Still Small Stuff

Thought I'd start off with our Christmas decor.  We got this many years ago in Germany and it hasn't seen the light of day in almost as many years.  Needless to say, I found it in the basement and chose it to put up instead of a tree.  The heat from the candles turns the fan blades and the scenes in the middle spin around.  It's very cool!  Also found a holiday / winter wreath that Darling Girl made when she was in grade school and I hung that on the front door.  That's as festive as it's going to get and it's more than I had thought to do.  Thanks for the nudge from June who urged me to decorate a little.

So on with the decluttering...I got a bit behind posting pics but have made some progress.  Feeling a little discouraged that it will ever be done.  I'm currently thinking it will be a 3 part process.  1 - get the house decent enough to have visitors without total humiliation.  2 - go through the process again to winnow out the things that I'm not quite ready to make a decision about yet or don't have time to sort thoughtfully.  3 - empty the storage unit (thus filling up the house again!) and sort through that.  It's going to be a long term project.

For those who have forgotten, here's where I started in the laundry room:

Here's what it looks like now:

And then, slowly I turned...

 The other side of the laundry room.  I was skimming through a book about decluttering and one chapter was called "Don't Look Up"  meaning only look at the area you are working on or you will go nuts!  I'm finding it to be very true.  That little white basket turned out to be laundry that I apparently simply forgot to do several years ago (at least 5) and then other stuff piled on top and it was forgotten.  You'd think someone would have missed their clothes.
And then turning once more there's this...There's a sink there on the right, not that you can tell.

It took a couple days but that room is done as far as sorting.  Still doing laundry for clothes to donate and Darling Man has the house gear and tools to organize.
So on to the next disaster area...the finished side of the basement:

 That's the chair I rocked my babies in.  One arm spindle is broken from those same babies getting much bigger and sitting in the chair sideways.  This is the space that needs to be cleared so we can put the extra bed in for guests.  Who, let's not forget, are arriving in a little over 2 weeks!  This corner had a whole lot of stuff that just went to recycle or trash.  Unfortunately I found another huge box of clothes under the desk (yes, there's a desk back there)  I sincerely hope that's the last of them!  I haven't uploaded the pics of the "after" for this corner so will save that for next time.

This process has brought up some feelings about how all this mess reflects my inner life as it was for so long.  And, also, the relationships in this house and to this house and the idea of "home" and what does that mean anyway?  After this came up, I started seeing the idea of home as a reflection of who we are in other places (a book I got from the library that I'm kind of afraid to read beyond the first few pages I've read, and the Dr. Oz show yesterday).  I'll write about it at some point.  but not yet.

Small Stuff - 4 weeks and counting

Well, Darling Boy and his friend are visiting in 4 weeks.  Can you say "Yikes!"?  I figure that gives me one week for each level (we live in a townhouse) and one week to clean.  I'm still keeping all the mental doors to the big picture firmly shut or else I will freak out!  So, with that in mind I continue working on the laundry room.  My thinking is once that space is cleared, I can use it for storing keepers and do-it-later-ers from other areas of the house.

I did a short session (about an hour or so) earlier in the week.  Here's what it looked like when I was done.

The red tubs are Christmas decorations and things.  We generally don't do Christmas decorating anymore but I'm not ready to give up on the idea of never again so they're staying as is for now.  The shiny tube is the Christmas tree, hee, hee.  The tall box behind the red tubs is 1/2 an artificial tree.  Apparently the other half has already been tossed so that got taken to the shed today to await big trash day.  I'm keeping the red chairs and plan to recover them.  Of course if that doesn't happen in say a year, they will have to go.

I spent several hours clearing today (taking breaks as needed)  The creepiest find was the cricket graveyard in the back corner under the shelves.  I did not take a picture.  You're welcome.
The "are you kidding me?" find was a juice box that has to be at least 10 yrs old.  Older, actually, but that is just too embarrassing to admit.

There were a few holiday decorations made by the kids that were in a random box so I decorated the door in the corner with them.  I'll leave them up for awhile and then toss them since they've been recorded here for posterity.

The weird hanger "Christmas tree" was made by my mom.  I kept it to see how it's made but will probably let it go.  There were toys in the cow box, almost all too beat up or broken to pass on.  A few went into the donation box and a couple will go to Darling Nephew who is about the right age.  In a box that had been packed 20 years ago I found my high school yearbooks!  I thought they were long gone.  So I had a nice trip down memory lane.  Boy, did I turn out differently from what I was like then.  Some ways good, some not so much.  All in all, no regrets.  It is what it is and what I do now is what matters, etc. etc.  It's pretty cool that I really believe this.

