Breaking through organization paralysis
November 10, 2020
After struggling to get things in order since we moved, 2020 has been an oddly productive year-long decluttering and organizing period.
After the 2019 winter holidays, I had a truckload of stuff to deal with: secondhand toys, books, art supplies, workbooks, clothes, and some presents. After visiting the homes of loved ones who are hoarders and just have plain too many things for anyone’s peace of mind, I was especially fired up to clear up and clear out all the things!
I asked PiC to feed me the boxes languishing in the garage from when we moved, one at a time. If we haven’t looked at them in 2 years, I’m almost certain we don’t need anything in there!
He got curious and pulled down three instead, so I took them all. I made quick work of two boxes – sorting them into a donation box and a bag of baby stuff that will go to a friend. The third has some electronics I have to figure out. I’m also sorted through another box of books that were passed on to me to donate to the library, the Little Library, and regift (the like-new copies) to young kids. (The pandemic has put a halt to the local regifting and donations for the moment, but the piles are sorted. The trick now is to keep them hidden from JB so they don’t raid it looking for things to clawback.)
Stress cleaning was good through January: I whittled down the contents of our bookshelves and emptied three moving boxes. In a three hour stretch, the bathroom vanity was tidied and old outdated products discarded. I tackled the two boxes in the closet that had turned into catch-alls: sorted and junk winnowed out. I claimed the jar of loose change for some coin rolling lessons for JB. Stress cleaning is perfect when it’s just a matter of picking things to discard and you’re not living in a global health crisis situation.
By February, I’d moved into the stage of “sorting things we are keeping”, and needed a different approach. I was a bit stuck on how to store those things in a useful, organized way so we know what we have and use it, and get rid of what we don’t use.
I could blow $500 (or a lot more) at the Container Store on storage solutions. I know I would really enjoy that polished result. But I don’t want to spend that kind of money. Any of it. I wanted to spend that money on a robot vacuum instead because I had been mentally saving for that for several years now. Note – that robot vacuum is really satisfying and worth the years of anticipation. Maybe some day it’ll be nice to have all coordinated storage but that’s not my highest priority right now.
For March, I shifted to repurposing mode. It’s better for the environment! I tweeted a lot of this smaller actions under #TinyDeclutter but I’ll expand on them a little more here.
This occurred to me when JB’s cup overfloweth with stickers. I had to come up with SOME way to help them feel in charge of their own stuff while limiting the flood. So they are allowed one whole shoebox full of stickers and they are to give away anything that doesn’t fit in there. This is partly to curb the mess and partly to curb their hoarding and feeling like they “have nothing”. (Oh please, kid.) It’s working a LITTLE bit. They are learning to pick things they want to keep, and pick things they are willing to let go of, and that’s a start.
I dug out two nice hat boxes that I bought cheaply at Ross 15 years ago, shoeboxes from recently replacing my shoes, and large padded Amazon envelopes from the few purchases we get occasionally.
- We put our confidential items in the Prime envelopes – all envelopes and anything with our address on it goes there so I know to shred it all.
- Shoeboxes: I’m using these as an easily stackable, no fuss, low stakes storage for our stationery, art supplies, and other small consumables.
- Hat boxes: I’m using these to store things that need a little more care like physical letters.
- We received a tower of treats: we gave away the sweets and kept the boxes for storage.
My garage box clearing progress halted with the pandemic since my usual means of disposal and avoiding the landfill were out for four months: donating and repurposing and regifting. We normally have access to electronics recycling at PiC’s work site but that’s out. From March through July, all I could do was shift piles around which wasn’t productive.
I did manage to do an epic cleanout of JB’s closet and dresser: they only cried over two articles of clothing and took back one outgrown sweater.
Oh and I’ve been repurposing my big glass jars for my Indian spices which have been languishing in crappy plastic baggies for quite some time. My pandemic-fueled love of tiny pickles is a double win.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to pay oodles for a proper spice rack, partly because of price and partly because the wildly disparate volumes between our Indian spices and our American spices make for a strange set. This slow and steady transfer to glass has been deeply satisfying.
It has to be the smaller things these days, lest I look one more time at the avalanche of stuff that is generated from having three people and two dogs home always and forever, one of them an overly enthusiastic artist, and go stark raving bananapants.
Who knew it’d be so much harder to stealth clean when there’s always someone at your elbow asking: What’s that? What are you doing with that? Can I see?
The VVA started doing pick up again at the end of July so I scheduled a pick up of the four large boxes of kitchen, linen, and kid items I’d been sorting. What a relief to have that mountain shifted and the floor space back.
In August, I finally got a motivational kick in the pants and felt up to true organizing. This kick bled right into September and even part of October. PiC did a load of the heavy lifting to put up shelving once I got it straight in my head what I wanted. I spent a bit of money on airtight containers to protect our supplies from the moisture problem we’ve been dealing with and it was ever so satisfying. It’s still in progress but I actually feel like progress has been made.
By end of October, though, we had to sort out through the influx of old house things and baby things and that got complicated again. I need a few more weekends to get this done!
We had such grand decluttering plans when the shutdown began! What we forgot was that Baguette was home with us–and what we could not have anticipated was that her own disruption meant that she wanted me, and only me, near her at all times. That meant I couldn’t do any of the decluttering, and Mr. Sandwich couldn’t do things that required him to move through the house frequently. My big accomplishment was that we finally set up a mail station by the door.
Recently, however, thanks to a jumpstart from one of Baguette’s aides who took it upon herself (this is mortifying, and nothing I would have asked her to do, but her offer was repeated and genuine) to organize Baguette’s room, we have managed to square away a few spaces and make inroads on others. We have a long way to go, but little by little it is getting better.
I think the only reason we got so much done was truly because I didn’t plan anything. I let the overwhelm and impossible feeling flow over me and then just waited until I had those stress-spurts of energy at the times that JB was distracted.
How lovely of Baguette’s aide to offer and assist with her room, though! I’m so glad you got that help, I hope you know it’s not anything to be mortified about. <3