What are you holding on to even though you know you should let it go?

I think everyone has something like this. Maybe it’s a collection of something you’ve had for a long time or something that belonged to someone you miss. Maybe it’s an old shirt that’s falling apart but you keep it anyway? Equipment for a hobby or sport you haven’t participated in for several years?

For me, it’s all my stuff from my time in the Army.

I still have everything:

• Dress blues
• Dress greens
• A long black overcoat
• BDUs (Battle Dress Uniform, aka green camouflage)
• DCUs (Desert Combat Uniform, aka desert camouflage)
• 4 pairs of combat boots (3 desert and 1 black)
• Several hats (even that stupid black beret that I hated)
• Multiple duffel bags and laundry bags
• Field Equipment like a pistol belt, canteen, ammo pouches, etc.
• A trunk full of things from when I was in Iraq

I deployed to Iraq 12 years ago and left the Army Reserve 10 years ago. You would think I could have gotten rid of some of this stuff by now. The BDUs have been used as Halloween costumes a few times and I chose the most tattered set as painting clothes. I do wear the boots but really don’t need 4 pairs.

For some reason, I just can’t seem to get myself to get rid of these things even though I can list all sorts of reasons I should. I’m not getting back in the Army and they probably wouldn’t take me at my age anyway. Most of the uniforms I have are not in service anymore. I don’t even hunt or play paintball. Most of this sits around collecting dust and filling up closet space.

Why then, do I hold on to it all?

I did contact a friend from the Army who opened an Army surplus store after returning home from Iraq. Check out Battle Boy Surplus if you need anything and support a Veteran-owned small business. He offered to take some of it and asked me to send him some pictures. Even for him, I still can’t get myself to gather it all up.

I guess the real reason is that I still look back on my time in the Army as one of the best parts of my life. Being away from home for a year sucked but I would do it again in a heartbeat. I often wish I would have stayed in but I didn’t want to deploy again. I was so busy with grad school and my family that I couldn’t do everything to the level that I felt I should have. I couldn’t be a good student, good officer, good husband, and good dad all at the same time.

As long as I see those uniforms hanging in my closet every day and I can wear my old combat boots, I can still pretend that the Army is part of my life. Every time I look at them, I think of those I served with and especially those that didn’t come home. I know it is crazy to hold on to all of it though so I will start getting rid of some things.

Where to start though?

There are a few recommended strategies for getting rid of sentimental items. First, I need to gather it ALL together in one spot. For anything, just looking at the sheer volume will help you realize how much you have and therefore make it easier to eliminate some of it. Next, take pictures. I have a few pictures of me in uniform, but I could take a few pictures of me in each type of uniform. Then, get rid of the uniforms.

The challenging part will be the trunk full of newspapers, magazines, and pictures that friends and relatives sent me while I was deployed. I know that if I don’t do something with it, the paper will just decay in my basement. I need to start going through it and scanning anything I want to keep. It’s likely I won’t even remember why I kept a lot it.

It won’t be easy but as I’ve said before, I need to fully purge my own stuff before I hound my family to get rid of their own things. I’ll keep you posted of my progress and let you know what other tips I come up with along the way. Keep an eye on my Facebook page for updates and feel free to share some of your own suggestions for how you let go of sentimental items. Thanks.

Welcome to Part 2 of my decluttering operations order. If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. Below is what I’ve written up for my son’s bedroom. In the Army, we would not only deliver this as a briefing but an operation could involve rehearsals and a demonstration using what’s called a sand-table or terrain model kit.

I need to execute this soon because his room is a disaster and seems to just be getting worse. To be fair, he did try to clean it up a little recently and we were able to see more of the floor than we’ve seen in a while.

I’m asking for feedback before I do this so feel free to make comments below or send me an email if you have a suggestion for something I missed.

Situation: Your bedroom is a complete shambles. It’s impossible to walk from the door to the other side of the room without stepping on something. The floor is covered in Legos, sheet music, Nerf darts and lots of dust. There are clothes on the floor and the desk because there’s no room in the closet. The closet is full because there are clothes that no longer fit and/or you don’t like to wear.

Mission: Together we (who) will clean up and remove excess items from (what) your bedroom (where) so that the floor is clear making it easy to clean and it will be a place where you can practice your music without distraction while being safe from tripping on objects (why).

