Drowning in clutter

[sadsack48]

I have this fantasy where everything I own is useful or precious. I would have such a small selection of things that when I got something new it would be noticeable, loved or well used.

The reality is that my house is full of fucking junk. I am so bad at clearing things out and decluttering. Occasionally I sell clothing on Vinted but it doesn’t get close to clearing the backlog of stuff (mine and the kids) that is hanging around still, outgrown or unworn for years. The same with cosmetics, toys, books, drawer upon drawer of nameless tat, paperwork, toys with bits missing, cupboards full of stuff…it’s every single room. I hate it but I can’t summon the energy to do anything about it. It just feels like too big of a task.

Realistically I know I just have to tackle it room by room but I’m always either at work or have my toddler with me and I can’t get fully stuck in.

I’ve become a bit obsessed with watching videos of people who live in tiny homes or vans. Everything they have is perfectly organised and necessary.

Im dreading another Christmas of even more stuff adding to the hoards we already have. Where do I even begin?

Be ruthless! Grab a roll of bin bags and set yourself 1hr each day to just bag and bin stuff. Start with the outgrown clothes as they're easy to identify, and will clear loads of room.

One hour might not seem a lot now, but it'll mount up to 7 across the week and you'll be surprised how much you've shifted. Set an alarm on your phone so you don't get dragged into spending 4hrs on one space, getting fed up, and packing in.

If you stick to it every day between now and Christmas you'll be totally done.

Can you possibly afford to get someone in to help? It's the thing that got me going.

If not then I think the thing that helps is as much as possible just chuck it out - it's the sorting snd donating and recycling and selling that is so exhausting. Just chuck it. Once you are straight and have a one on one out policy you can recycle and resell.

Also ditch the perfect tiny home vids, they are just clickbait, no one lives like that unless they are completely obsesssive. Most clutter prone people do better with open storage as there is the least friction to being tidy.

Stop watching videos and start doing something about it!

When I had a toddler I would take a bag of stuff to the charity shop once a week. Because he outgrew stuff so quickly (and my body was changing a lot as I stopped breastfeeding and my boobs shrank back down to nothing)

I’d also have a purge of, say, just paperwork every month or so. Or a little burst of chucking out little broken bits of gardening stuff or orphaned Tupperware lids. I didn’t have a system, I just attacked whatever was pissing me off in the moment.

I think it’s easy to get into a fantasy of a perfect minimalist outcome, but that just stops you from doing the necessary ongoing work of just clearing shit out.

And the more regularly you clear shit out the harder you think before impulsively replacing it with new shit nobody needs.

Whereas the more you worry about the clutter without doing anything, the more likely you are to self soothe by, say, buying books about how to declutter, or buying a new planner to help you organise the decluttering process, or buying random storage solutions that you hope will solve the problem, or buying a capsule wardrobe to support your fantasy of a minimalist life. And you just spend more money on more clutter that makes you more unhappy.

I am/ was a slight hoarder- definitely not hardcore but because our family pretty much lived in a house where they invented decluttering (think all school art disappearing unless you kept it, all books, comics and annuals going to charity shops, things never out of place etc) I fought to have a homely, comfy, chaotic home and got carried away. I learned to look at things through a ‘will anyone properly want this again’ lens, silencing the voice that said yes to every single item, even half hardened play doh or colouring pencils that were unusable. I will say keeping stuff in case is generally ridiculous, if you’re in an emergency you’ll buy exactly what you need. Good luck

Start by getting rid of toys and clothing that your DC has grown out of. Donate to a Babybank/Charity/Sell by weight at a Cash for Clothes place.
Then go through your kitchen cupboards and ditch out of date foods and drinks.
Then go through medicines and ditch out of date ones.
Scan then shred paperwork (or hire a shredding company). Going forward arrange for bills etc to come in via email.
Then start with your porch or hallway. It's what visitors see first; it's usually a simple job due to its size and isn't "lived in". Plus anything else you drag out will have to come through the porch or hallway.
If you get a dry day put stuff outside with a "Please take" sign. Advertise on you local community Facebook page that it's free to collect.

Not very helpful are you?

Quite

I recommend watching the Mel Robbins podcast where she's talking to Dana White, "From chaos to calm". It's a good interview that really nails why it's so difficult and Dana's method takes the angst out of the process when you're feeling overwhelmed.