Anyway...here's what it looks like now (drumroll, please)

The bigger cardboard box on the floor is army gear so Darling Man gets to go through that one.  Tools on top of it.  The little box is collecting house gear like paint brushes and a saw.  Next to tackle will be the shelves.  But not tomorrow.  Tomorrow I am going to finish my last paper (final) for school that is due on Wednesday.  I think I'd rather clean...

Small Stuff - Big Motivation

Darling boy is coming to visit next month - Yay!  He's bringing a friend - yikes!  Don't get me wrong we are excited to be meeting her but don't want to scare her off with all our cr**.  So now I have a time frame for putting a real dent into the mess.  What I've noticed is that I really have to be aware of NOT thinking about the Small Stiff project as a whole.  When I get a mental picture the different areas of cr** I have to shut an imaginary door and not think about anything other than the cows currently being herded in the laundry room.

Okay...here's where we left off in the laundry room...

 Can't really see the cows (there's 2)  I kept working on the baskets of clothes, straight to the washer to be donated or the trash.  This time I found a couple of items to keep.  Darling man will be getting one for a Christmas gift, heh, heh.  Found some strange things, too.  See that neatly folded piece of blue on the Dirt Devil box?  I've been thinking all along that it is a tablecloth so I was surprised to discover a very large pair of hospital scrubs...I have no idea where they came from!

 I found the shirt I embellished for a FISH themed party held shortly after I started working at the job I was laid off from last year.  I suspect showing up in this shirt hinted to my new co-workers that I might be a little less "quiet" than first impressions implied!  Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking... 

Still, it's pretty cute for felt basted on a t-shirt, if I do say so myself.  Also in this batch, 2 crafty things that I added to my crafty things collection.  Doesn't mean they're safe since that stuff will get winnowed out, too! 
And last...there was a single hot pink sock and a pillow case tied in a knot.  I wonder if I could write a silly poem about this????

  Please, tell me!  Why on earth would I tie a knot in a pillowcase???

Hey, hey, there's more clear floor showing!  And yes, I did just sit the Dirt Devil box on one of the other boxes to make the clear spot bigger!

 I'll be done with school for the semester in a week and a half and am really looking forward to having more time for a few weeks (I'll need it!) 

Before...

After 15 minutes:

Another cow has been added.  Can you find it?

Small Stuff: Roundup

Once again, I spent 15 and only 15 minutes in the laundry room clearing out stuff.  I decided to make a game of it and continue picturing all the cr** as cattle waiting to be rounded up and put out to (someone else's) pasture.  Here's a little cow I decorated to keep me company and make me laugh.  It's kind of blurry.

Cleared 2 baskets of clothes and blankets.  Stuff that was good enough to donate went straight to the washing machine as all was musty and wrinkled.  The ratty stuff went to trash.  There's a noticeable piece of floor showing!

 /

 And now I can see a couple of the boxes that are at the bottom of the mountain.  That one that says UNITED?  It's been sitting there since we moved to this house in 1993 and the stuff in it (I think) is from our move from Arizona to Maryland in 1991.  I'm thinking after 20 years there is nothing in there that I can't live without.  We shall see!

Small Stuff: Thinning the Hoard

I'm having fun playing with the word "hoard".  When I say it I think of "herd" as in cattle.  It's a fun way to think about all the stuff in my house...a herd of stuff stampeding out of control.  

I don't really feel like a hoarder since I no longer bring stuff in...seems to me I've just been maintaining the herd.  But, ta da, the round up has begun.  I am thinning the herd.  There are no sacred cows here, everything is up for elimination.

Today I spent 15 minutes with the most awful area of the worst of the worst room, all rooms and areas having been inventoried and ranked.  Now that was an eye-opener!  I ended up with pages and pages listing all the areas of out of control stuff.  Which is of course, all the areas in the house.  So now the herd of stuff is just a list instead of some ephemeral overwhelming thing hanging over my head.

Here's a pic of the area in the laundry room that beat out the competition for title worst of worst.  I'm not sure it really is the worst...

This pic doesn't show the tiny area I worked on today so you'll have to take my word on it that there's less stuff than before.

Progress

I must keep reminding myself...if I want to be a writer, I get to write.  So here's a progress report for things that are going well in the less is more experiment.

Driving less has been a tremendous success!  Darling man and I had been contemplating moving to having one care to share instead of one each.  Life intervened to speed the decision along <smile> his car died about 6 weeks ago.  I have adjusted to riding the bus for most of my day to day travels (that sounds so much more interesting than going to school and work)  I enjoy it for the most part, it's convenient, free and it affords me lots of time to read.  Sometimes I read for school but mostly I'm reading books that have been hanging out unread on my bookshelves.  Plus once they're read I can pass them on out of here!

