Declutter, Clean, and Organize My Life Catch-All

I don't know what you intended, but what you're showing us in the picture really looks great! Great job!

For cables, you can use toilet paper/paper towel holders to stick up under your desk until the ones you want are in stock.

I got all of my blankets, quilts, sheets, etc. bagged up in blanket bags and arranged neatly on my closet shelf instead of just crammed in wherever they would somewhat fit. Today I did some organizing on the next shelf down. I really need to do the whole closet, but those shelves are a good start and I was able to get some things off the floor because I couldn't fit them on a shelf anywhere. I also decluttered two electric blankets that were no longer working that I intended to recycle and use as regular blankets, but then asked myself if I would ever really get to doing it. When the answer was, "no" then out they went!

bekkilyn wrote:

I don't know what you intended, but what you're showing us in the picture really looks great! Great job!

Thanks!

For cables, you can use toilet paper/paper towel holders to stick up under your desk until the ones you want are in stock.

A former colleague of mine was using soda bottles to do that. I think I will just wait for now, I don't want to do this twice. I should take care of screwing the power bar to the desk this week though, assuming I can find where I put my box of loose screws. (I thought it was in my locker downstairs, but didn't see it yesterday.)

but then asked myself if I would ever really get to doing it. When the answer was, "no" then out they went!

Been there. This is a question I ask myself a lot these days. Congratulations on taking the 'no' approach

Today's task is to figure out what I have in an accordion file I unearthed and sort through it and file what I really want to keep and then will be repurposing the file for more current work-related things. I've gotten it sorted out now and the only thing left is to make the file folders I need for what I want to keep and get those filed in my file box, which shouldn't take too long! Then my daily task for today will be completed!

I also ordered a couple of hanging cloth shelves to go in my closet and plan to fold some of the things I currently have on hangers and it should free up a lot of space in there.

I've thought about doing the closet the Kondo way in which I take out everything at once, but I have a feeling that if I ever did that, I'd end up sleeping on that pile for the next few days.

So I'm planning to get it done piece by piece as part of my dailies. I seem to do better with smaller steps and get too overwhelmed when I have too much at once.

Today was something else!

So the daily task for today was to pick up the rest of the things on the floor of the "office" room and put them away. Well in the process, I accidentally turned off the UPS for my desktop and cable modem and router, etc. I've had this small printer stand sitting around for months with the intention of using it under my desk to hold the UPS, modem, etc. but had been procrastinating because I knew it was going to be a real pain getting all those things extracted from the beat-up plastic milk crate I'd been using that has been sagging and put onto the printer stand.

So I decided that since everything was already turned off that I would forge ahead and get it done! It really was a pain. I used wire cutters to take apart the milk crate since I didn't really want to unplug *everything* to get it out. A couple cables did come unplugged, but I managed to extract the crate, vacuum the area, and get the printer stand under the desk along with everything else, found where everything needed to be connected and miraculously it all worked when I was done! (I seem to often have the misfortune of deciding to do things like this at the same time the internet decides to go down and then I spend lots of time trying to figure out why things aren't working, thinking the whole time that it's me. Glad this was not one of those times!)

Yay!

But it sure was an ordeal!

My partner is selling her house, and we have been purging. So many things donated. An ultimate dump run will happen when we vacate, but it won't be too much. The weirdest thing to purge was my dad and my SCUBA equipment. All about 8-15 years old. 3 bins worth. The money spent on it was several thousands of dollars. We got our money's worth out of it for sure. It's an expensive hobby, and I probably won't be getting back into it ever, and if I did, I'd just buy new equipment. SCUBA equipment degrades and loses value extremely quickly.

So, dropped the 3 bins at a local dive shop for them to salvage or destroy. Weird.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

The weirdest thing to purge was my dad

Out of context theater presents... patricide!

I was coming here to boast about finally getting rid of our hometrainer, but am now inspired (by which I mean, you raised my anxiety levels) to declutter some more. Especially the old DVD's, games and magazines stuck in the attic.

dejanzie wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

The weirdest thing to purge was my dad

Out of context theater presents... patricide!

I was coming here to boast about finally getting rid of our hometrainer, but am now inspired (by which I mean, you raised my anxiety levels) to declutter some more. Especially the old DVD's, games and magazines stuck in the attic.

Congratulations on the hometrainer getting-rid-of! The attic will be able to breathe much better once you get those other things cleared away too!

