Why declutter?Why should we get rid of all that extra stuff stored in the attic or crawlspace? Who cares if I have all this stuff? It’s mine and I have the right to keep it. It doesn’t affect anyone except me. Besides, some of this stuff is worth money. I’ll sell it at the right time and make out big. Do these sound familiar? If you’ve tried to convince someone to get rid of some of their extra junk, then you’ve probably heard one or two of these. Maybe you’ve said or thought some of these yourself. The truth is, at some point someone will have to deal with your pile of stuff - whether it’s you, your spouse, your kids or your grand kids.Why not save everyone else the trouble and take care of it yourself? That way you have control over what happens to it. If, for example, you really want your spoon collection to go to your favorite niece then why not give it to her sooner than later so you can see the joy it brings her. If you think that coin collection or antique vase is worth so much money then sell it and do something fun with the money. You might think that so far this post applies only to “older folks” but that’s not entirely the case. I guess some of the suggestions do. If you’re truly enjoying that spoon collection and aren’t ready to give it up, then by all means let it continue to hang on the wall where you can see it every day. I’m more concerned with all that stuff preventing you from parking a car in your garage or what’s in that storage unit you’re spending money on. Back to the list of excuses in the first paragraph though, let’s talk about the belief that clutter only affects the person holding on to it.How much time to do you spend moving piles of stuff around - sorting, organizing and reorganizing it - when you could be doing something else like playing catch with your kids or hanging out with an old friend. I know that when my wife and I recently spent time picking through the contents of the cedar chest on a Saturday afternoon, both of us would have rather been playing monopoly with our kids. I’m looking forward to having less stuff just so I don’t have to spend time handling it or constantly feeling like I should be doing something with it. I think that all that stuff takes our time and attention from others so, yes, it does affect more people than just you. Here’s another reason. Safety.That pile of junk in the basement, garage, or attic is nothing but kindling if a fire starts there. In the case of my kids’ room, I have no idea how any of them make it from the bed to the door on a daily basis without tripping over something. I can picture myself at the doctor’s office with one of the kids sporting a big black eye and a cut across the forehead and then telling them “he tripped”. I would have to produce photos of their bedroom to keep myself out of trouble. I hope you found at least a little motivation here to get rid of something if not for yourself then for those around you. Start somewhere. Start small. Work slowly. But I bet that it will feel pretty good.
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Remember those puzzles where you slide the tiles around to either make a picture or put the numbers in order? You know, the ones where the whole thing is filled except one spot. I often feel like my house is one of those puzzles, except instead of tiles we have clutter and there’s no empty space. My wife and I have had the same conversation over and over trying to decide where to move things and what to get rid of. We have a tired looking china cabinet that desperately needs to go, and as far as I’m concerned the China can go with it. But my wife is standing her ground on that one. We want to replace the cabinet with a buffet in the kitchen, but there’s a shelf where we want to put the buffet. I have the same opinion of the shelf and most of its contents that I do of the china cabinet but my wife at least concedes that the photo albums could probably live somewhere else. I ended my last post about books saying that I needed to follow my own advice and get my antique books off the basement floor. I refuse to buy more shelves so I have to make room for them somewhere. I also have a wood bookshelf in the basement, where the temperature and humidity fluctuate quite a bit, that probably should be on the main floor or upstairs. At the same time, our office, where another bookshelf lives, has become a multipurpose room. We have hooks on the wall where the kids’ backpacks usually hang, my guitar, a large desk with our computer on it, an aquarium, and even a dartboard on the wall. I guess this was the long-winded way of saying that we are in the process of rearranging the house.Rearranging all of these things requires the removal of something. We just went through most of the DVDs and CDs to clear some space on a bookshelf. We put most of the DVDs in this huge binder. We liked this case because each page had space for two discs and also for the DVD covers. When we were done, we had a big pile of empty DVD cases sitting on the floor. It turns out that our local library was more than happy to take them along with the movies and CDs we decided to get rid of. When I was done rearranging the remainders, I had two empty shelves on our living room bookshelf and the binder of DVDs is stored in the closet. Our next step is to tackle the one piece of furniture we both agreed could go, the old cedar chest (aka time capsule) in the living room. We’re just getting started on it, but have already discarded some pictures and frames. When we get rid of it maybe I’ll feel like we have one of those empty squares in our puzzle. Sometimes decluttering means just rearranging and getting rid of some things in the process.I think it’s a good idea to occasionally examine where all of the things you actually use are located and decide if it’s really in the best place. If you’re like us, you’ve been in your house a while and things just sort of accumulate in places for no good reason other than you just decided to put it there “for now” and never found a new spot for it. Visualize how you want your house to look when everything is where you want it. Think about how you use it, or in the case of our China, how you don’t use it. We keep saying we should just use get it out occasionally but we never think of it when we’re getting a meal ready because the China cabinet is in the living room. Getting the China into a buffet in the kitchen will put it where we see it every time we’re getting ready for a meal and help remind us to either use it or get rid of it. I’ll keep you posted on our progress and I hope you’re making some progress as well. Welcome back! Hopefully you’re here because you’ve gone through your book collection and now have a box or two you’ve decided to part with. Now what? How do you get rid of those extra books and how do you store those you just can’t bare to let go of? First, let’s tackle the ones you’re getting rid of. Aside from the obvious places I mentioned in my previous post like the local library, here are some other places to take your books. This is easiest if we break them up into groups.
