free

There was a radio ad the other day, a Home Depot add, that talked about getting rid of the clutter. Or "Conquering the Clutter", I think is what they said. My ears perked up: I'm all for being motivated at conquering the clutter in my house in effective and efficient ways.

Their solution to conquering the clutter?

Purchase some of their storage solutions.

Um. Hm.

That is not conquering clutter.

Conquering clutter is about getting rid of the clutter and about not letting things that are immediate clutter into the house.

It is not about hiding it in a storage drawer.

I will therefore use the ad as a reminder that I have great resources at my disposal, like FlyLady (and her book Sink Reflections) and various books and websites and articles (and tapping!) that have come my way, and that I should take some action and get rid of some stuff! Not just pack it away somewhere!

If You Haven't Tried Tapping Yet...

I am amazed.

Truly!

I just can't believe how quickly tapping (EFT) has helped me. For weeks, I'd been unmotivated, not really getting much done. Resistant. Playing lots of computer games.

I did a number of tapping sessions yesterday. As I tend to do when an interest gets sparked, I got a little obsessive. lol. I spent hours reading websites and watching videos and doing more tapping. I actually found one tapping script for clutter and tried it, but it didn't leave me with the positive feeling at the end that the author of the script had felt. If anything, I was more aggravated by the clutter and just the stuff that needs to be taken care of in the house (not necessarily clutter, but useful things that need proper "homes" within the home) so I went back to the format I learned from The Tapping Solution, which helped me feel much better. And then I finally reached a point where I decided it was late enough in the evening, time for a little treat while watching TV and/or playing a computer game on my laptop. This is when the effects of the tapping really started to show.

In the mood for popcorn, I headed to the kitchen and pulled out my air popper. While the margarine (Fleischmann's dairy-free non-hydrogenated!; not as good as the Becel Vegan, just fyi) was melting, I looked and saw the dishwasher light on, telling me it was ready to be emptied and saw the dirty dishes in the sink. Now, normally--and I mean pretty much every evening, not just Friday evening, in the past decade or two--I would have just left the kitchen as it was and tackled it in the morning. Or I would have begrudgingly made myself do it as part of some goal. This time, it was simply, "Hm, I want the kitchen clean." And I cleaned it. No resistance. I'm still amazed because I so often feel resistance to cleaning the kitchen (although, yes, I still do it regardless) and there was none. There was no temptation to leave the job incomplete. I even put away the popcorn popper.

Perhaps a bit of background information on me will help to get the full impact of this change:

When I was little, under the age of 9, I liked everything just so. I took great pleasure in arranging the jewellery on my dresser, keeping everything nice and tidy.

Then, we moved. In the middle of my grade 4 school year. I was torn from the only friends I ever remembered having and was very attached to. And knowing what I know now about childhood depression, it is pretty clear that I fell into mild depression as a result. How that played out was, in part, my lack of interest in having things nice and tidy. I just didn't care about it anymore. It was like night and day. My mother, naturally, didn't understand what had happened. How could I have gone from being super tidy before we moved to a complete slob (at least with my room) after we moved? I recall her getting frustrated to the point that, more than once, she took a big garbage bag, put everything laying around in it and said the bag was going to be thrown out on a certain day so if I wanted any of it, I'd have to put it away properly.

My room wasn't always a mess, though. I kept flitting between enjoying keeping it clean and just not caring. It really has continued bouncing back and forth that way ever since with my bedroom and many things, with my bedroom tending to be at least a little untidy more than not. Although not entirely: Now I do care again, the only moments I really don't care are when I'm absolutely exhausted, but I feel so overwhelmed with the sheer amount of stuff to do, or I have just blinders on that I don't really see the mess in between serious cleanings. (This makes it sound like my house is a pigsty; it isn't, but it's got its fair share of stuff not put away and just plain clutter.)

Our poor little apple tree

It's a blustery, blizzardy (sure, that's a word) day out there and I would normally be spending such a day playing on the computer the way my husband is playing on the PS3 while he waits for the snow to calm down before snowblowing. While I have been on the computer a lot, it hasn't been to play: caught up on some messages, took care of transferring funds from a prepaid phone to a monthly plan, and other useful things. Like working on this blog post. I've also done some non-computer things like driven my daughter to work in this nasty weather on the nasty roads, made my way to the grocery store and back, had lunch and, yes, kept the kitchen clean again. I haven't played a single Facebook game yet today. I don't even really have the inclination to, yet every other day this week I used up all of my lives in Candy Crush Saga and would play a bit from some other games first thing in the morning. Or even get (non-Facebook) The Sims 3 going.

But back to my point. I have, for the past 30 years, essentially, pretty much lost the joy of keeping things clean. Oh, sure I wanted everything clean, but I had mostly resistance to the idea of actually cleaning things. Or just feeling completely neutral and just doing it because it had to get done or should get done. If there has been a time even in the last 20 years where I approached my kitchen on a Friday evening (or any late evening) the way I did last night, I can't recall it. And it was effortlessly done. I hadn't set a goal or planned to do it, I just did it. And I liked the final product.

Do I dare add that this morning, before anybody else was up, I grabbed up the dishes that others had left after I'd cleaned last night and I put them in the dishwasher? No resentment, no resistance, just, a feeling of I want the kitchen clean. And, yes, it made me happy to make it clean. :)

Maybe you don't have a clutter problem. Maybe there is some other issue affecting you. Either way, if you haven't tried tapping yet, I highly recommend checking out The Tapping Solution site. Check out the articles and videos and start tapping. You could be amazed!

A Mid-Summer Update

Wow, I didn't realize it had been almost a month since I last posted! Eek!

Since last month, my family and I have gone on a trip to Victoria and Kelowna, both in British Columbia. Some time to just have fun is always important! :)

My husband has most of the pictures on his phone, but here's a picture of French Beach, not far from Victoria. We spent a few hours there, mainly enjoying the tidal pools with all the wildlife: little crabs, a pleco, tons of tiny little hermit crabs running around everywhere (even fighting at times!) and more. It was absolutely fascinating!

*sigh* Blogger insists on having this picture this way.

French Beach; that's Washington state on the other side of the strait. We did not get a phone signal until we had gone so far down the beach that we managed to get an AT&T signal from the US!

Since getting back, we have been working on having a clutter-free basement. It's still not done. :/ There's a lot of stuff to go through, a lot of stuff that accumulates during 11 years in a house! Especially with growing kids and running a home daycare! My dayhome (that's what we call home daycares here) has come to an end for full-time children and I will only have my nieces and nephew after school in the fall. The youngest of them will be 5 and no more babies in the house, so I'm giving a lot of stuff away, both to people and to Goodwill. We're also finding a ton of clothes. It seems our cat, who is always trying to escape, thought that there might be another way to escape the house?

A lot of garbage and recycling has gone out, too. The basement and crawl space are looking so much better! There is still quite a bit to go through, but I'd say it's more than half done. The more clutter-free it becomes, the happier we are! If you've had a cluttered area that you've been ignoring, it's so worth the hassle and frustration and work

One thing that has not been good since getting back is junk-free and overall healthy eating. It's starting to affect me: huge sugar cravings, sinus issues (I used to have sinus issues all the time; I haven't in ages and I am not liking it!!)... I worked yesterday at getting back on track by eating a lot more fruit, which that alone reduced my huge sugar craving. Food is so important! I think it's by eating better and feeling better, then "slipping up" that it really hits how important it is; it's too easy to get used to things slowly get worse and worse and not realize just how much we are being affected by food we really shouldn't be eating, or eating in the quantities we do.

That's it for now! There is laundry to be done. Wouldn't it be nice to have a laundry-free life? :D