I took some things to Goodwill yesterday! The lady was a bit irate that I didn't have it in a box, but I didn't have a box, but other than that little hump, it is done!

dejanzie wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

The weirdest thing to purge was my dad

Out of context theater presents... patricide!

Things have slowed down somewhat in the past week or two. There are a few items that I wish would sell, as they take up a lot of space in my "to-get-rid-of" bookcase.

I've finally finished sifting through all of my DVDs, and the only ones I will keep are the Star Trek tv series and movies, plus the few movies that I would include in my all-time top 10. Everything else is good to go! I'll need to call my friend so he can stop by and pick them up (probably next weekend).

I think I'm going to get rid of my old desk chair and just use an exercise ball to sit on when I'm at my desk. The chair is long past it's prime and while it was the most comfortable desk chair I'd ever used, it doesn't seem to be very helpful to my posture and it's a bit broken in places, so I think it needs to be put out to pasture so to speak.

Which leaves room for the floor lounger I plan to set up next to my bookcases and have a bit of a reading nook there. Today's goal is to vacuum that area and get everything clean and get that set up. One of next week's goals will probably be to try to dismantle the chair to get it out a lot easier, probably before Wednesday since that's when trash and recycling is collected.

bobbywatson wrote:

Things have slowed down somewhat in the past week or two. There are a few items that I wish would sell, as they take up a lot of space in my "to-get-rid-of" bookcase.

At some point it is worth it to take it to the local used buy shop and take whatever they will give you, or just donate it to get it out of the house.

I've started to 'stealth declutter' all around the house, without telling the missus. I'm curious if and when she will notice Today I put some pillows away that lay beside our bed for about a year or so, finally started to tidy up the suitcase with kids' toys still open since we came back from the sea and while on a Teams call (without video of course) I scanned the shelves in our home office and threw away some old paperwork and CD's.

dejanzie wrote:

I've started to 'stealth declutter' all around the house, without telling the missus. I'm curious if and when she will notice Today I put some pillows away that lay beside our bed for about a year or so, finally started to tidy up the suitcase with kids' toys still open since we came back from the sea and while on a Teams call (without video of course) I scanned the shelves in our home office and threw away some old paperwork and CD's.

Oh I bet that's a fun game to play!! If you really play it stealthy, you could get rid of all sorts of clutter in areas that are not visible, but still get a lot done! Mwahaha!

Yesterday I cleaned up our DVD-filled TV cabinet, and got rid of 2/3rd of the collection I built over the years. Absolutely nobody seems interested in going through them looking for hidden gems, something I loved doing for years when retail was still a thing that existed! Or maybe they are on to my questionable taste So to goodwill they will go, if they want them. At least I got to put my PS VR stuff into the emptied space...

bekkilyn wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

I've started to 'stealth declutter' all around the house, without telling the missus. I'm curious if and when she will notice Today I put some pillows away that lay beside our bed for about a year or so, finally started to tidy up the suitcase with kids' toys still open since we came back from the sea and while on a Teams call (without video of course) I scanned the shelves in our home office and threw away some old paperwork and CD's.

Oh I bet that's a fun game to play!! If you really play it stealthy, you could get rid of all sorts of clutter in areas that are not visible, but still get a lot done! Mwahaha! :)

... But unfortunately five shopping bags full of DVD's are not easy to hide I'll keep at it of course in more subtle ways, so NOT like this:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/NxqGYpr.jpg)

I drilled a few holes and plugged some coatrack thingies in there, to hang my gaming laptop and our girls' school bags on. Looks much nicer in our little storage room without those bags laying around!

Ohhh that's really neat what you did! I LOVE seeing people's organizational systems and the things they come up with!

One great thing about nowadays is that we can almost always get whatever we want digitally if we get rid of something we end up wanting at a later date, and digital doesn't take up all that physical space or need to be dusted!

bekkilyn wrote:

and digital doesn't take up all that physical space or need to be dusted!

This is true, but moving music onto a Plex server has gotten me side-eyeing all of my digital clutter... Things are duplicated oddly, file systems are a mess...

It's been very gratifying to be able to find recipes and knitting patterns more easily. I also made an alphabetized list of all our spices and taped it to the cabinet door so I can more easily mark off what's low or out (I... have a spice problem. That's another reorganizing task for another day.) Further tidying has taken a back seat to studying for a professional licensure exam, but I'm loving watching everybody's updates!

