Decluttering- help!

[LemonCakeCat]

I live in a small house with 2 children. We have too much stuff.
I want to get rid of a lot of our stuff but I dont know where to begin. I'm sat in my room just staring at piles of crap. What's the best plan of attack?

Get some packing boxes and black bin bags.

Go into the room with the black sack (rubbish) and two boxes (charity, friends). Start with the nearest thing to lay you hands on and get sorting.

When the boxes are full put them in the car/ garage/ hallway.

If you are wanting to go truly minimalist you can have another box with what you want to keep in.

Thanks. I feel totally overwhelmed by the amount of stuff!

I've just done this in my bedroom.

Big pile of carrier bags and 3 boxes - keep, bin and donate.

If you can't manage to do it all in one go then bundle everything into the carrier bags and do one a day (or one drawer, one surface etc)

Touch everything only once. Really think about each item. I had a declutterer come to my house and her advice was each item you keep must meet two of the following criteria - do you love it?/do you use it?/does it have a place?

Then decide for each item if you are going to keep it. If so, put it in the keep box (or even better, put it AWAY). Then there's the donate box if someone else can use it (maybe you can ebay or car boot some of this), or bin box.

It's ruthless and hard to begin with but soon you'll be whizzing through stuff and not pondering over things for more than a few seconds.

It is not a magic cure (my recent lapse is due to poor MH problems) but really does make a difference. Good luck OP

I'm reluctant to Ebay stuff.....it won't happen. I think I'll just take everything we dont need to the charity shop. I could do with the money but I need my sanity more

Me too! I'm in a similar situation. Too much stuff! While I know you're meant to get some bags/boxes and keep, bin, recycle, sell or give away, actually doing it seems more challenging. It can be overwhelming, or hard to get motivated. It can be boring and virtually send you to sleep. It's easy to get distracted, when uncovering things you haven't seen for ages. There aren't long enough periods of time to get stuck in before you're meant to be getting lunch or cleaning the kitchen etc.

I know I should be capable of picking up items and putting them in a box. But I find the decision-making hard, and tend to get stuck quite often. Why keep this picture/letter/memento/potentially useful item, but not that one? What if I lose weight but have got rid of my smaller clothes? What if I get rid of this unwanted gift but Great Aunt XYZ asks me where it is?

We made the same decision as you OP with eBay - it isn't worthwhile for the lowest value stuff. The time taken to photograph, describe, pack, post etc. just wasn't worth it, when you counted up the hourly proceeds.

Looking forward to this thread and sharing ideas.

I’ve signed up for a decluttering challenge that starts on the 6th January. They set you a challenge a day.

I found it via an advert on Facebook, but you don’t need Facebook. The website is www.declutterhub.com

I don’t suppose it will be as good as I’m hoping, but I need some help. I tried really hard last year and got rid of SO much stuff. Books are a real problem for me, but the British Heart Foundation collect from your house, and took 26 boxes. However, every space I made, was soon filled with someone else’s stuff.

Good luck everyone.

Make small specific targets and aim to achieve 2 or 3 a week.

Like clearing out one drawer. Or one pile. The trick is not to create another pile whilst sorting out. Get everything away or out immediatelym

And it takes a couple of laps and a couple of years to be a very worthwhile effort.

Marie Kondo.

Seriously it has changed my life.
She advocates starting with an easy category first, such as books (obviously if you are a massive bibliophile pick something else).

Collect ALL items of the category you are decluttering.
Hold each item in your hand and decide whether it sparks joy

For me it's seeing everything in the same place that does the trick.

Practice makes perfect with it too, I decluttered certain areas more than once getting more and more ruthless every turn.

Previous decluttering attempts where I worked room by room never worked.

Read her book, seriously.

I will have to admit that I have an international move coming up in 2020 so I have a bit of pressure to get rid of things

Decide - either one rom till it’s clear or one thing at a time - clothes toys kitchen cupboards paperwork

One room works better because you’d we the results. Do not leave that room till complete!!

Agree with boxes - rubbish/keep/charity

Take a picture before and after.

eBay could work but you should want to do this it’s effort to wash iron and store so you aren’t as clutter free as quick

My first step was to stop the inflow of stuff.

One thing I found helpful was a blog called 365 things less. I think I might start doing it again, you just had to find one single item to declutter each day. I found it helpful for when I wasn’t in the mind frame for declutteribg or it seemed over whelming, I would look around and try and find just one thing to declutter. Often it led to more.

I always start by grabbing a rubbish bag and throwing out every bit of rubbish in site be it a wrapper that got forgotten, paperwork, broken toy etc

Also find putting on a song and seeing how much I can declutter in that song works :)

My mantra is "Doing something is better than doing nothing." So do something, even if it is one shelf. I find seeming a tangible improvement makes a huge difference.

I think you are sensible not to bother with eBay, unless for a high value item. The sooner you get stuff out of the house the better.

It has taken me around a year to get on top of my home bit by bit (it used to be really bad). You can do it if you just keep going!

Order a skip and get rid of as much as you can...anything not touched in 6months goes in skip..

It is hard. I'm a hoarder so I have been through periods of getting rid then periods of being frozen with the shere amount left.

Put a timer on your phone. 15 minutes. Just pick one area and quickly pick everything up one by one. At the end put all charity bits in the car. Junk in the bin. Do this every day. Just one area at a time. By the end of the week that area will be so much better. Once you see it improve it's easier too carry on.

If you sort items for the bin or charity shop...get them out soon so no temptation to recheck those bags !

How are you OP? Let us know how you get on.

It's hard. I've spent all day decluttering my bedroom. All day. I took a day off work to do it. It's done but now I have to keep it clear and get on with the rest of the house. It feels like I'll never get it done.

I have read a LOT of decluttering advice. This is what worked for me today.

Black bags for rubbish - taken out when each one was full
Basket for recycling - emptied outside into recycling bin when it got full
Donatable donation boxes/bags - so you can just hand them over and walk away, not go through them again

When you find something that is in the wrong place, take its to its home straight away

This is from ASlobComesClean and means that if you stop/get distracted you don't have another big mess to sort out. For this reason Marie Kondo just didn't work for me.

Good luck - recognising that it needs to be done is the first step!