Execution: This operation will be executed in several phases:
1. Anything on the floor that can be quickly and easily put away to make some room so that we can walk across the floor without breaking our neck, will be put away.
2. With the floor clear, we will go through all of you clothes starting with your drawers then moving on to your closet. Anything that does not fit or will not be worn will be removed into three piles: torn/stained clothing to become rags, clothes to donate, clothes to be packed up for your younger brother to wear later.
3. We will inspect all of your toys to decide which ones really should be in your room. Similar to the clothes, they will go into piles: items to stay in your room, items to donate/sell, items to be passed along to younger siblings.
4. You have a lot of knick-knacks that take up a lot of space. Similar to the toys, we need to get rid of some. Those that are kept, need to have a true permanent home. This is when we will look at installing more shelves.
5. Likewise, we need to remove some of the personal stuff like trophies, awards, and six-year-old art projects. Marie Kondo recommends tackling sentimental items in her widely acclaimed book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up“.

Service & Support: To keep this simple, we’ll just list the items that we’ll have on hand:
1. A couple of garbage bags for things being thrown away
2. Boxes for sorting clothes and toys to donate/save
3. Vacuum cleaner
4. Dust rags
5. Magic Sliders come in handy for moving furniture around easily.
6. Since one wall is pegboard, we’ll have some more pegboard hooks handy to hang some things on.
7. We’ll also have some snacks so we don’t have to take a break to recharge. Never declutter on an empty stomach!

Command & Signal: As always, mom is in charge of everything. She will have the final say on pretty much everything, especially the disposition of all clothes. I will be the one helping with the room to keep things on track.

Safety: Believe it or not, safety is one of the prime reasons to clean up this room. There are multiple reasons for that. First, my son has allergies. With a messy room things get dusty and it’s very difficult to clean. Second, even without being in a rush, it can be a life-risking undertaking to walk through the room. Never mind what could happen if there was an emergency and you had to run out of the room. You could easily trip on something and knock yourself out on the desk.

So that’s pretty much it. I’ll try it out and then report back on how it goes. I’ll also refine it based on any feedback received and post the updated version. Thanks for reading.

In the Army, we have a format for mission planning called an Operation Order, or op-order for short. When I was learning to be an officer, it was called the Five Paragraph Operation Order, even after the Army added a sixth paragraph for safety.

Since my mission is decluttering, I decided to make a basic op-order for the process. In this post, I’ll describe an op-order and then put a rough one together using my son’s room as an example. Later, I’ll put it to the test and let you know how it goes.

Here are the main parts of an op-order with a short description of each. The full Army version has many sub-bullets for each. See the link above for more details.

1. Situation: A quick description of what the current state is or problem that you’re about to solve. This is to help everyone else understand the big picture. The Army version has a detailed description of the enemy and friendly forces. In our case, the mess is the enemy.

2. Mission: A statement of not just what you are going to accomplish but who will do it, where, when, how, and most importantly, why.

3. Execution: It starts with the overall intent of the mission. This is by far the largest part of the op-order. It contains a step by step plan of how you’re going to accomplish your mission which could be as detailed as you want, including a time line. Tasks should be defined as well as what to do in specific situations.

4. Service & Support: This section describes what resources you have to accomplish the mission (materials, supplies, people, etc.)

5. Command & Signal: Who’s in charge of what. In the Army, a leader had to designate any changes to the command structure as well. Hopefully no one dies during your decluttering mission but maybe you want to make sure that someone carries on if you can’t.

6. Safety: This section was added by the Army mainly to address safety during training, but I can easily apply this to cleaning up around the house. In the case of my son’s room, the floor is currently a minefield of Legos, clothes, board game pieces, and Nerf darts. One of the first things that will be cleaned up are the items that will hurt the most to step on or pose the biggest tripping hazard.

A Note on the Execution Paragraph

In the Army, we used a method called backwards planning to develop a timeline in the execution section. Backwards Planning is just a cool sounding term for something that most of us do every day when we figure out what time we need to get out of bed in the morning so that we get to work on time. I always thought it was ridiculous how much time we spent learning and practicing this process because it seemed so obvious to me. Unfortunately, I’m often surprised to find how many people just do not get the concept.

Backwards planning starts with a specific time that you need to be somewhere or do something. Then you work backwards from there taking into account what activities need to happen before that critical time and how long each of them takes. Some tasks can be done in parallel and some cannot. It’s that simple.

For example, you need to be at work by 8 am. OK. The last thing you do before leaving might be to pack your bag and grab your coat, etc. That takes about 5 minutes. Breakfast takes 15 minutes. 20 minutes for a shower. At least 10 minutes to pack lunch. Don’t forget the fact that you like to snooze the alarm for 10 minutes every morning and that it takes an average of 30 minutes just to get to work. Add all that up and it looks like you need to get up about 6:30 am.

In Closing

I didn’t want to make this too long so I’ll save the actual op-order for later but I think that in general the Army is on to something when it comes to planning out how to accomplish a large task and share that vision with others with the operations order. I’ll let you know how it goes as soon as I can test this out and I’ll post my written op-order. I’m coming up on my one year anniversary since my first blog post so that might be a good topic to celebrate with.

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