Coming Unmoored

“Nothing motivates you more to clear the clutter from your home than boxing up all of your belongings.”

–Unclutterer.com

A lot of the decluttering manuals will encourage you to tackle small projects slowly over time so as not to get overwhelmed with the enormity of the task ahead. After all, you didn’t accumulate all this STUFF overnight, it’s probably not wise to induce cardiac arrest by trying to get rid of it overnight, either.

Unfortunately, the slow-and-easy plan works less well when you’re facing a one-month time frame to move yourself and your (hopefully reduced) belongings into living quarters less than half the size of where you are now. Drastic circumstances call for drastic measures and all that rot.

My apologies if my frequency of entries have been a little thin recently and continue to be so over the next few weeks. I’m having to work hard and creatively to divest myself of a lot of stuff in a short period of time. And, as mentioned already, I tend to move slower these days than in my hyper-ambitious youth.

But let me re-cap some of what I’ve accomplished so far in the last couple of weeks:

• I’ve sold $26,000 worth of furniture, musical instruments, and personal items.

• I’ve Freecycled almost as many low-dollar items.

• I’ve given a few cherished pieces of furniture and musical instruments to friends who I know will appreciate them.

• I turned in enough books and CD’s to the local used bookstore to have ended up with $1000 in credit. That’s a lot of freaking books to give away. Especially for someone who hoards books the way a dragon does treasure.

• I’ve donated fifteen garbage bags full of clothing, bedding, towels, and assorted linens to a local charity

• I took two full carloads of non-recyclable garbage to the dump.

Oh, and because I am much more talented at acquiring stuff than getting rid of it, I’ve created a photo album to document my progress. Completely geeky and probably uninteresting to anyone other than myself, I know.

Anyway, that was the first, easy pass at decluttering. I think it’s going to get rougher from here. If there happens to be a patron saint of declutterers and you’re feeling especially kindhearted, please say a prayer to him or her for me.

Comments RSS