...to have hoped the clutter would have abated by now

[Apackoflips]

I am an avid follower of Marie Kondo . I have read lots of the declutter books ( and sent them to the charity shop) and have watched declutter videos on your tube etc etcetc.
So why on earth do I still have drawers that I cant put one more pen into?Boxes in the dining room that hold things to be sorted. Why have I got several random bags that are full of crap sitting on the utility room floor ?These bags were filled on a panic rush round before guests were imminent. There are some things in the bags I need to keep so I can't just chuck the lot unfortunately.
What do other people do? Surely other people have drawers that arent full to bursting in every room in the house.

@MitziK

I feel your pain, my mother was a hoarder

WAS

She had to move from a flat to a bungalow due to her mobility - she had no choice. This was the hardest thing shes ever had to do. It was awful and the move tore our small family apart. Which sounds insane, but it did. I spent hours and hours trying to clamber over dusty boxes of shit trying to help her pack, and all she did was cry and shout at me when I suggested throwing something out. I wanted to abandon her many many times

In the end I don’t know how but I did get through - I was probably horrible to her because none of her stuff was going to fit in the much smaller property and she did allow me to throw it away. I did what I do, and said ‘here is 1 drawer, fill it with your best knives and forks’ and ‘here is 1 box fill it with your best towels’ and she did do it. Her hoarding was connected to her emotions about losing her parents and terrified of parting with something that belonged to them. Same again, I got her to keep the best items only.

Kondo doesn’t deal with the deep emotional attachments IMO. You need to work our exactly what is causing your hoarding feelings and anxiety and battle that

by putting into bags around the house you are just avoiding throwing them. Start in the worst area today and don’t expect that you will do a whole house quickly - it does take a long time

Also if it’s in a bag on the floor I can tell you now - you don’t need it. If you did, it wouldn’t be in the bag

I think you are a bit harsh MitziK.I am not as bad as your mother but I do hang on to too much stuff. I grew up with very little so looked after my "treasures" . I still find it hard to throw things away but I am slowly getting better. There used to be a fab programme called The Life Laundry where they helped people tidy but explored the reasons why they hoarded stuff.

I went through a stage in life where I was homeless, I was lucky and housed but for a long time had very very little money. I ate or my kids ate so obviously they ate.
I stopped eating and developed a bad relationship with food, it took a long time for me to eat again when I could afford it, but I went too far the other way and had masses of food in all the time because I was terrified of never having enough food or being able to afford it.
The problem was it would go off, I'd bin a bag full before doing a food shop and the waste was shameful. I then thought about those who were still without, still had no food and there was me binning it.
That thought kept me going. I'd still buy lots, but work out what we would eat that week and the rest went to the food banks. Slowly I reduced the amount I was buying as I got used to meal planning and all round better with food, easily took me 5-6 years from having nothing to being able to buy food sensibly.
I appreciate your issue is stuff, but your original place for keeping things is the same as mine.
Go through your things, don't attempt to sell - instead give it to those who currently have nothing hopefully helping others now you are fortunate will help you part with things easier

I don’t have any helpful advice but try the ottoman storage boxes, storage beds etc. At least it will be out of sight

I think one of Marie Kondo’s key points is to do the whole thing at once, or at least whole groups of items (E.g. clothes) and not have those “limbo” areas. She makes the point that the drawer or room at a time method doesn’t work, because you just move things to the place that hasn’t been done yet, or you sort out your clothes in your bedroom, but what do you do when the clothes from the utility room need to be put away? Practically I don’t really know how anyone does that around family life, I guess you need to take a week off work, but I’m sure that’s why she’d say her method hasn’t worked for you.

I think maybe you need to adjust your thinking if you're trying to follow Kondo. I think the reason she does things in groups is because yes, each pen individually may spark joy but clearly having hundreds doesn't because you're here asking for help. As others have said you need to prioritise, pick the things that spark the most joy then find joy in having drawers with a bit of space in/ being able to find what you need.

And once you've cleared I personally would remove things, be it to charity shop, skip, by selling on asap or I imagine you'll find things creeping back in.

I started tackling my place over the summer and it got worse before it got better. I too found clothes and folding easy, but started grinding to a halt with miscellany. Doing a little often worked for me.

I love the idea of Marie Kondo but I have a DH and a DS who are both avid collectors so my house it just full of tut But her method has given me the courage to get rid of a ton of old books and clothes....

Maybe you could Kondo the entire house except for one cupboard. Keep that cupboard for random stuff.

Yes you need to work on 1 item at a time if you have a collection
I can work on a room at a time but when you have a lot of stuff you need to sort out those individually. So gather up all the pens/books at once and go through them, same with clothes. The time for tidying is when you put the drawer back in and you have decided what to keep or throw out

I did this with DM books. I got every book in the house and we went through them. I also showed her the size of the shelf and what would fit, this makes it more realistic as to how many you can keep. You do need to identify where they are going to go before you begin sorting

You either take time off work when no one is home or you allocate a day on the weekend to it. But part of that day has to be driving the items to the dump or the charity shop. It needs to end with something happening to the unwanted items or it is a trap they will creep back in

If you wanted to do this before Christmas you could allocate every Saturday to it.
Week 1 pens and paper
Week 2 books
Week 3 clothes
Week 4 kitchen items
Week 5 do your Christmas shopping 😂

I'm joining this thread because I have to!
My bedroom is under control. The kitchen isn't too bad. The living room and the kids room are full of crap. My house is tiny.

The dds are crap harvesters they adore it!

