This thread is intended for discussion as well as support for those who wish their both their inner and outer lives to become more organized, productive, peaceful, and happy.
I've been doing some cleaning. I was shocked by the amount of paper I had. I've been putting my shredder to work. I was also shocked by how many toys I have so no more toys until I make more space. I have some cool stuff with nowhere to put it.
I thrown out a bunch of useless stuff like a scanner. My printer has a scanner that I never use. No need for two. Gave away a razor scooter I only rode twice before getting a better one. Tossed a bunch of game controllers that I will never use again. Got rid of a large number of game cases and a few games that I now own on steam or other places.
In the last month I've probably *thrown out over half of my collected amassed things from the last 10+ years. Some of this stuff I carted up here to Canada in the first place just to store and end up throwing it away now, so I know it was the right choice.
Due to the mixed bag of feelings of this divorce, there's a lot of stuff I probably should have tossed that I'm not ready to let go of, yet. Those are things I need time and distance to process, and they will be dealt with at that time. For now, I take comfort in their sentiment.
What I now ave could have probably all fit in the back of a pickup truck if it wasn't about to be winter in Manitoba. Just mailed it all in the post instead. It really helped to assign monetary value to weight; I literally will have to pay for everything I choose to keep. I feel I want to look at slowly reducing and simplifying to someday achieve something of a minimalist lifestyle.
I'm gravitating towards small. Small, long-lasting, well crafted. Organized. Clean. Austere. It calms me in a way I used to fear made me seem boring. Thankfully, I'm nearly forty and give 0 f*cks anymore.
As a former interior design snob I love it, I love konmari, and I will fight anyone who feels the need to tear it or Marie Kondo down right now. Let her thrive, she did a good thing.
*includes recycling, donating, and giving away.
My wife is super good at this and I am not. My desi is always a mess and thus my life is often chaos. Work I usually have nailed down. There I am somewhat organized but due to my lack of certain organization my calendar and email suffer time to time. And I am in account management and project management.
I really need some great plan to out into place. It sucks that I've tried so much my whole life but it never sticks.
Currently I'm in my mid-40's with kids and more crap than we know what to do with. We're slowly realizing that we didn't need most of the stuff we've accumulated over the past 15-20 years and would be almost retired already if we hadn't bought it. We lived in a 3,000 sqft house and it's filled with stuff we hardly ever even see.
For instance, we held onto a ton of baby stuff thinking we'll have a garage sale or give it to our girls when they decide to have kids. As we age and look back though, half the crap we thought we needed, especially with the 1st child, we didn't need at all. Like the play pens and changing tables and all that crap. We hardly ever used them after the 1st kid but still set them up anyways.
My goal is to slowly just get rid of all the crap (giving most of it away or trashing it) so by the time we are ready to retire and kids are gone, we can live in a tiny house pulled behind our car or in a 10'X10' cabin on some cruise yacht until we die. We are going through room by room and if we haven't used something within the last year, it's going bye bye. Once we hit the main areas it will be time for the attic storage and the basement closets. God give me strength!
Anyone want to start investing now in a medium sized yacht?
Timeshare yacht....Share...Time....Time Share..... Oh I get it!
So, I recently sold my Gamecube on craigslist. The person who bought it came in to test it, and saw my collection of PS2 games. He was very interested. Recently, he asked me how much I wanted for the whole thing. Which has been quite a puzzle.
Outside of PriceCharting and checking eBay for items in a similar condition, anyone has an idea on how to evaluate that stuff?
Going with PriceCharting, the whole thing is probably around CAD1.7k, and around CAD1.9k when checking prices on eBay. I'm not going to ask for that, but that at least gives me a starting point.
I have a bunch of things to put for sale on eBay that I've been procrastinating on for, well, years at this point. I listed a few things today and, for whatever reason, two of them sold within the hour. I took some more photos today, and I plan to spend some time tomorrow adding a few more things.
I also started a list of various French-language comic books I want to get rid of, and will list them later on Kijiji. English-language comics and graphic novels are next. Once I've pruned my collection, I should be in good shape.
Someday my life won't be so cluttered. That day is still a long way off though. At least it feels pretty good to finally do something about it.
Two borderline hoarders with delusions of nostalgia and two kids in a small home with inadequate storage. The clutter is real.
Let the purge begin. Taking some photos of the current state to use as encouragement for clearing stuff that hasn't shifted in years.
First carload went to Goodwill. A bunch of kid furniture and toys that had been cluttering up the basement and inhibiting access to cabinets.
A modicum of elbow-room has been achieved. We'll call it phase point 5.
Next thing on the list... an old couch that will need to be dragged to the curb. With those pieces gone we have some space to regain access to the crawl space under the stairs to clear out some stuff we haven't looked at in at least five years.
Our biggest issue is that not much in our house has a true dedicated spot. Every flat surface seems to accumulate some kind of detritus or a box or a stack of something that doesn't really have another place to go.
Edit: And we spent a good hour trying to research other places we could donate things to without having to drive an obscene amount or having to split the stuff up and came up dry. Goodwill has problems, but it still beats the dump.
Managed to put together a few listings on Kijiji for English-language comic books, and these seem to be getting some attention. I haven't sold anything yet (although I'm waiting for payment on my Futurama comics), but I've been getting plenty of messages. I might be able to get rid of those fairly easily.
I haven't been so lucky with the French-language comic books though. Granted, the ones I listed aren't the most popular series. Oh well. I probably should have done that during winter 2019, when I was living in Quebec City, rather than here in Ottawa...
I have to say, this been one good thing about this whole COVID-19 shïtshow: it forced me to face my clutter and to start doing something about it.
In the past 2 days, I've managed to sell 2 of my old PS2s, all of my old Star Wars comics, and the entire run of the Marvel adaptation of Stephen King's 'The Stand'. Things are not really selling all that well, but at least there is some progress on that front!
I have to admit, it feels pretty good to see things go. I've been dragging my feet at selling some of that stuff for years. I'm not sure it would've happened had I not been stuck at home all day, looking at bookshelves full of stuff I'm never going to use or read again.
Posted my Spider-Man comics today.
Some guy is interested in the "Amazing Spider-Man" issues I have, and asked me to take photos of their spines. I'm thinking: "They are all in plastic sleeves, taking them out and putting them back in will take more than an hour, so no." I did it for a few issues, and that's all he gets. If that's not good enough for him, too bad, I'll wait for the next buyer.
We're staaaalling. The couch is gone. The kids and I watched from the front door while it got chewed up by a garbage truck.
Thus ends the reign of the first piece of furniture I ever bought for my first actual apartment.
We had planned to do another donation run, and then there were thunderstorms. We had planned to do another purge, but then the kids decided we needed other plans. We were going to sift through the office and then work decided that I'm part of phase two of our reopening plan and need to spend time on campus prepping for the dozen or so people that will take them up on the voluntary return. Until it isn't voluntary anymore.
I'm willing to put in the work in the house; what I need is a contractor that'll just show up, take my sorted stuff, and make a good faith effort to donate/recycle everything before taking it to the landfill. Do such contractors exist?
I've only been able to find junk/cleanout people who just trash everything; I hired one of them to clean out my parents' place after taking a lot of stuff to Goodwill, but they still trashed a lot of stuff I'd also have donated if I had more time. (They'd also told me that they load trashy stuff first and stuff they think they can donate last and then stop at goodwill, which I am not super convinced was true.) Or on the other end there's the consultants who'll help you go through the stuff. I don't need that either; I know what I want rid of, I just want to send it away responsibly.
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