I thought we could share ideas that didn't work for us during our decluttering. I'll start with a few observations I've made over the past couple of weeks - and the target is my landlady.
My landlady is a woman in her late fifties and up until last week unemployed since Spring last year. Now she has found a job that means going in twice a week for a month. One of her courses at the center for unemployed has just ended, which means she can be at home some days, too. Thank god! Maybe she'll finish some of all the projects that she hasn't finished.
Like the halfway painted walls in the bathroom; one needs a final coat (white), another has splatches missing, two have been 'framed' but miss paint over the main part of the wall (blue) altogether, and according to a girl who lived here as I moved in (she had had enough of all the quirks and so moved out during my first week) the walls have looked like that for a year now.
She's anal about her countertop; made a bad choice and went for a surface that can't handle moisture so not only does she wipe droplets off constantly, but also makes her two tenants use cork trivets between anything and the countertop. She has a huge stack of the trivets, just waiting to be used. It's very aesthetic.
I rent her son's room, since he's living with his dad now. Apparently she moved all the stuff out, into the dining room and hasn't touched those things since. She keeps telling me she's going to tackle it any day now, but nothing happens. There's a complete chaos in there and I doubt that it will be gone during my months here.
She has decided to get rid of a full set of china and some of it is already in the entryway in a couple of baskets, uncovered and waiting to be sold I guess. So once she has found a buyer she'll maybe have to wash all of them again to make them presentable. Unless she has tripped over them and broken parts of it.
She constantly washes half loads of stuff in the washing machine - only in the evening and weekends though, which in the beginning made life not very easy on her two tenants - until she realized she can't claim the machine to herself completely now. There's only one drying rack, which results in discussions anytime the two of us 'girls' want to wash something. Oh and she doesn't mind to start the machine at 8 am a Saturday or Sunday either :) I'm especially thrilled since it is my neighbour. The pipes go through my room along that side of the wall so anytime someone uses water the pipes squeak :D This can happen at 7 am during the weekend mornings, but hey, I don't have to wake up to my alarm.
Her vacuuming machine is out all the time because she seems incapable of vacuuming more than a room at a time. She vacuums whenever she gets the idea to do so, for instance when someone else might want some peace and quiet. The kitchen floor was so filled with dried food - not from my cooking sessions though, mind you - that I decided to finally vacuum a couple of days ago. She 'usually does it on Sundays', but hasn't taken care of it since I moved in.
Same goes with the bathroom. There were toothpaste splatters all over the mirrors and goo on the sink for two weeks until I cleaned them. The bathtub and the wall against which she seems to shower herself are nasty due to the hard water, but she is blind to that.
She cooks and gets confused sometimes which plate she's using and so she might turn the wrong one up - an empty one - which has happened a couple of times already. (I might buy a smoke detector because there is none here.) She's not anal about the ceramic stove.
My conclusion based on these few examples (believe me there's plenty more) is that to ever have a remote chance of decluttering successfully, a key point is to actually finish what you start. This lady runs like a headless hen, is all over the place and in reality achieves nothing. She seems to lack a gene for organizing things too, unless they have a logical home like a drawer in a kitchen. This doesn't have to be the end of it though, because as I see it, it can be counteracted by making a plan, breaking each room into projects and each project into manageable chunks.
Another key point if there's a lot of decluttering to do is not to mix weekly maintenance with getting rid of stuff. The normal maintenance creates a good backbone in my opinion, without which there might not even be enough room to start the purging process.
Stay realistic, people, and you'll create miracles! Love from Denmark, Nina
