Moving House

Oh! Not me.

Not yet in any case!

One of my neighbours moved house in the last week, and they moved into a bigger place; as they were expecting a new addition to their family. 

However, I have noticed something about people when they move house:  they don't clean out the house until they move from the place.

This is exactly why I'm decluttering my place now! When you declutter your home, and get rid of the things you no longer wish to keep, and have the things you want to keep, you only take the things to the next house that truly belong there.

I know this sounds so very basic, it sounds as though it's the dumbest thing I'm telling you. But really, I've watched so many people move from this unit complex; and they throw out bag after bag of rubbish on the days after the moving van has been. I mean, exactly what did they take with them to the next place for them to leave all the junk behind? 

I'm constantly looking through my cupboards, cleaning out bags of paperwork, donating books, clothes, old sheets, old towels, shoes, Christmas decorations and other things I seriously won't be needing in my house just so I won't be dragging them to the next place to clutter up my home. 

And that's just the thing:  when I do move into a larger place, I will be moving into a place where I'll be spreading out my furniture, hanging pictures on the wall I've had hidden behind doors and in wardrobes and I'll be decorating my next home in such a way I won't be needing to buy anything for it really - well, okay, a new Christmas Tree or a large floor rug, but that's about it!

I don't see how keeping so much crap and not cleaning out a pantry once every 6 months, or cleaning out the laundry once a year can hurt people - especially when you know you have to move at some point in the future. And just like Peter Walsh has been telling us: it only takes 10 minutes to start out cleaning one drawer. You have to remember a couple of things: be honest, be brutal and be positive about what you're doing. 

I'm always that way when I declutter and clean. It takes time and patience, but really, once you get going (and you know you're going to move house in a month's time), you will feel better for it when you have cleaned out the kitchen and you are only packing what you're going to take with you.

Just think:  when you return to clean the house, most of what you'll be cleaning will be just a quick wipe-down... that's if you clean as you declutter. If you don't, you create more work for yourself. 

Small Things

I've been busily working away at smaller things lately. There's the entertainment unit - which was filled to the brim with VCR tapes I'd like to see on dvd. And then there was my wardrobe that I worked through again rather successfully.

And now, I'm looking at the smaller things in the house. You know those things around the place, they make the machine of the house work more efficiently, smoothly and easily. I had to only look around for the past week because I had no money to put towards it.

But today was pay day, and I went out and did my grocery shopping and bought the things I needed to make the house run better again. 

I bought two of these work caddies to use around the house. One is for the upstairs bathroom, and the other is for the downstairs area. I think they'll work really well! And them being both red will make them stand out too. I'll be able to put them away in the same place every time and they'll work out for the house each time too. 

Then there was the garden hose connections I had to buy new ones of because the old ones were broken by people stuffing around with them too much. So, I bought good, expensive ones and I just hope nobody screws with them. I hate to use profanity on here, but really I just don't need somebody stuffing with my property when I'm not here. And disconnecting my own hose when I need it there to use to wash my car or water my lawn isn't a choice. If everyone else around me can have their hoses connected without a worry, why can't I? 

Anyway, I hope nobody breaks these ones. 

But the house is coming along so well! 

I've begun knitting a throw for my bed; using all my yarn that I have in the suitcase up the top of my wardrobe. This will get rid of the yarn stocked up in there... and make something nice and colourful. Otherwise, I've been getting rid of crappy yarn I no longer need and can't use or want to give away either into the bin.

I scored a new iron through my Fly-Buys and it's a Panasonic... it's lovely, light and I could iron with it forever! I used it the other day and didn't want to put it away. Now, that's a first for me!

Anyway, I'm still going through my bedroom and looking at things to see if I need them. My money box collection is bigger than I first thought; and yet most of them are empty. And I'm looking at what clothes I really do wear compared to the ones I just love to have because they look good.

Yep, it's the small things that I'm looking into this time around... really, isn't it the devil in the details that keep things going? Of course it is.

Boxes

Today, I went out to a charity store and did some very cool op-shopping. I scored 2 ice buckets. One was 1970's and once was a much smaller one from around 1930's. The 70's one was plastic and insulated, while the 30's one was glass and metal and looked gorgeous and tiny. So, I polished up the glass one and displayed it on my piano, and looked around the house to put the 70's one so I could use it. 

But I couldn't find a place for it.

So, I opened the bottom doors of the entertainment unit and found it was filled with boxes from my kitchen items. However, these were lined so I could put my Bird Collection items away when the time came and I needed to move; and I could put them inside their right boxes. 
I pulled them out of the unit, and found just how many VCR tapes I had of some great films - all collector's items - and I have just kept them for one reason or another. But now, I really don't need them anymore. So, over the next day or so, I'll be pulling them out and bagging them up to sell online for a collector to buy off me.

