Happiness month day 17 – decluttering
There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of decluttering.
One of my friends updated her facebook update with “More stuff freecycled: claimed and offered. And the car boot is full for a tip run later.”
Later on it read ” More claimed. Scrap metal sent for recycling. Suddenly I have so much more floor….”
I could sense her joy and relief in her short sentences as she updated her progress.
I’ve been on a decluttering mission for a number of years. I do really well for a few weeks then fall off the bandwagon, but each time it gets easier to climb back onboard.
This month I’ve been focusing on my study. It’s a ‘me’ room where I have my favourite books, some comfy cushions and there are no electronics in there! It’s a space for me to mediate, read, be … However it’s become a bit of a dumping ground so I decided to sort it out.
One of the things I was struggling with was an archive box full of newspapers which had articles about the work we do to spread the ‘green’ message in them. They dated back to when I was pregnant with Little Miss Green and was campaigning for home births in the area! Part of me was ready to get rid of the lot, after all, I have my memories, I know why we’ve been in the press over the years and I wanted to reclaim my space.
But part of me had a romantic image of flicking through these papers with my grandchildren on my knee reminiscing about the good old days.
Recently in a charity shop I spotted a couple of large photograph albums and yep, you’ve guessed it – I spent the weekend cutting out the articles and pasting them into my photograph albums. After 4 hours I had reduced my archive box of newspapers to 2 small folders and all the paper was taken to be recycled.
The irony is that now the articles are presented so easily I’ve looked at them more times in the past week than I have in the past 10 years of them being thrown into a large box.
Now I have my cake AND I can eat it: I’ve decluttered, reclaimed some space and become more organised in the process.
I would love to declutter. To have someone come and declutter, actually. Decluttering is overwhelming to me. By the time I would finish, the beginning would be cluttered again. I’ve become much less sentimental over the years, too. I just toss. I need to get digital–you can take photos or scans of lots of that paper sentimental stuff and save it in an album or even on a computer. That takes up much less space.
Can you come declutter my house please?
By the way, I’ve been loving reading your blog! I awarded you the Versatile Blogger Award. Come check it out on my blog.
@Gaby @ Tmuffin: Hi Gaby, thanks so much for the award; I’m really touched 🙂 Ahhh, I have to say I *hate* the decluttering process; it’s only the rewards afterwards I enjoy. Hope you manage to get some decluttering done yourself…