Holy Crap, We Got A Lot Of CRAP!

Alternative title: Where did all this shit come from?!

Over the past 6 months I have noticed in our house that we have been collecting more and more STUFF. We always had a lot of things, but those things were piled away in boxes and therefore, didn’t exist to us. But this past year I have noticed that the stuff seems to be multiplying and making its way into the living spaces of our house to the point where it is now taking over our house.

1) First we tried the “move one pile of crap to another room” organizational method. This allows the once overfilled room to look great and we don’t have a problem with clutter until the next room is full. Then when that room is full we would move the extra piles to a different room. We continued this until we realized….we had run out of rooms.

2) Next we tried the, “just move it to the storage unit” organizational method. This was great until we went to the storage unit and realized we couldn’t find a damn thing.

3) We also tried the “shove it in a box/put it in a closet/hide it under the bed/place it behind furniture” organizational method. This worked very well, until we needed to find something we had shoved in a box, put in a closet, hid under the bed, or placed behind furniture. Not fun.

4) When it got to the point of complete frustration we considered other options like just selling our house and including all our crap with it or just leaving the stuff in our front yard and letting people go through it…neither of which seemed like the most logical way to solve our problem.

So we decided it was going to have to be done the old fashioned way – take time, go through everything, and throw away what we no longer wanted/needed. sigh

Now I have made it my mission for the past few months to remove ALL excess clutter (excluding my husband of course) from our house in an attempt to re-adjust our feng shui, re-center our Qi, simplify our life, and just get rid of all our extra SHIT!

So I decided the best way to do this was one group of clutter at a time. I started a couple months ago and I decided to go through all my clothes first. I brought over 3 large tubs & 2 big trash bags from the storage unit and a couple smaller bags of clothes from our house. (And to think with all those clothes and still nothing to wear) In the end I filled up two big tubs of clothes I want to sell next year and two bags for the Goodwill. Ahhhhh, more hangers available for new clothes.

Next I hit the big bags of receipts, old check books, past bills, and other documents that I have put in a “need to shred” pile/heap over the last 3 years. After a week and a half of shredding documents Enron style, I ended up shredding everything in the pile and filling up nearly 3 large trash bags. Ahhhhhh, it feels good to shred documents.

This past weekend I decided to conquer the massive amounts of shoes I have. My sister and I took my 64 pairs of shoes (eeek, that is a lot) and all their boxes down to the living room and we laid out all the shoes. I put them in groups: heels, flats, boots, tennis shoes, etc.. I then went through and picked out the shoes I didn’t like anymore, that didn’t fit, or that I had pairs that were very similar and put them in a bag to give to family or to sell* when we have our garage sale next year. (*I didn’t think I could sell them but I heard this was ok, but what is the rule on selling previously worn shoes?!?!) Some of these shoes were circa 1998 and WHY I have never gotten rid of them before is beyond me. But when it was all said and done I got rid of 29 pairs of shoes! I also had enough clear plastic boxes for my shoes and tore up all the original shoeboxes I had kept when I had bought the shoes (22 boxes). Ahhhhh, more room for new shoes!

Then Sunday I continued my cleaning and I went through every old magazine we have kept over the last three years. Normally we just throw them in a basket in the living room or put them in the library aka the bathroom. I divided magazines so each person had theirs and let everyone throw away what they no longer wanted. T & I threw away at least 30 magazines…K. still has to do hers (slacker). Ahhhhhh, goodbye potential fire hazard in our house.

I know by the sounds of it, you might think our house was one big mess…but really we had learned the art of hiding our crap. But now, it just looks great and it has created a lot more room in our house so we can get more stuff! ;) Next on the agenda, organize recipes that are on paper. I am typing out and saving in a word document our stack of recipes we have printed out or have written down over the years that are stacking up in the kitchen.

It seriously feels SO good and almost therapeutic to get rid of all that extra stuff that we obviously don’t need and is just taking up space!