ActualDragon wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:

and digital doesn't take up all that physical space or need to be dusted!

This is true, but moving music onto a Plex server has gotten me side-eyeing all of my digital clutter... Things are duplicated oddly, file systems are a mess...

It's been very gratifying to be able to find recipes and knitting patterns more easily. I also made an alphabetized list of all our spices and taped it to the cabinet door so I can more easily mark off what's low or out (I... have a spice problem. That's another reorganizing task for another day.) Further tidying has taken a back seat to studying for a professional licensure exam, but I'm loving watching everybody's updates!

Good luck on the exam! I know how much time it takes to prepare for those sorts of things!

You are so right about the digital clutter. Even though it has its advantages over physical clutter, it's still something that can get out of hand and cause stress, so even digital clutter needs to be managed. I have some digital clutter I need to take care of. Not as much as I used to have, but still enough to be a problem.

With advancing search capabilities, digital clutter is less of an issue these days. But it's all too tempting to just let go and use search as a crutch... and that's not good either. I've also been using a mix of Dropbox, Google Drive, local storage and OneDrive over the years so sometimes I lose track of where to find that specific photo or document. I've been 'decluttering' towards OneDrive lately.

Today I've been reorganizing the plastic map holding thing (no idea what it's called) that holds our tax/house/car/travel papers, and threw out a lot of old paperwork. And during a conference call (viva wireless headsets!) I was able to empty one shelf completely in our attic closet. Apparently I still had all the course material for the Veeam VMCE 7.x lying around, even though v10 has just been released and I recently passed v9.5u4

Good luck on your exam ActualDragon!

For some weird reason (long weekend, probably), I sold a bunch of things on eBay this weekend, and some stuff on Kijiji as well. I'm especially amazed at the speed at which my Futurama DVDs sold.

Digital clutter is one area where I've been failing for years. I built a whole to-do list of what needs to be done to get in order, but for some reason I never get to it. Someday I might.

bobbywatson wrote:

For some weird reason (long weekend, probably), I sold a bunch of things on eBay this weekend, and some stuff on Kijiji as well. I'm especially amazed at the speed at which my Futurama DVDs sold.

Digital clutter is one area where I've been failing for years. I built a whole to-do list of what needs to be done to get in order, but for some reason I never get to it. Someday I might.

I'm using the "eat the elephant" approach. Breaking it down into tiny, bite-sized pieces, even if that means only clearing, organizing a couple files a day.

Fantastic on clearing out all the things!!

I did get that office chair broken down and it went out for trash/recycling collection Tuesday night! I'd forgotten that it was a holiday weekend and that the trucks come one day later instead of on Wednesday, so they are out collecting my clutter today. Still, it has been gone from my house and that has been wonderful! Today's goal is to attack the cabinet under the kitchen sink!

I made a mistake with one of my goals last week that I'm still working on clearing. I made the mistake to make the goal too vague, as in "Clear up the rest of the clutter on the living room floor." It sounded simple at the time because I don't have a lot of things on the floor, but what's remaining is a bit tricky and so it's been taking a lot more than one day to do, which also mentally dampened my motivation for that goal. So that goal remains undone even though I've made progress on it.

The lesson to be learned here is to not make vague goals. If I'm decluttering anything, I need to be very specific. Rather than saying "the rest of the clutter on the floor" I need to instead say exactly which clutter I'll be removing, i.e. "clean and put away the outdoor tools lying near the door."

I have been completing other daily goals since that flop of a goal, but it's still one that I haven't been able to check off as completed. Live and learn!

Just discovered this thread and this is something I’ve been desperately needing to do but keep saying “I’ll get around to it”. Very motivating, I’m going to join in the “fun”.

Docjoe wrote:

Just discovered this thread and this is something I’ve been desperately needing to do but keep saying “I’ll get around to it”. Very motivating, I’m going to join in the “fun”.

Yay! Welcome!

Docjoe wrote:

Just discovered this thread and this is something I’ve been desperately needing to do but keep saying “I’ll get around to it”. Very motivating, I’m going to join in the “fun”.

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/MAir7JcHGl0TLlwbtV/giphy.gif)

Yesterday I emptied the cutlery shelf, vacuumed and cleaned it.