How about all those books you want to keep?For starters, don’t store them on the floor of the basement with a water pipe above them like I did. I decided to go to the experts in storing books and look at the American Library Association. They actually have quite a bit of information on the proper care and storage of books. We may not all be able to carefully control the temperature and humidity level where we’re storing our books but I did find some useful tips that we can all probably use. I haven’t watched the entire thing yet, but the ALA has an hour long recorded webinar on the Care and Handling of Books and Scrapbooks. Also, every April the ALA recognizes Preservation Week with loads of resources on how to care for not just your books, but photos, scrapbooks, and other family heirlooms. The simplest tips I found came from AbeBooks though:
After reading some of the storage recommendations, I’m shocked that the books I rescued from my grandparents’ attic are in the condition they are in. To be fair, even though I grabbed a bunch that were in good condition, I left many others that had damage from mold, insects, or water. My next task after writing this is to follow my own advice and get them off my basement floor. Feel free to let everyone else know in the comments how your decluttering is going and if you have any of your own suggestions on decluttering your books. Thanks as always for reading and good luck. I have a love/hate relationship with books.I guess it’s mostly a love for them, but now and then, I look at the overflowing bookshelves in my house that seem to collect more dust than should be possible and I just want to start throwing them into the donation box. I never seem to have as much time to read them as I would like so they just represent one more thing that I want to do but can’t make the time for. This week, we’re going to find some motivation to declutter the books, where to get rid of them, and what to do with the ones you decide to keep. If you’re like me, the books are still flowing into the house even as you fill a box of them to donate. Books are one item that I usually don’t mind having a lot of, as long as they fit on the shelves that we currently have. I refuse to go out and buy more bookshelves so that I can store more of them. One of the main reasons for the number of books we own is because many years ago I worked at the corporate office of Borders Books. I couldn’t resist when a fresh cart load of free books, magazines, and CDs would show up in the cafeteria. Not long ago I decluttered our CD collection and was amazed at how many I had picked up at Borders and never even listened to. Some were still in plastic. CDs that haven’t been opened in 10 years are a pretty easy thing to ditch, but how do we convince ourselves to reduce the number of books we own? Here’s a few suggestions.
So you’re ready to declutter the book collection, but what do you do with them?This post is getting too long, so next time I’ll give you more details on what to do with them as well as some tips for properly storing the books you decide you just can’t part with. Here’s a quick list though to get started. The obvious place to take your extra books is the local library but I would also encourage you to donate to other organizations and to check with friends and relatives. When we cleared out some of the old board books, we brought them to church and gave them to a young couple starting their family. Another idea would be to start your own Little Free Library in your yard. If you would rather sell them, there’s always Facebook, Craigslist, etc. Good luck.I know books can be a tough thing to part with for many people but remember the value is in the story or information contained in the book, not in holding on to the physical book itself. Read it. Then pass it on unless you really are going to read it again. A year ago I made a few resolutions for 2016. You can read the whole thing in January 2016 as well as my follow-up in April, but suffice it to say I didn’t do a very good job of sticking to them. Briefly, they were to continue the purge of unnecessary things from my house, learn to play the piano and guitar, and finally to write more. I don’t feel like I was overly successful with any of these, especially the musical ones. We continue to remove things from our home, but increasingly there are disagreements about what we can get rid of. I haven’t touched the piano but one of the Christmas presents I received was a computer program called Rocksmith to connect my electric guitar to my computer. It’s been a lot of fun so far. There are lessons, games, and songs to play along with and the computer gives instant feedback as to how you’re doing. I’m expecting the kids to want a guitar soon so that they can play the games too. As far as writing more, I definitely have been doing that. I find myself more often having conversations with friends about their own decluttering endeavors and feel like I’m making an impact on at least a few people. Am I making new resolutions for 2017 then?Yes and no.The more I read about resolutions, the more I feel like I’m just setting myself up to feel guilty about no following through on something. I guess you could say I’m keeping my old resolutions to continue decluttering, write more, and learn some guitar but what I think we all really want is to just be better and happier people than we were last year. I think I have a good idea of my faults. I’m probably unaware of some and my wife could likely add to the list if she wasn’t so nice. I know I’m impatient, probably not as thankful as I should be for things I have, and I constantly badger my family about having too much stuff laying around the house that they never seem to put away. I have searched around the internet for ideas and one list of resolutions resonated with me from CatholicStewardship.com. I’m going to adopt part their list of resolutions for this year.
Ask the Lord for guidance, strength and perseverance in achieving your resolutions. In his letter to the Phillipians, Saint Paul writes: "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength" (Phil 4:13). If God is the center of our New Year's resolutions, they have a better chance for success. Thanks for reading. Wish me luck and if you would like to see the full list of resolution ideas on CatholicStewardship.com you can check them out here. |
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