notes about decluttering

Last Thursday we had a Relief Society activity. We started out with a speaker who gave us some tips about organizing our lives and decluttering, and then we had a clothing/hobby item swap afterwards. So here are some of my notes from the things we talked about:

• Don't fill your attic with stuff. Even though you can't see it, it presses down on you, because you still think about it. It drains you.
• If someone asks you to store something for them, say no unless they have a date that they will come back for it or they give you a contract saying they will come get it. The speaker said that she and her husband had lived in a house with an attic, a basement, a cellar, and a three-story barn, and they ended up spending a bundle of money before they moved to have someone come haul all the stuff away that people had asked them to store.
• If someone offers you something that you don't like (curtains, clothes, furniture, etc.) and that you know you never want to use, politely say no. Don't take it and store it for years because you didn't want to hurt their feelings. It's okay to say, "I don't think I'll ever use that."
• It's usually a lot easier to go through someone else's stuff and point out what they should throw away than it is to get rid of your own things. But it's not okay to go through their things and get rid of stuff without them saying it's okay--it's not worth the hurt feelings, and you never know if that thing had special meaning for them.
• With kids' toys and books, use a 1-2-3 method. Pick up three things, and they can choose one of the three things. Do the same with the next three things. If they want to choose two, then they can't choose any from the next three. Set aside the items they didn't choose. Over the next couple of weeks, if they ask for one of those items, give it to them. That's something they still play with or read. Whatever is left that they never ask for, you can throw away or donate.
• When you are taking kids' items to the thrift shop or garbage or whatever, do not put them in a see-through grocery bag. Put them in a thick garbage bag so the kids can't see them as you carry the bag out the door. If you put the items in a grocery bag and they see what it is, it will suddenly become their favorite toy ever and they won't let you take it, even though they haven't played with it for over a year.
• Don't store clothes that don't fit you anymore. If you have clothes that are too small but you are saving them for when you lose 25 lbs., you are punishing yourself every time you see them in your closet. Instead, get rid of them. And if/when you actually do lose 25 lbs., yay! Now you can go buy some new clothes as a reward!
• Only touch things once. When you get the mail, go through it over the trash can, and then immediately file whatever you don't take care of right away. Don't pick up a book and set it someplace else, thinking you'll put it away later. Put it away right then.
• Declutter the bathroom. You don't need a lot of stuff in the bathroom, and a lot of the things that are sitting on the counter could be put away. It's a similar idea for the kitchen.
• Clutter takes away your time from more important things. Lots of knickknacks means lots of dusting.
• Never rent a storage unit. If you are spending $100 a month on a storage unit, you're effectively raising your rent $100--and you could be spending that money on a nicer place instead. And if you do really need a storage unit, make sure that anything you store is something you will still want in a year, because that's probably how long it will take to get back to that storage unit.

This is a topic I have been thinking about a lot over the past few weeks. I think it's nesting, but I've been really wanting to go through things and just get rid of stuff. Before the swap, I went through all of my clothes and donated several of my pre-Kevin things. Even though I eventually got down to about my average weight after he was born, those things never fit nicely again because my body was shaped differently, and I realized that it was time to accept that. So after the baby is born, I'll just have to get some new clothes that I actually like. Gee, that's too bad. : ) We also started talking about Kevin's toys, and we realized that a lot of them are just used for banging on things or they get thrown on the floor with everything else but never get played with. So we went through his toys and put away things like matchbox cars, puzzles, and wordy books that he will eventually want to play with but isn't old enough for yet, as well as baby toys that will be nice to have for Baby Girl but that Kevin isn't interested in.