This morning, my family started our annual “clean-out”. Well, we mean it to be an “annual”, but this is the first time in four years we really dug ourselves out. I’m pretty good at chucking what we don’t use/need, so I thought to give you some tips to do your own “Great Clean Up”.
Pull it all out
It’s easier to see what you’re dealing with if you can visualize your big pile of stuff. My family’s problem is that we tend to buy new giant rubbermaids when ever we run out of space for anything. So for me, pulling out all of those totes made me see the hoard we had accumulated.
Give yourself time
You are going to run into things you haven’t seen in years. You will stop in wonder and browse through things. If only give yourself an hour to clean out, you will get frustrated and just shove everything back where it was. And what good would that do you? However…
DO give yourself a REALISTIC goal
You are better off if you set limits for yourself. It’s even easier if you have some one working with you set them for you (my husband sets mine. I set his). If you know you like to drag things out, say “I will take this pile to Goodwill today at ten. When I come back, I will take this pile to the dumpster.” If you freak out if something’s left incomplete, you can say, “I HAVE to go to bed, TOMORROW I will finish this project”.
Be merciless
You have a whole pile of crafting stuff you haven’t touched in five years. If you’re honest with yourself, you know that you will never touch that stuff in the next five years. Toss it. Donate it. But GET RID OF IT. And do it as soon as possible, before it has time to fester and grow even bigger. Clothes that you’ve been holding onto that you haven’t worn/don’t fit/out of style: GET RID OF IT. Anything you have more than two of: GET RID OF IT. (This more applies to old toasters/kitchen appliances/tools)
Be honest with yourself
If you know you will never make the trip to the donation place, just throw it away. Yes, I realize that this is wasteful of perfectly good items, but honestly, if you know that you are going to put off the trip until you just re-absorb the clutter, just toss it. If you are keeping photos of people you have cut off from your life because they’re toxic, why keep the picture? They don’t care. They will never know. If you’re keeping stuff just because you might use it, be honest: will you use it? Probably not.
Reorganize
Once you get everything out, you need to reorganize what’s left. What good is all of that work you did gonna do you, if you just shove it back into the nooks and crannies of your life? Get some storage (I have extra if you need some…), LABEL it, and put it away neatly. And REMEMBER you have that stuff.
Really, that’s all there is to it. This morning I was going through my rubbermaids, and found all sorts of neat and not so neat stuff. I had a HUGE rubbermaid filled with half done crafts from years ago. I tossed all of the unfinished projects and ended up with a small gift bad of unopened cross-stitch. I had a whole other tote of pictures, and my husband had found tools he forgot he had.
List of things I found while gutting my crap:
A newspaper from September 12th, 2001
My old babybook
My husband’s high school baseball team picture
My camcorder, which I thought got stolen
An unused ChiaPet
A remote to a car I no longer own
A gazillion empty photo albums, to go with the gazillion loose pictures
Notes from high school (the kind you pass to friends. Spent awhile looking at those! Then I threw them away)
A nekkid Polaroid of me (In the days before affordable digital cameras, kids)
And most important of all, a thank you note from the sister of a man I performed CPR on. He had a sudden cardiac arrest in the parking lot of my store. We had just installed a public automatic defibrillator, and I was able to use it to save his life. It was the greatest, most important moment of my life, and I had “put away” the thank you note so I wouldn’t lose it. I forgot about it. The most important thing EVER, (alright, besides my kid) and I FORGET about it. I would like to share that with you all now, so it can’t be forgotten again.
Dear Kim,
My brother Gary was saved by you & I wanted to thank you so much. He has congestive heart failure & has had heart problems for years. He is a wonderful brother & means the world to me. I can never thank you enough for saving him. My parents and I are so thankful & grateful to you. Gary has a pacemaker now & is doing good. I would like to learn CPR & hope I can take a class soon. Everyone we talked to at Mc____’s was so nice and helpful to us. Thank you so much, Diana
Whenever you “clean out” your life, don’t forget to keep what’s important and valuable to you. What other people might consider junk, if it’s important to you, it isn’t. Unless you’re a certified hoarder, then you have a whole other set of issues I can’t help you with.
PS. I know I promised a beer-bong last week, but I ran into trouble at work, picture-wise. I’m gonna try to promise my newly 21yo yard workers amnesty if they’ll model with it.