I still use the car for errands, shopping and going to night class, just takes a little planning.  So we are saving money on gas and upkeep with only one car which has helped the Small Money project.  Also on that front the weekly cash allowance is working, too.  I established some rules, like if I have money left over one week, I get the difference the next so I start each week with the same amount.  I am happily surprised at myself that I've kept this up consistently for almost 3 months!  Yay, me.  I have enough money to pay for next semester's classes.

Clutter-wise everything is still a mess.  But, there is progress on the horizon, I think.  I signed up for an on-line class to get help with getting started.  I know that Small Stuff will happen.  There have been some false starts and this may be another but I figure that as long as I don't give up, it WILL happen.  I will discover if less is indeed more!

 

Small Diversion - Going off Topic

As you can see, I haven't written anything in quite awhile.  It started as frustration with making no progress on the clutter front.  Then it became self-perpetuating silence.  The more I don't write, the more I can't write and so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah...

For the past 6 Mondays darling man and I have been going to a writing class offered by the local recreation department.  I was hoping it would shake something loose so I could start writing here again.  I mean, seriously, there are so many thoughts in my head that I want to let out.  Anyway...finally for the last class tonight I was able to put some words to a thought.  So I'm going to share it here as a Small Diversion with, hopefully, more to come.

 Heartbreak

There are a lot of ways to answer the question “Who was the first person to break your heart?”  I could be cute and say Ricky in second grade who gave me a Cracker Jack ring but then took it back so he could give it to Valerie.  I could be dramatic and talk about any of the guys who said “love” but left anyway.  How does a heart get broken anyway?  I think perhaps, every time, I’ve broken my own heart and blamed the other.

It seems to me, the times when it feels like my heart is breaking, I am holding so tightly to my idea of how things should be that my poor heart, always alert to danger, becomes a tense, brittle thing, easily shattered when those expectations are not met.

I recently watched a film clip of a young man picked up and tossed a quarter of a mile in a tornado.  He had no broken bones, no internal injuries.  The reason for his amazing survival?  Having first been knocked unconscious, his body was completely relaxed as it tumbled through the air and slammed to the ground.   

There is a lesson here, I think.  If I relax into life, into the moments, if I keep my heart open and soft, it might get bruised but it cannot be broken.

Small Money

I have put myself on a budget in an effort to save part of each paycheck.  After adding up the expenses that come out of my paycheck, I now have a weekly allowance for "spending money".  Up to now I have been going paycheck to paycheck and not keeping up at all with what I'm spending on.  Mostly food by way too much unnecessary stuff.  So, a specific amount in cash for the week and when it's gone, I'm done spending!  

Found an interesting website that encourages saving by not spending.  PiggyMojo lets you set a goal for saving money and then text or tweet the $ amount whenever you decide NOT to make an unnecessary or impulse purchase.  Fun concept though I didn't sign up since it'd be just one more thing to keep up with.  But, hey, just thinking about not spending as saving is proving helpful to my Small Money efforts because I'm choosing not to get the junk food or whatever more often than before.

Another Small Money effort is getting by on $30 gas / week for the car.  Some weeks it's a stretch but it's been 4 weeks and so far so good.   I'm more intentional about what I go and do.  I spend less on stuff I don't need or really even want because I think twice before going out.  I really want to see if I can keep it up so I've checked the bus schedules and it looks like that will work out fine for the 2 days/week I have classes during the day. (Classes start tomorrow)  And I save by not spending because the bus is free with a student ID!  There will be a new car trip for a once a week evening class so we'll see how that fits in.

Still flying

Today is day 4 of  the Flylady beginner steps.  I've kept my sink clean, gotten dressed to my shoes, read emails and made of list of those things on a post-it that's been put on the bathroom mirror.  Adding 1 more thing each day makes sense and feels easy.  So that's all good.

I can now see some more floor in the bedroom and even a bit of baseboard.  At this rate it'll be months (years?) before I'm clutter free but...I did more today than yesterday and more yesterday than the day before.  Feels like progress.  Reminding myself: progress, not perfection.

Small Steps

This Flylady experiment is going to be interesting!  I got a bunch of emails today and apparently this happens everyday.  I just scanned and deleted most of them.  They were very perky and encouraging and a little bit annoying.  I am not a perky person these days.  Apparently, shining up my kitchen sink, which was the first task, will lead to all of the de-cluttery / organizational changes I want to make.  So I shined up my sink and since I already have a habit of having the dishes dealt with before I go to bed it feels totally do-able to keep it shiny.

The bedrock of Flylady is changing habits by doing  "BabySteps" something I have had trouble with in the past.  On the other hand, nothing I've done on my own has worked long term so I'm keeping an open mind...at least for the next 30 days doing the Beginner BabySteps (I cringe even saying the B-S word).  Today was shine the sink.  Tomorrow is get dressed for the day, all the way to my shoes.  I generally don't wear shoes in the house so we'll see if that makes a difference.

