2023 Organizing & Decluttering Annual Thread!!!

I generally just do what strikes me as well, but often think I should focus on one room a week (or month, depending on the room) but don't really seem to stick with that. We have plans later today but I am going to get the fall décor out of the crawlspace and put the painting stuff back in before we go. The rest of the weekend I am going to finish organizing my scrapbooking supplies, go through DS's clothes/room, and put out the transitional décor. I'll put the Halloween stuff and later fall decorations in my son's closet since he is at college. That way it is easier when I want to change things up in October and November. Might also get rid of some of the décor that I haven't been using.

Oh yeah, as far as concentrating on the same room for a period, it can work really well and when you’re finished it will likely have a big, motivating impact. Especially when you see how well you function in there and how relaxing it is.

When working on a large area my best advice is to keep it up as you go. That way, if you don’t have time to finish or aren’t motivated to finish it’s still better than when you started, not worse. I keep a trash bag, a donation box, and a laundry basket going at all times. As soon as a trash bag is full it goes in the trash, as soon as a donation box is full it goes in our vehicle so we can drop it off the next time we’re in the area. And the laundry basket I use for items that don’t belong in the room, but I don’t want to stop what I’m doing to put them away. Because then I get sidetracked. At the end of each session I walk around the house with the laundry basket putting everything away. If it doesn’t have a permanent place I put I where I think I’m mostly likely to use it, making sure not to just clutter up another area even more. Anyway, nothing is more of a motivation killer for me than leaving an area worse than when I started so this works really well.

Good luck!

I am preparing my fabric & craft stuff for a huge sale, to be held at a semi-local fairground arena in mid November. I have a LOT of stuff, so I am going thru the fabric right now.

I collect(ed) *fun fabric* & have made many I-Spy type quilts. Well, no babies or little kids in the near/distant future so it is time to reduce. I collected these fabrics with a fun attitude and I want to take care that they will go to good homes. My mom left me with such a mess of all of her quilting stuff/fabric/notions and no-one should have to take that responsibility.

I'm sorting into 10"(+) & 6 1/2"(+) squares, fat quarters, 1/2 yards, full yards and 2 1/2" strips. My Accucut cuts the perfect 2 1/2" strip. The rest of the bits are going into a plastic bag to be sold as scraps. I have 3 huge Rubbermaid totes (the kind with the 3 hinges) to go thru. 1 is done and then off to the next. This is ONLY the fun fabric and not the black/whites (positive/negative), Christmas, fabric collections, Holly Taylor (Moda) fabric and much much more. I want to be organized, use my food sealer to seal bags (theft is a huge issue at these events) and price properly.

It's okay. I need to get rid of clothes too

It's ok to let them go. If you do find you need larger jeans down the road you can buy another pair. You've lost the weight and you deserve to wear clothes that fit properly.

I have that same problem too which was why the Dana White books/concept really spoke to me. My process used to be to pull EVERYTHING out of a space, try to sort through, organize and categorize what I pulled out and only put back the stuff that actually belonged in that space. Except by the time everything gets pulled out I’d run out of time and need to stop halfway through, leaving a huge disaster in my wake. So I’d get to the point where I just wouldn’t do anything because I knew the mess would explode, and at least I knew where stuff was with the current mess, LOL.

It’s so much better to break it down into more manageable pieces when you can. Instead of taking everything out of the closet at the outset, maybe just tackle one box or one shelf. The new goal is to make the space *better than it was* even if it isn’t totally done all at once.

For me the motivating factor is seeing things move out of my house. That’s a more measurable thing. Whether it’s bags of trash, boxes of stuff to donation or even individual items going to other people on the local Buy Nothing group, it’s all stuff going out the door. The Buy Nothing group is honestly my favorite because they come to me and take the stuff away, so I don’t even have to leave my house. I bag it up, put the person’s name on it and put it out on my front porch for them to stop by and grab.

