<$Monday, August 13, 2007$>
"Now I'm having a plan."
| This weekend I managed to tackle the small mountain of clutter that had accumulated beside my bed, and ended up tossing out an entire kitchen-size garbage bag's worth of crap (as well as identifying a stack of books that I need to either sell, swap or donate) on the way to unburying my nightstand and making it functional again. 'Twas awesome, and now I'm inspired to do more. Husband and I have been trying to get ourselves motivated to reduce our amount of useless junk for a while now...pretty much since we got married and moved in together to a space that was barely big enough to fit all of my stuff in the first place. Besides being overcrowded, when we move to a bigger place (which I'm sure will happen someday), we both really want to have less to have to deal with packing and moving. With Husband's disability, unless we can afford to hire movers--which seems doubtful--the bulk of the carrying will fall to me, so you can imagine that I'm especially eager to have fewer things to have to carry. With all of those motivating factors, you'd think we'd be living like Spartans by now (except without all the artful slow-motion. Or the togas); but with less than a month to go until our first wedding anniversary (which: whoa), we're just now beginning to make some headway. My two biggest obstacles, it seems, are time and emotional attachment. Husband, on the other hand, has the time, but after his first attempt at ruthless decluttering left me upset with some of his choices for things to throw out, which were oddly weighted toward my side of the bathroom ("You threw out my allergy eye drops?!" "You never use those!" "I use them almost everything morning!" "I never see you use them!" "Because you're still in bed!" "Well... oh yeah. Sorry."), he's wisely decided to leave "my" stuff up to me to deal with. I think with summer winding down and school starting this week, the time problem is about to solve itself. Husband's homework should keep us from going out as often on the weekends, and will also keep him distracted and occupied, leaving me time to myself to deal with said stuff. That leaves the emotional hurdle to overcome, and that's a big one. I know I kept more stuff this weekend than I should have, because I simply couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. So I'm developing a strategy: I'm making a list of my emotional priorities, from greatest to least, and I'm going to refer to that list as I sort through my stuff. If it doesn't relate to one of these priorities in some way, it goes. Of course, each priority will have a limited number of things I'm allowed to associate with it and keep, otherwise I'd be able to shoehorn just about everything in somewhere. I'm still figuring out this system, but basically, it goes something like this: Mementos from my wedding: important. Mementos from the height of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanaticism: not so much. Wedding mementos I get to keep: all (for one more year, at the end of which anything I haven't gotten around to either scrapbooking, displaying or otherwise preserving can go). Buffy mementos I get to keep: anything with an autograph, a couple of choice items that were handmade by friends, my comics, and my Spike action figure. Okay, and my Buffy figure, so Spike won't get lonely. But that's all. I know it still sounds like a lot, and like I'm not making progress, but believe me: that leaves a lot of Buffy-related junk that's gonna go. All right, so the system isn't really so much a system yet as it is a vague plan. But it's a step in the right direction. As I hammer out the details and work out the kinks, I'll keep you posted on my progress. On a related note, Get Rich Slowly has a good decluttering tip that I might have to work into my strategy: Purge Clutter with a De-Accumulation Bag Labels: organizing, systems |
