It wasn’t great when I left to visit family, and then the mail and other detritus crawled on top and died right there. It was an avalanche waiting to happen, and I’m pretty sure if it fell it would take us 3 days to dig out.

So I cleared it off. Everything. Yes, everything. No, seriously. It filled up a big reusable Ikea bag. Have you seen how huge those things are? Yeah. To the brim. Now, admittedly I did also clear out a shelf that hangs over my desk, and I left a few small items. But I just wanted to see my desk top again.

And I do! Yay!

Here comes the hard part. What do I do with all of that stuff?

I’m tempted to leave it in the bag for a week and see what I really need out of it. Things that I need will get dug out and placed back on the desk. And after a week, the other stuff gets stored or tossed.

I already went through the bag once, throwing out any junk, old flyers, expired coupons, unnecessary receipts. But there’s still a lot in there.

I’ve decided that I’ll only keep a couple of current projects handy. An art journal, a couple of books I’m planning to read and review. Everything else can go… elsewhere. I don’t need 10 books on my desk when I’m only currently looking at two of them. It just adds clutter.

I still have some receipts and paperwork to file. Others to shred.

It feels so nice. I’m really going to see if I can get by like this. I look around at it and go “Ahhhhhh.” It’s so much more serene. I highly recommend this. Take everything you possibly can off of your desk and only put back the essentials. Not what’s convenient — just essentials. See if it can work for you.

I bet you won’t even miss most of it. I probably won’t either. I’ll let you know what I discovered that I needed most.

image credit: morgueFile

Sentimentality has not been my friend. I like to keep mementos reminding me of good times, happy things, and people I love. But when you’re so busy storing these items that you don’t actively display and enjoy them, you’re not getting any benefit, are you? I know I’m not.

So we’re learning to be a bit more ruthless. Donating books we’ll never read again (and being more discerning when we buy new ones), throwing out receipts and bits of paper that we no longer need.

There are two big lessons we need to learn and stick to:

1) Once you’ve started decluttering, don’t allow new clutter to take its place. Once you get that desktop or kitchen counter or dining room table nice and clear, keep it that way. Look for ways to embrace the clutter-free lifestyle and try to keep up – don’t let it gradually clutter back up. Be vigilant!

2) Fighting clutter is a continual process. Just one cleaning session will not be enough. Once you get an area clear, you must work to keep it that way. It will be much easier to maintain if you try hard not to let it get cluttered again. It’s not as hard as it sounds, as long as you don’t allow yourself to be lazy.

We’re working on our living room right now. Because our place is so small, we have my desk in the living room. It’ll be moving to the dining room as soon as we can get things cleared out in there. We have to do a section at a time.

I’m hoping that posting about these things will help us keep going, and keep us more accountable on doing what we planned. Does writing about it help keep you accountable? Or do you feel embarrassed by your projects and would rather just talk about them when they’re finished?

[image: stock.xchng]

To say it’s not ideal would be an understatement. So here we are, still trying to remap the living room and dining room to give us a little more open floor space.

I keep going back and forth on things, trying to find the optimal arrangement. It’s driving me crazy. Unfortunately, I don’t think it matters which way we do it. All of the options have drawbacks. Shall I sit with my back to the room and TV? Let part of my L-shaped desk hang out into the room?

It’s tough when you have such limited options. But we’re going to try some new things anyway and see how it works out. Our dining room will be a little less usable, but our living room will open up a lot. That’s good for the son and his ability to play. And I’ll have room to do my yoga. (I hope.)

What do you do when you have a limited amount of space to work with, no budget, and can only rearrange to try and make things better?

image: sxc.hu

But there are days when it’s an effort to get much more done than my work and finding something semi-healthy to eat. If I do one thing, another thing is left undone. So I try, but I’m a big failure when it comes to my kitchen.

And doggone it if my desk isn’t far behind. I started a couple of art projects and my desk is piled with books, papers, and art stuff. Oh, and toys. My son has taken over the corner of my desk. Anything that gets stacked there will get knocked off or incorporated in to my son’s repertoire.

I am not perfect. I struggle to stay organized every day. And right now I’m trying to keep up with my work. My desk and home have suffered because of it. I continue to try. Some days I make it, others I don’t.

What are you struggling with right now? Tell me it’s not just me, and that you fight to keep organized as well. Pretty please? Maybe then I’ll feel a little less like a failure and more like a normal mom.

Or maybe until you decide to tackle spring cleaning.