Anyway, I grabbed the boxes and went to put them into the kitchen (where there's a cabinet I could fit them all) but I found there were still more boxes! These boxes were from mugs I have bought over the years. So, I organised which ones to throw out and which ones to keep and then bagged up the ones to toss and did just that! Now, I have room in the entertainment unit for my 70's ice box and my boxes for my Bird Collection mugs, sugar bowl, creamer and salt'n'pepper shakers are all under the counter where they belong.

The next thing I need to do - I think is create a bar for my growing collection of items... but where would I make it? There's so little room here. So, how is your decluttering going? Better than mine I hope... I'm still one step forwards and two steps back at times. But today was a good day.

Jane of All Trades

When you declutter your home, you discover that your home could do with a vacuum or a dust - or the furniture could do with a polish or a bit of the fix-up. It's just the Jack - or Jane - of all trades in us that makes us do this. 

Recently, my brother and I had been chatting on the phone about what's going to happen to my place over the next year. He asked me if I'd like to move away from it and into a 'real house' (this is a house on a block of land, with an actual driveway and lock-up garage), and I said yes, that's the aim. He asked me what I'd like to have in the way of a home. I told him a 3-bedroom place would be nice, with a good-sized laundry and an open-plan house (where I'd be able to use the furniture to its full extent instead of working around large counters and walls). He could see where I was coming from; and knew I'd love a place where I could spread out and I could have friends over for a bbq or dinner without worrying about offending my neighbours (as in townhouse complexes you have to make sure you don't bother people).

But with me decluttering and throwing out more than ever, I'm almost at the end of my journey. This doesn't mean I'm not going to post anymore, and it doesn't mean I'm cured of my cluttering problem. And it is a problem; as I'm always bringing home something and never have the space to put it. 

I still have a lot of craft gear I have to store in plastic boxes. I still have to move things around the living room to polish the piano. I still have to work on decluttering the home office in a huge way every few months. And the problem I have is that my place can't handle my things.

Now, don't get me wrong: I no longer have crap around my house. I have useful items, which don't have a home. And this is bad. I'm in great need of a bigger place where I can house my craft and art gear, have a library and my home office and make my living room, dining area and kitchen really look and feel great. The problem is that I'm powerless to get the wheels turning in the direction I want them to. 

I gotta be a Jane of all trades to start fixing up my place in the smallest of ways, to help my folks in some way to fix this place up. I just hope they see what I'm doing as a positive thing... cleaning out, cleaning up, and fixing up. 

Developing Good Habits

I have found that people with clutter tend to have bad habits around the house. This doesn't mean they're lazy; it just means that their clutter got in the way of them trying to do things.

I've watched those 'Hoarder' shows and noticed that the people on them fall into a few categories. They'll have something really awful happen in their lives and they mentally just stop, while their lives continue on. This means that their house also stops. It stops being pretty. It stops being something of pride. It stops being a lovely place to come home to. They stop bringing friends home. They stop cleaning anything. They stop doing anything around the place because they forget how to in the end. And this is where they're friends or family (or both) end up getting involved; because their lifestyle is starting to kill them.

Then, you have the hoarder who has lived with another hoarder and doesn't know any different. They don't know how to develop good habits because they've lived in an environment where they haven't been able to develop them (there's a video on Facebook about a woman who's at the extreme end of this, all because her mother hoarded the worse possible thing... I won't go into detail here. It was gross). People like this, are almost beyond help because they have to be taught how to clean, taught how to put things away, taught how to throw things they don't need out. It's starting with a clean slate pretty much.

But then you have people who have inherited their family's things. They don't know what to do with them; and feel guilty as hell if they let them go or sell them. They feel the need to hang onto old things from their Mother and Father's place just in case they're worth something - and don't get me wrong, some things are worthwhile. But some of the things aren't. The best thing to do is to get things valued, then go from there.

I fall into the last category and the first one. I've had a rotten relationship where I was beaten up and it made me stop mentally. I started hoarding and I almost turned into one of those poor souls on 'Hoarders'... and just watching that show for one season made me realise I needed to get off my butt and do something about my junk (yep, see, I have junk too! I have stuff too, but we'll cover that on another post). 
The one thing I had to do was make myself start on developing good habits. This meant putting out the rubbish every night, washing up every night before I went to bed, cleaning up the living room before I went upstairs, putting the remote controls for the tv and stereo system where I could find them every time, doing my laundry on a weekly basis and putting it away every time. 
I've gotten into doing my laundry, putting out the rubbish, washing up, putting the remotes where I can find them and ... well, I've started developing other new habits I'm hoping will stick. Just last night, I spent 45 minutes cleaning up the living room and washing up before I turned off the lights downstairs and going upstairs. And this morning, when I went down to have breakfast, I didn't feel as though I was going to be ashamed of my house today... I felt as though I could breath for the first time in a long time.

This is what forming good habits can do for you by decluttering and cleaning up. I know it sounds simple, but for some of us, it's an ongoing battle. It is for me - and it may be for you. So, how is your battle with the clutter and cleaning going?