But Wednesday had a bit more oomph to it. I found the bag of personal stuff my grandma kept of me. I hadn't looked at it since she passed away over 5 years ago. She kept the cards I sent as a 6 year old from summer camp, and the note I wrote for a Christmas present (Clark Gable movies and fleece blanket :-)) she not only kept but framed as well. And to think she had 13 grandchildren! She was such a sweet lady, and I miss her dearly still.

The project for this weekend is to figure out where to put the new cat tree, and then vacuum and clean the floor. My place has been a mess (outside of the small part of my office).

I ordered some cable organizers from Ikea. I was supposed to pick them up last night, but I never got the confirmation email that they were ready for pick up, and now I'm not sure what to do. I might end up calling them later today to see what's up. (Order status says 'Order received', nothing else.)

Surprisingly, my Futurama DVD sets sold in a manner of hours, and the person who bought them was exactly on time, which was pretty amazing. I also managed to sell my DS Lite. This weekend, I should be able to list my Dreamcast accessories (2 controllers and 3 memory cards). No idea if they will sell. I also have a bunch of video games ready to be listed as well.

I got rid of all my PS1, PS2 and Dreamcast games earlier this year. I'm currently working on selling the Wii and GBA games. PSP games are next. Funnily enough, I sold both my PSP-1000 and my PSP-3000 earlier this year, and I only have a PSP Go remaining, which I cannot use to play games on UMD. Good thing I ripped everything a long time ago.

One thing that I did not realize at first is how stressful listing stuff on Kijiji/Craigslist can be. I find it somewhat tough to manage me going out (for walks or errands) and trying to figure out when someone will come to pick something up.

dejanzie wrote:

Yesterday I emptied the cutlery shelf, vacuumed and cleaned it.

But Wednesday had a bit more oomph to it. I found the bag of personal stuff my grandma kept of me. I hadn't looked at it since she passed away over 5 years ago. She kept the cards I sent as a 6 year old from summer camp, and the note I wrote for a Christmas present (Clark Gable movies and fleece blanket :-)) she not only kept but framed as well. And to think she had 13 grandchildren! She was such a sweet lady, and I miss her dearly still.

Awesome!!

That's the thing...when we clear out the things that don't matter, we can uncover the things that do matter very much! (Though we have to also be careful we don't let sentiment also become clutter...we don't have to keep *everything*!)

bobbywatson wrote:

One thing that I did not realize at first is how stressful listing stuff on Kijiji/Craigslist can be. I find it somewhat tough to manage me going out (for walks or errands) and trying to figure out when someone will come to pick something up.

That stress is why I tend to donate everything rather than sell it. I'm impressed at your persistence!

bekkilyn wrote:
bobbywatson wrote:

One thing that I did not realize at first is how stressful listing stuff on Kijiji/Craigslist can be. I find it somewhat tough to manage me going out (for walks or errands) and trying to figure out when someone will come to pick something up.

That stress is why I tend to donate everything rather than sell it. I'm impressed at your persistence!

Or greed

bobbywatson wrote:
bekkilyn wrote:
bobbywatson wrote:

One thing that I did not realize at first is how stressful listing stuff on Kijiji/Craigslist can be. I find it somewhat tough to manage me going out (for walks or errands) and trying to figure out when someone will come to pick something up.

That stress is why I tend to donate everything rather than sell it. I'm impressed at your persistence!

Or greed :)

LOL whatever works, right?

Today is clean the kitchen floor day and I've already vacuumed it the first time and went over half with a steamer mop. (The furniture is moved over to the other side.) When the steamed side of the floor dries, I'll get to the other half. On another good note, I was able to declutter a regular mop. I was thinking of using it before steaming, but I hadn't used it in so long that the foam "mop" part was falling apart, so out it goes. I have two pads for the steamer mop, so once I've done the entire floor with the one pad, I'll do it all over again with the clean one and then both will go into the wash!

Last night I also put together a dish drying rack that goes over the sink, so I have cleared off some counter space where I had a regular drying rack. Also a cast iron pan rack came today so I'll be able to actually get the cast iron from just sitting on the stove top and into a cabinet. It's also bright red, which is a bonus!

Still waiting on my Ikea order for cable organizers.

Finally managed to vacuum and clean the floor today, after postponing it for a few weeks. Also managed to wash my comforter. If all goes well, I will finally catch up on laundry tomorrow. *sigh*