Helping her clean really motivated me to clear out my own place. We have way too much stuff in a tiny, one-bedroom condo. And it’s high time we got rid of over ten years of clutter. That’s exactly what we’re doing.

We started with our dining room, where we had a small chest freezer. Due to a faulty wall plug, we haven’t had any food in it for a while. So we moved it onto the balcony and out of the way. We do plan on using it again, but I think it’ll be able to stay out there as long as we run a plug out there. Then we removed an old desk that wasn’t used and I emptied an entire bookshelf to clear up some space.

For the books, we’re deciding which books we will keep for our new place, and which ones we can do without. We have a Goodwill bookstore across the street, which also accepts donations. It’s a perfect place to drop off our books or any other donations we need to make.

It’s a slow process. I’m not rushing to get it all done in a weekend. But I find that I’m more willing to give things up. As I pulled out a t-shirt this afternoon, I took five minutes to remove shirts I don’t wear or that don’t fit. It’s one drawer, but it’s one less thing to do.

I find that I love being able to pile things up for donations. Seeing the clutter slowly disappear. It’s awesome. We are also keeping more valuable things to list on craigslist.org. In the last month we’ve sold a few things. It’s not a lot of money, but every little bit goes into our moving fund.

The spring cleaning bug has hit me and I’m not fighting it one bit. I’m using the momentum to clear things out. The more ordered my surroundings are, the easier it is for me to see what I really need to do. I love that feeling.

Have you started spring cleaning? Do you clear out each year? Quarterly?

image: taken in Belize

Well, that’s exactly what we did last week. Sister-in-law came over to babysit so we could go out. We spent the day cleaning. We had been planning to anyway, but her arrival gave us a deadline.

No matter how hard I try, I don’t always find the self-motivation I need. Like I may set myself a deadline for a task, but deep down I know it’s a deadline that I have set. And I apparently don’t care so much about my own deadlines. But if someone else needs something, or I have company, or some other outside deadline, I will plan out my time to meet it.

So why do we have so much trouble with our own deadlines and motivation? I’m not sure, but I’m working on it.

In the meantime, I may just need a babysitter every week so hubby and I will attack the house together prior to their arrival.

It all adds up to clutter, doesn’t it?

Simplifying
What can we do to clear our minds? Our desks? Take it in small bites.

Reduce your RSS feeds. Are you subscribing to more feeds than you can read? Do you have more than 5 unread posts on any site? When was the last time you read it? Even if it contains important info, if you’re not reading it, how can it help you?

You can mark everything read and start over, or you can delete the feed. Try marking it. If the list builds up again and you don’t read it for a week or two, it’s probably time to drop it.

Take a hard look at your projects. If you have more projects than time, you’re not going to give any of them the attention they deserve. What can you drop? What can you delegate? Are your kids old enough to help?

This is where a mother’s helper can come in handy. Yes, it costs, but if it frees up your time for just a couple of hours so you can get some projects done, isn’t it worth it?

Be ruthless in culling your email. Subscribe to a bunch of email groups? When was the last time you read them or found useful information? Set up an email rule to send them to a folder. See if you miss them. If you don’t, unsubscribe.

Do you really need to read every email that crosses your path? Probably not. Scan them when you’re processing your inbox (you DO have a plan for processing email, don’t you?) and decide right then if you need to do something, if you need the information for later, or if you can dump it. Services like gmail make it easy to every single email, but you don’t really need to go back and look for cousin Mike’s joke email, do you?

Stop collecting “stuff.” Just because it’s on sale, even if it’s a coveted favorite office supply or kid’s toy, doesn’t mean you need it. If you haven’t touched something in two years, will you ever? Dump it or donate it. (I’m not talking about important records. Just “stuff” that gets in the way.)

I am extremely guilty on this one and I need to work on it more. We have a very small place and not a lot of storage. I have to go through things every quarter and see what I’ve managed to hoard. If I buy a new item, an old one like it has to go. (Okay, I’m a girl, so that especially applies to bags – I love computer and work bags.)

Reducing the guilt
Remind yourself that it’s okay to prioritize what’s important to you. If that means you have to cut some things out, give yourself permission to do it. Don’t feel guilty. Realize it’s essential to your sanity.

Take it in small bites. It’s always best to break things into steps. You can complete one step at a time and avoid feeling overwhelmed. If you feel you have too much to do, it’s easy to just not do any of it. And that’s why the clutter builds. It’s all too much.

And if you forget, or fall off of the wagon, that’s okay. Just pick up where you left off. A little progress is better than nothing.

What other types of clutter do you have trouble with?