I don't have clutter as it makes me mentally ill. If my home is sorted I'm fine.
Nothing comes into my house unless it's part of my collection. I collect specific stuff.
Excess stuff goes to bin, charity shop.
Everything has its place. I have a 5 x 5 cube kallax in the hallway with baskets in the cubes and in there goes things like newspaper for the cat litter tray, boats and shoes, scarves and gloves, shopping bags.
I've got an office organised in the spare room for home administration with everything in folders in a box so I can find it.
It's just a matter of not letting junk in the house in the first place or if you do then deal with it right away.

Now is an excellent time for clutter clearing. End of the year, end of a decade! start the next one clutter free.

Trouble with pens and stationary stuff is that it does seem wasteful to throw it out if it works. I do have it all in one place, sorted into similar items but it's now a case of not buying more, rather than any benefit of just throwing items in the bin.
Saw really with unused toiletries, you could try and find a beauty bank to drop them off to but also you can just use them up and not have to buy new stuff for a while.

Do you collect every one of s single type of item together, eg get all your pens together.
Then you see there are 3452 of them and 1548 are blue biros. So look at all the blue biros. Which ones actually work? Chuck the others, then do your joy check and bin the rest. You still have 835 blue biros that bring joy. Decide whether you get more joy from the biros or the house room. Then decide exactly how much house room you want to give blue biros compared to the cost of replacing them.A small box full? Chuck the rest. If it helps, imagine your home is a storage container and you have to pay for the volume of storage you use. Which items are ' worth the cost'.
You do need to see exactly how many of an item you really have as a catalyst to being able to get rid.

I'm decluttering too, it's ridiculous how much stuff has accumulated, especially since having kids. However the biggest issue I struggle with is the guilt over throwing things out. I know that plastic thing will end up killing a turtle somewhere, so I feel the need to make sure I recycle and reuse absolutely everything I can, or forward it to someone who can make use of it. I also don't want to throw something only to find I need it and have to buy another one thus adding to the cycle of waste that's killing our planet. I'm aware of just how much crap gets 'donated' to charities who then spend precious time and money sorting and dumping it - so I only donate what will actually have resale value. Recycle/reuse, then bin. It takes so much more time to thoughtfully dispose of items than the need/ spark joy / don't need / donate or chuck methods. I would love to just chuck it all, but it's really wasteful and irresponsible to do so.

I struggle with being wasteful. Throwing things out that work.

But I've had a bag in my hall way that needs to go to the charity shop for 4 weeks. I don't get time to go.

I've got a pile of toys the dcs have outgrown that might be of use to friends with younger dcs by the garage door, but I've not seen those friends for 2 months and we've just realised between parties and events going on at weekends, it's going to be more like the week between Christmas and new year before I see them next. (Their dcs will have had a new load of toys by then.)

I need to throw things in the bin, but then that's wasteful and bad for the environment.

I think I need give myself permission to just black sack the lot...

Our council incinerates general waste and uses the heat for energy generation so I know that if I put non recyclable plastic in it, it won't go to landfill and kill a turtle but will at least get burned and provide some energy before adding to the CO2 problem.

In all seriousness unless you are living in rural Australia it will realistically not take you long to put items into a car and take them to a charity shop. Or book a collection from a charity, like British Heart Foundation who will collect. That takes about 5 mins online. ‘I don’t have time’ is an excuse 😂

Maybe you need a joy scale.
1-5 = get rid
6-10 = keep

Might help with the pen collection.

You’ll feel light and joyous when you do shed a few pens , that’s a promise.

The rooms we live in are actually quite tidy I just have a loft full of stuff, mostly not my stuff the kids will be taking theirs at some point but I have boxes of stuff which belonged to various people who have died, both sets of parents, my best friend, another childhood friend even some stuff from grandparents I know that no one is ever going to want this stuff but throwing it away feels like throwing them away.

There’s more than sparking joy to Kondo though - it’s about saving what is there, rather than concentrating on what you can throw away.

Perhaps it would be helpful not to be looking at your stuff and decide how many eg biros you need, how many staplers etc.

So if you decide 10 pens is enough, gather them all together and choose your 10 favourite ones (with styluses!) and chuck the rest quickly. And then - this is crucial - don’t bring any more home.

Ah our council doesn't incinerate. In fact our whole recycling system is dubious, with it often dumped overseas in other, less-developed countries to become toxic waste there instead. Again, something which promotes guilt at even the recycle stage, hence the drive to reuse and repurpose wherever possible.

To use a previous example, don't chuck heaps of excess pens that work. Donate to your local school, teachers often buy extras out of their own pocket for kids who can't afford their own so passing on a stash would be both good stewardship of resources and prevents waste - less pens overall needed as less are going straight to landfill unused, teachers wallets are a little bit fuller. Pen companies mightn't be happy though

This is the thinking that stymies my decluttering a bit, but I will get there eventually!

We’ve been very poor but are now fairly affluent. My husband is really struggling with accumulating stuff. He can now afford most things he wants but finds it so hard to let go of anything that may be useful at some unspecified point in the future.

I’m trying to flip it on its head and in each room think “what do I need” and make a list. Put it in the room if it is needed and throw everything else out. Sometimes I replace for better quality. I’m trying to think of it as gaining space rather than losing stuff.

I find it really hard to let go of some of the art equipment, but I don’t need it and won’t use it, as I have a better version that I do use and I want the space more!

PookieDo is right you do get emotionally attached to stuff even if you are fairly minimalist like me, hoarders are an extreme version of that.
I put all of my stuff in storage when I moved and it's still there.
I'm living in a one bed flat while I'm buying my new house.
I've been here for some months now and I'm definitely missing my stuff.
Missing having a big choice of shoes and admiring my mineral collections, being able to find the right size knitting needles and having my own comfy sofa.
It's actually making me feel a bit depressed, I have another three months of this.