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I am FINALLY getting around to cleaning out and reorganizing my Room. Yes my ROOM. I currently live in my parents basement in my childhood bedroom (4m x 5m, about 12feet x 15feet) since moving back from Vancouver island a year and a half ago, about when rental prices here went through the roof (It’s about $1200/month for a 1 bedroom):evil:. So now that I actually have a whole month before my next contract, it’s time to get rid of stuff.
I negotiated with the parents to use the spare room to sort in for a month and so far I have emptied my closet and am AMAZED at how much stuff there is and am now feeling very overwhelmed by it all. Does anyone have any tips/advice for getting through it all? I know I have to get rid of stuff…
PS – Before anyone offers… The Windstones are staying with me (Though I think I might have an extra Peacock Fledge in the boxes somewhere) 😀 😀 😀
If you have not used it in a year, get rid of it. I recommend taking things to Goodwill or an orphanage. It makes it so much easier to get rid of things you know you dont need but still talk yourself into keeping. Listen to music while you are going through it… makes time fly!
I second Ski. The stuff you keep “just in case” is only taking up space and/or gathering dust.
When I changed my winter wardrobe to spring, I took out almost 10 pairs of jeans I was keeping just in case I lost enough weight to fit in them. I don’t wear jeans anymore. Even if they fit, I wouldn’t wear them. They’ve been taking an entire drawer for almost 10 years now!
My advice: be ruthless!
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmLook through it but get rid of 90% of it, there may be a few things you’d really want to keep but if you haven’t looked at it for this long you’ll probably be ok without it. My sympathies, I’m a packrat and know how it can be! 😀
purplecat wrote:Look through it but get rid of 90% of it, there may be a few things you’d really want to keep but if you haven’t looked at it for this long you’ll probably be ok without it. My sympathies, I’m a packrat and know how it can be! 😀
I’m another fellow pack-rat and I am going through the dilemma process of what to keep/get rid of. I’m having anxiety about getting rid of stuff that I can’t replace because I don’t know what I will use and what I won’t.
Case in point. I have a small collection of baskets. About 5 really nice, expensive ones. I bought them all at different times because I had an idea of what I would use them for, only to never get around to it. I am currently using one for a different purpose than I bought it for, but you get the point. So how do you decide?? What if after I sort through all my other crap and find out I could have really used that one basket I got rid of. Frankly, there is just too much stuff to sort through at the same time, so I’m in a bit of quagmire as to what I might find a use for and what I might not. It doesn’t help that nothing is sorted together so I’m afraid to chuck something until I get the like items of one category together to see what I have to decide.
After reading this, I realize how stupid it must look to someone else, but I think my mind glazes over even considering how to sort through it all. (I have had a reoccuring theme of opening up a box that has been stored for awhile and then saying, “I forgot I had that.”)
Foxfeather, I’m not trying to high-jack your thread, but I find this topic of great interest and would love to read more feedback. Sorry if I stepped on your toes. 😳
You need to take a day or two (a weekend, maybe?) and do it all at once. Make four piles: keep, maybe keep, donate, trash. When you’ve finished sorting the entire room, go through the maybe-keep pile and put that stuff into one of the other three piles. Throw out the trash pile. Bring the donate pile to the Goodwill. And then sort your keep pile into things like paperwork, art projects, decorative, etc. Then find places for it all.
If you have something like baskets, I would put that in the maybe-keep pile at first, and then decide if you can use them once everything is sorted. Then you decide if they go into the keep or donate pile when you sort the maybe-keep pile.
I watch a lot of organizing TV shows, and this is the type of thing they say to do. Try to do it all in a short period of time though. Otherwise you’ll learn to live with your piles and they’ll get mixed up and disappear back into the clutter.
Good luck!