Right now my house is kind of in dumpster fire status. I’m getting stuff together for this upcoming consignment sale next week so I’ve been pulling out stuff to tag and box up for the sale, and because we’re in the middle of a major change up of DD’s room. We wanted to pull out the carpet and put down different flooring first and she wanted to change out some of the furniture. But the old stuff is still in her room and the new furniture that we’ve been collecting is sitting in what would normally be a formal living room (but we’ve never used it for that purpose). She did a pretty big clean out earlier in the summer but with DH still in his “it’s *summer* and we must go to the cabin every free minute!” mode, that’s as far as that project got. 🙄 I really wanted that carpet ripped out months ago, but here we are. We installed all of the similar flooring at our lake place, so it isn’t a matter of not knowing what we need or how to do it. It’s just a matter of actually staying *home* some weekend to do it. I can’t do it myself because the old furniture is big, bulky and heavy, and I really didn’t want to wait until it’s freezing cold outside and we can’t open up the windows while we’re pulling out a room full of 20 year old dusty ass carpet. 🤮

Getting through the sale will help A LOT. There will be so much stuff going out the door that’s not coming back in no matter what, and that’s measurable. Getting DD’s room taken apart and put back together will also help a lot, not only for her space but for the main floor, very visible, living space that is currently cluttered to the gills with all of that mess. With the toys and the kid clutter gone, it will be much easier to move to phase two which is to empty out that living room the rest of the way, pull out that carpeting next and replace it with something else. At the rate we’re going, that will end up being on next year’s to do list.

I save my big organizational messes for when dh is out of town.. no cooking, less stuff to take care of.. don't care about the mess.

I can only do it for a few hours at a time.. too many decisions is tiring..

They'll be out of style if you ever need them again. You deserve nice jeans, no matter your weight. Somebody else who gained weight back will be grateful when they find them in the thrift shop. Happens to the best of us.

Today is the last major day to get my stuff entered into the computer for tagging for the consignment sale. 😳😬 Lord, give me strength! I kept finding more things for the sale right before we left for the last long weekend at the lake and came home to the dumpster fire mess I’d made. I had opened up all the toys with battery compartments, cleared out the exploded batteries and cleaned them all up with white vinegar and left them all open to air dry before we left, and installed new dollar store batteries last night and everything works again.   

(Pro tip, if you have a battery operated thing that has old, exploded alkaline batteries in it, you can make those things work again by removing the old batteries and cleaning up all the residue inside the compartment with white vinegar on Q-tips. Sand off any rust on the battery terminals, then let everything dry out completely. When you put new batteries in the thing, it will very likely work again! I’m so glad I learned that tip before my kid was born, it saved so many “broken” things from being sent to a landfill.)

There are still more toys and things that I need to drag out of closets for this sale. It’s so easy to forget about stuff when it’s stashed out of sight! I have a strong feeling this stuff is going to require multiple trips to the fairgrounds to drop all this off, or I’ll have to enlist DH’s help and use our enclosed trailer to get it all there in one trip. It could easily add up to $1000-1200 by the time I get everything tagged.

Today is the last day of the consignment sale and as of yesterday night, 77 of my 161 items had sold. YAY! Today is discount day. I only discounted my four most expensive items and only by about 20-25%. We’ll see if they go at the lower price, if not there’s another sale in the cities in a couple weeks. I won’t have to retag anything unless I want to lower the prices more or donate everything that’s left at the end. The sale ends at 2:00 and I have to go collect what’s left (and my check) after that tonight. I’m so glad almost half is gone already and I’ll walk away with a few hundred bucks at least. I’m calling it a win. 

I decluttered my craft stash today by USING lots of items in my DD album for 2022 😱 Never thought of actually using my pretties, just liked to paw through them all the time stroking them 🤭

I'm determined to drop off the 2 bags of medication and Goodwill items from my parents' home today. I want it gone!

Y’all have motivated me so I pulled out all but 2 sets of extra scrubs and rehab shirts from the closet. DH can only wear black scrubs and undershirts at his regular job, and there are only 2 days on the weekend so he can’t possibly wear more than 2 other sets a week no matter how many how many contract jobs he wants to take on! So I’m going to ask him to get rid of most of this excess. That’ll feel good.

eta: Perfect timing, he just walked in the door. And he only wanted to keep 1 polo shirt. About 120 seconds and almost a dozen items removed from our closet. Win!

Yes! What about crochet and knitting?