A friend surprised me with a back to school gift of an engagement calendar filled with inspirational quotes about living a simpler life.  An example:
One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.  Andre Gide

This feels particularly true in this moment.

Small Stuff - plan B

Well...that didn't work.
After a trip to Boston where I had a wonderful time but bought things I didn't need, I came home, ate a lot of cr** to fake feel better (like that ever works!)  and fell into a big fat funk.  After 5 seasons of Grey's Anatomy on Netflix I got up and paid for my fall semester classes, ordered my textbooks and got re-motivated to keep going on this Small Life Big thing.

June's advice to just do 10 minutes of decluttering has been helpful so that all progress was not lost during the funk.  A bookcase got sorted with most of the books being donated.  Currently working to get my little corner of the bedroom with my desk cleaned up before classes start.  All my hobby/craft stuff was also in this area so I made a place in another room for that.  I'm not sorting it now, just putting it all in one place.  I'll be spending my decluttering minutes this week finishing getting my study area ready.  That's way too many "ing's" in one sentence.

Seriously, I look at the different areas of clutter and feel so overwhelmed.  While on vacation I read The Secret Lives of Hoarders by Matt Paxton.  While I am nowhere near buried under clutter like some of the extreme cases he writes about, I do have a problematic relationship with my stuff and need help getting a handle on how to clear this stuff out and then maintain order.  I know people who have good things to say about Flylady so I had a look.  It takes a baby step approach to first setting up simple routines and decluttering then learning to be organized about maintaining order.  Seems like a place to start. 

One done

The downstairs half bath is de-cluttered and cleaned.  I found some interesting artifacts in the cupboard under the sink:  a big lock of darling daughter's hair, 12 boxes of assorted bandaids, 8 bottles of old sunscreen, and a water bottle darling son used at summer camp when he was in elementary school.  He's 27.  Sigh.

You know it's bad when you have to clean the bottles of cleaner before cleaning...but, it's all good and it's all bright and shiny now.  Next up is the upstairs bathroom.  Also small and less cr** in the cupboard than downstairs.  These are the easy rooms.

When I look at the rest of the house, it seems overwhelming so I'm reminding myself to just look at the space in front of me right now.  And as June says, slow and steady, slow and steady.

Procrastination and a plan

So.  I spent the past few days observing the many ways I find to procrastinate getting started on my downsizing project <smile>  I am a procrastination pro. I'm embarrassed to admit it's been almost a year since I decided to work on sorting out our house after being down-sized at work.  I have to laugh at myself, though, as I take notes on my varied ways of not doing.
Don't want to make a plan?  I suddenly MUST get the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) vegetables cooked.  Don't want to clean out a cupboard?  Simply must do laundry right now.  Don't want to come here and write about procrastinating???  Well...gotta check email and FaceBook first...or find a recipe...or, or, or...sucking me into endless surfing.  Then there's the ever present temptation of TV, Netflix (I kind of regret learning how to stream using the Wii), the garden, books to read and, and, and...


Yet, in the back of my mind, in spite of myself, I'm making a plan.  I'm trying to think and plan SMART, which stands for having goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time specific.  (Google SMART criteria)  I am quite sure I could manage to spend weeks writing up a detailed plan to procrastinate even more...I can apply the Transtheoretical Theory of Change or even my own theory of behavior change that I came up with for an assignment in a Health Behaviors course I took last semester...so many fun ways to think about doing instead of doing!!!


Therefore the first part of the plan is to just start anyway and keep it simple.
In general, the first step in making my life smaller so it can be bigger is decluttering the house one room at a time, starting with the easiest ones.  If it's "easy" I'll be successful and can build on that success.  At least that's the idea.  Specifically, I'll sort into 4 categories: keep in the room, go to another room, donate, trash.  Anything undecided goes into a box that gets donated after 6 mos or a year if stuff isn't used.



I need to treat this like another job so I'm committing to 2 hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (days I work part-time) and 4 hours on Tuesday & Thursday.  Weekends for tasks or fun stuff that hubby and I can do together.  This feels manageable.
Downstairs bathroom tomorrow.

Small life big

I want a bigger life.  Not more or better stuff or more money, but more passion for living and more living my passions.  Thing is, I don't have a clear picture of what those passions are, only vague notions.  So, a couple years ago I get this crazy idea that the way to have a bigger life is to make it smaller.  The theory being if I strip down the physical clutter, room will be made to sort through the mental and then spiritual clutter until my true passions reveal themselves.

I'm not sure what this blog will be.  I've heard that writing a blog is helpful when trying to lose weight so why not use one to lose all kinds of excess stuff?  So, this may also be a place to think out loud about what's important, what to keep and what to let go.  Mostly, I hope the blog will be a way to keep myself on track, eyes on the prize so there will be a little less thinking about what I want to do and a lot more doing it.

We shall see what happens!