We need to do this in our basement, btw. That will be a fun weekend! Not! 😯
Well ide say a carboot was a fab idea, im doing one next week but you guys would have a clue what im talking about 😆
Its when us crazy lot all take our cars cram them full of unwanted stuff park in a field and sell it all out of the boot of the car (I guess you would call it a trunk) 😕
Good fun actually i have found many hidden gems in carboots 😀
Carboots sound like fun… and a packrats dream!! 😆 Get rid of the baskets, Silver. C’mon you can do it! 😛
I usually go through it in stages. I don’t do it all in one day. I can’t or I get overwhelmed. I do a bit, take a break, do a bit, take a break. I split things into tasks. Maybe this pile of paperwork now. That pile of clothing next. Those books after the clothes. This seems to work well for me.
I live in literally a walk in closet and had to move home from an apartment. Very little actually fits in this room outside of a bed and closet. I think I’ve learned to bend physics though to fit more in it. I always find a way to rearrange and fit more into it 😈 I have to shift between summer and winter clothes, because I can’t keep both in here. I know I have to go through my stuff, but considering most of it is in a storage shed, not going to happen right away until I can get it all out of storage. Mostly just paperwork at this point I think anyways. I do keep things that I may not use/wear for a year or two (maybe a really mild winter prevented me from wearing my warmest wool sweater one year, but the next year it was brutally cold), but I know I will use later. I do eventually end up needing it. If I honestly know I won’t need it/use it/wear it, I give it to good will if it’s in good shape, sell it, or chuck it if it really is ready to bite the dust.
Silver – No Prob! 😛
Emerald – I’ve watched alot of oranization shows too, hence why it came “out of the space” to be sorted 😉I guess I just can’t believe the amount of STUFF that came out of a closet 1m x 1m x 2m. I fills up the spare room :shock:. Lots of it is fabric that was bought (by the person) for commisions that never got made for various reasons :?. I plan to build crazy patch quilts with all the cottonish type fabrics and batting and take them down to the homeless shelter, but am at a bit of a loss as to what to do with 8m of lovely lavender satin.
I bought a closet orangizer system thing today which should help, it was boxes and bins all stacked on top of each other before.
I know what people mean by packrat. I am trying So hard not to be one! My mother is a huge packrat, and though there should be 3 spare rooms in the house now that the siblings have all left, they have all been filled with boxes of stuff that “someone might need” 😯 and she will not get rid of!
We kids all joked that we needed TLC’s ‘Cleep Sweep’ Show to come and do the whole house! 😉
I too am a real packrat but having a neighbor next door that is a social worker at the women’s abuse shelter has help me clean out things I haven’t worn in years. Everything I throw out I give to her to take over to the shelter. They desperately need anything especially jeans and towels. This gets me to clean out my walk-in closet at least once a year.
Emerald 212 wrote:
Quote:I watch a lot of organizing TV shows, and this is the type of thing they say to do. Try to do it all in a short period of time though. Otherwise you’ll learn to live with your piles and they’ll get mixed up and disappear back into the clutter.
She’s right. As I have proven to my cost. And now I have an even bigger pile of stuff to go through.
im also having to go through my war zone of a room to clean (its tiny compared to my old room i had before i moved) and i can hardly fit everything in here..so needless to say alot of it must go
SilverArrow wrote:I’m another fellow pack-rat and I am going through the dilemma process of what to keep/get rid of. I’m having anxiety about getting rid of stuff that I can’t replace because I don’t know what I will use and what I won’t.
Case in point. I have a small collection of baskets. About 5 really nice, expensive ones. I bought them all at different times because I had an idea of what I would use them for, only to never get around to it. I am currently using one for a different purpose than I bought it for, but you get the point. So how do you decide?? What if after I sort through all my other crap and find out I could have really used that one basket I got rid of. Frankly, there is just too much stuff to sort through at the same time, so I’m in a bit of quagmire as to what I might find a use for and what I might not. It doesn’t help that nothing is sorted together so I’m afraid to chuck something until I get the like items of one category together to see what I have to decide.
After reading this, I realize how stupid it must look to someone else, but I think my mind glazes over even considering how to sort through it all. (I have had a reoccuring theme of opening up a box that has been stored for awhile and then saying, “I forgot I had that.”)
You just described me 😯 … but with baskets. I’m like that with practically everything I own. I have a thing for office supplies. And I could clothe 6 of me, at various weights. All because I might need it (being whatever I’m looking at) if I get rid of it.
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