What one change helped you the most to reach your decluttering goals in 2011?

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What one change helped you the most to reach your decluttering goals in 2011?

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Started 5 months ago by Ella
Latest reply from Lucy the Writer
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Ella
Member

I've gotten so much out of reading all your replies - thank you! I see a lot of you have cited ATAD as the prime mover in your decluttering. Also PEEP, do it now, close the loop, set a timer, set limits, stop or postpone the inflow, and reframe your thinking.

I have a feeling that ATAD is going to be the most powerful thing for me in the coming year. All through 2011, I mostly read the ATAD thread but seldom posted anything of my own. But since the End of the Year ATAD thread started, I've been faithfully hunting down, decluttering, and posting at least one item every single day, and
by now I'm beginning to feel the power behind that daily commitment.
I'm looking forward to our monthly ATAD threads.

Posted 5 months ago #
chacha1
Member

ATAD started up *after* I had done the bulk of my decluttering, but I still managed to get rid of a lot of stuff this year by using that conscious, look-around-to-see technique. Just silly stuff, like a tool for making fancy butter curls (really!), or the 5th Bundt pan.

For 2012 I'm not sure what's going to be the biggest help. I'm kind of at the point where it's TIME that is my nemesis, not clutter. Or at least, the remaining clutter isn't mine to dispose of. Grrrr.

For effective uncluttering of my time, I think the key is going to be to stick to very firm schedules, i.e. if practice is scheduled Monday and we can't do it because DH has to work late and then is stuck in traffic for an hour, it gets bumped to Tuesday but no later.

This week, it meant prepping the veg for a pot roast on Sunday night even though I'd already spent way too much time in the kitchen. Making myself do that meant that the pot roast cooked Monday and now I have some breathing room for dinners.

Posted 5 months ago #
Netleigh
Member

This is a really interesting thread.

For me I think the various changes like ATAD, one in one out have helped.
But the most important resulting change from adopting these habits is being more mindful of how I use things and what we need.

I have realised that I don't like sticking to one pattern of decluttering for the whole year and I was fairly scattergun in implementing ATAD, choosing areas where it was easy to get at the low hanging fruit. I'm ready to change things by setting monthly goals in 20012 so I end up concentrating on one area or habit for the month. I can always come back to it again when I've had a break by concentrating on somewhere/thing else for a month.

Posted 5 months ago #
xarcady
Member

What does PEEP stand for?

There were two things that made a big impact for me this year.

First was deciding to create a new habit every month. Focus on doing one thing every day for a month, until it became routine. Thanks to this, I am now doing the following daily:

Scooping the litter box
Tidying the living room every night just before I go to bed
Making my bed in the morning
Putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher instead of on the counter on top of the dishwasher
Keeping the kitchen sink empty
Emptying the dishwasher and dish drainer every morning while waiting for the kettle to boil
Putting books I've read back where they belong the day I finish reading them
Clearing off the coffee table every single day
Clearing off the dining table every single day
Wiping down the bathroom sink and toilet daily
Putting the recycling in the bins immediately
Using the time I spend waiting in the kitchen for something to cook or boil to put things away/clean things/tidy a drawer or cabinet

I now have 11 habits that are pretty firmly ingrained--I'm still working on the 12th one. Written out, it doesn't look like much, but it has made a huge difference in how my house looks. One thing that made doing this possible was that in prior years, I had done a lot of work in finding homes for things. So the tidying up and clearing off tables goes pretty quickly, because everything pretty much has a home to go to.

I'm going to do this again in 2012, but for health/fitness related things, like daily exercise and drinking enough water.I experimented with this for weekly tasks, but it didn't work for me. It has to be a daily or at least Monday-Friday type task for this to take.

The second thing that helped was getting a complete physical for the first time in 5 years. After finding out that I'm anemic and short on Vitamin D and getting both those things treated, I have the energy to work on getting decluttered and cleaned up.

My goal for 2012 is simple. I have to get control over paper. I've tried and tried for years, tried various different systems. Nothing has worked for me. So this coming year, I have but the one goal. To find or create a system for dealing with the mail, paperwork and bills so that

1) there are no sliding, shifting piles of paper anywhere in the house
2) magazines get read and recycled promptly, instead of being stuck in the aforementioned piles of paper
3) bills are paid on time
4) important papers are filed so that I can find them again, and
5) unimportant papers are recycled/shredded on a regular basis.

It's going to be an adventure.

Posted 5 months ago #
irishbell
Member

Xarcady- PEEP:a place for everything and everything in its place.

Posted 5 months ago #
Irulan
Member

2011 didn't hold many changes for me as far as clutter. The one thing that really helped me in maintaining my new, smaller space was having frequent guests(overnight or dinner). Small spaces quickly get overwhelmed, and the desire to entertain helped me keep a frequent handle on things.

Posted 5 months ago #
Lucy the Writer
Member

xarcady,
I hate paper. I have pretty much everything uncluttered and keep it that way except the paperwork.

I live alone. I have a post office box which at least gives the mail a place to rest out of my house since I only pick it up about once a week. Bills come to me online. And yet, my desk top is overflowing. Yesterday I just shoved everything into a box.

For the past two years, I have even hired a woman to sort and file bills, receipts, etc. for me and that has helped, but really, I don't know how I have so much to take care of. I have no magazine subscriptions. I only receive a couple of catalogues which I read and toss. The mail that does come to my home address is almost always junk and I usually get rid of it immediately.

The bugaboo appears to be when I bring home the stack from the P.O. Box. I set it on the desk and say to myself "I will get to that tomorrow." And we know when tomorrow comes...Never.

I have read and reread all the hints and guidelines about paper: touch it once, do it daily, set up a schedule, etc, etc, etc. Why can't I seem to stick to any of them? I am normally very disciplined.

So enough whining. I will just begin again which is what we do, right?

Posted 5 months ago #
rutheverhart
Member

Lucy -- not to get all "Dr. Phil" on you, but it seems like there is something extremely negative about paperwork, and you're allowing it to create a negative loop. Why do you fear it? Because that sounds like what it is -- fear. What is the power of this particular paper? I ask this since you are "a writer" as am I. So how can some paper be so positive and some so negative? Very little paperwork needs to be "filed" these days since almost everything important is on line. You can stick receipts in an envelope in the desk drawer until they expire. You can have a folder for insurance. But you know all these things, right? If I were you, I would definitely do a little journaling about the power of this paper that so confounds you. Good luck and let us know how it turns out! I am rooting for you!

Posted 5 months ago #
ninakk
Member

Lucy, I agree with rutheverhart. There is a reason for things not moving when they should be moving and usually it is an emotional one. Sometimes it takes both effort, openness and energy to identify the answer to "Why?" as in why is it emotional, but there's no point in over-analyzing either because some "Why's" never get a reply.

I think you might keep a P.O. box because you can't let the troublesome papers closer to you, but I might be mistaken? While it definitely keeps the papers away, it is also a sure way to create that awful pile, which then gets shoved out of sight, still in the shape of a pile.

In this case, for your habit to change, you would have to start dealing with things in real time the same way as someone, who wants to clean up their email inbox does. From this point on, all emails are dealt with the way how you want the process to look like and only once today's emails are identified somehow you continue to the older ones. The problem is of course that the P.O.box still exists with no way for you to change anything unless you go there daily.

I wish you all the best with this project and hope you'll face it bravely. There's support to be found here, too, should you need some during the process. Good luck!

Posted 5 months ago #
Lucy the Writer
Member

Ruth and Nina,
You are both so right! After I wrote my little diatribe about paper, I realized that it causes me so much anxiety to deal with it. I can feel it in the pit of my stomach even now.

It may be that for years there were too many bills and too little money. And those horrible office jobs with tons of paper crossing my desk that needed action...and I didn't have a clue what action to take so much of the time. So it was shuffle, shuffle. And, for a couple of years before my mom died, I had the onerous task (to me anyway) of paying her bills and handling her mail and dealing with her taxes as well as mine. Whew.

Since all of those scenarios are in the past, there is really nothing to fear today.

I do like having the PO Box as a business expense and also for security reasons. If I go out of town, I know my mail isn't piling up on my porch.

I will take your suggestions and set up a new habit. Such as: process the mail the same day I pick it up from the PO (let's just designate a Wednesday for that task), sort, shred, and put the rest of the paper in a pretty box to be filed. I guess that means file on Thursdays. I don't think I can handle closing the loop all in one day. But I will get stronger.

Like you said Ruth, I probably really only need about five file folders to handle my papers and I already have a very simple system that my friend set up.

I think I over-complicate the task at hand. My uncluttered life is so much simpler and streamlined now but my mind has not caught up with that reality.

I feel energized. I can do it. Here's to slaying the paper dragon in 2012.

Thank you both for your encouragement.

Posted 5 months ago #
Ella
Member

Lucy: I have the equivalent of a PO box. My mail is delivered to a bank of locked boxes in the lobby of my apartment building. So I could do exactly as you, and let the mail build up during the week. But here's what happens if I do... I KNOW it's building up, and the thought in the back of my mind becomes more and more sickening as the days go by. When I finally bring the pile into my home, it sits untouched because by then it's toxic and I don't want to touch it. Most if not all of it turns out to be harmless. The only harmful part is the stress I was giving myself needlessly.

But I should say: that is how it USED to be for me. Because now I fetch and open the mail every day without fail. It is a task on my daily must-do list, and I give myself a star every day for doing it. There is never any toxic buildup. And glory be! some days I open the box and it's empty! I get a star anyway. :)

Mail is like dirty dishes. Both can quickly reach critical mass when not dealt with daily.

Edited to add/ Lucy: You posted while I was still writing. It's good to see that you've decided on a weekly course of action. Yay you!

Posted 5 months ago #
irishbell
Member

With the not wanting to deal with mail-
Is it more of a fear/phobia of what might be in the mail-bills etc?
Or is it simply the paper part of it? You think you might not have time to read it all,
or there is too much to get through in one sitting?
Or is it just one more thing you have to do and you figure it can wait another few days or so?And
then it piles up and becomes a huge issue?
I think if you figure out WHAT the reason is for procrastinating, (i think someone else suggested this?)
that's the place to start dealing with it.
Easier said than done, I know.

Posted 5 months ago #
Lucy the Writer
Member

Back to the original thread:
The one change that helped me meet decluttering goals in 2012 was remodeling my house. It is a small house and I changed almost every surface...paint, floors, knocked out walls, tiled a new walk-in shower.

I didn't live in the house for five months. I grew less fond of a lot of furniture, art, accessories. Once I moved back in, everything was in such chaos, and as I began to arrange the rooms anything that I didn't want or need made it to the front porch. Amazing how many neighbors asked for the big stuff. The bags of accessories, clothes, and smaller things were picked up by a local charity.

The most important thing that worked, I think, was that I got some distance from the stuff. Some of it had to be packed up and as I looked at some of it five months later I wondered what I was thinking.

Over the past six months I have exchanged some pieces for more contemporary items: a couple of lamps, a new comfy reading chair, a new area rug. But I have been diligent about sending the items being replaced out the door.

I know this is a radical way of decluttering. That wasn't my original intent in the remodel. I just wanted a more contemporary home that reflects my lifestyle and decor choices. The decluttering was a bonus.

Posted 5 months ago #

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