Forget vinted just fucking ditch the lot to charity.

We’re currently declutterring our house, and we had a lot of stuff. I went through the house and numbered all the spaces where clutter builds up (generally shelves and cupboards but other places too) and then decided on a realistic amount that would be challenging but achievable to sort in a day. Then I set a timetable and we agreed as a family that we would tackle one load of declutterring every Sunday: so on first Sunday, we’re declutterring spaces 1,2 and 3, then the Sunday after 4,5 and 6 and so on. With a deadline set for when the whole house will be finished (Christmas).

Then we just stuck to it religiously, we’ve already reduced our amount of stuff by about 50%. I bought a load of cheap plastic baskets/boxes that fit neatly inside each cupboard and labelled them so that I know what goes in them. I also have a cleaning caddy with stuff to wipe out cupboards I’ve cleared, binbags for stuff that needs to go to the dump, and loads of bags for life to bag up stuff for the charity shop.

Good luck OP. We were in absolute chaos before, but it’s already a lot easier to keep things under control because I’ve done all the main rooms now and have a designated place for items of absolutely every category, so I can just drop stuff back in. In our case, clutter built up because we were all thinking ‘oh god what do I do with this, I’ll just shove it in this cupboard and figure out what to do with it later’ and before you know it, the cupboard is bursting at the seams and you can’t find anything so end up buying duplicates of things you think you’ve lost but are actually just inaccessible due to mess. The labelled boxes prevent this from happening because anything shoved in sticks out like a sore thumb.

I recommend starting with whatever room will have the biggest impact. For us, this was the kitchen as it was making me stressed trying to find what I needed every time I cooked, followed by the sitting room as we spend the most time there. Choosing a high-impact room means your living space will be noticeably nicer to be in after the very first declutterring session, which will hopefully motivate you to stick to your plan and transform the whole house.

I was you. I went through drawer by drawer, room by room over 4 weeks. Removed 60% of stuff to charity/tip.
Stopped buying stuff and made Xmas and birthdays about doing things. So much better. Still declutter every couple of weeks and bit of the house.

My mental health is 20 times better.
I wouldn't let myself go in my phone until done and listened to skme really good audio books instead.

I buy coloured bin bags ans have regular trips to the charity shop

I’m ruthless. There’s nothing I love more than decluttering - I do a little bit every day so it never has a chance to accumulate! I wouldn’t bother putting things into piles or planning trips to the charity shop unless it’s easy or convenient - Freecycle or Olio is the way to go. If no one wants it for free, throw it away.

You're watching the wrong videos. Watch videos of people with cluttered houses successfully clearing them out. I have ADHD and find the ones aimed at people with ADHD particularly useful. What you need to do is find the system of organisation that works for your brain and implement it little by little.

It's all very well to say "stop watching videos", but that's not helpful if actually you need a push to get going and some help to come up with effective strategies.

Identify your blockers and work around them.

If you're sentimental, I'd recommend starting with the least sentimental stuff, like toiletries.

I tend to worry about the stuff im not keeping so now I do three piles- keep, sell, dispose. I get DH to sort the dispose pile into recycling or charity and action the bags accordingly. I never, ever look into them!

Keep on track by never buying on a whim and using up the good stuff.

We are the same! Houseful of stuff.
I know that we have some decent stuff we really need to sell tho on vinted or anywhere else and we really do need that money, and so what I try and do as I’m sorting out is put stuff in the “vinted box” and try to post 10 items a week whilst chucking the other stuff out.
if we had tonnes of money I’d bin/charity shop the entire lot but I need to try to recoup some of the money that I have spent on stuff!

watching stacey Solomon gives me anxiety when they empty peoples houses into the warehouse,
how on earth do people sort through all that stuff in so little time? Especially things like paperwork etc…

@PassOnThatI will try that, thank you 🙂

If you’re busy and have a lot of clutter you need to get rid of a huge chunk of it quickly. Try doorstep charity collections and a skip if you can afford one. Doing it all in one go and doing it quickly can give you a good motivation boost.

Trying to sell stuff on vinted or eBay can be a huge barrier to making progress when you have too much stuff. It’s better for selling the odd thing now and again when you’re having a smaller clear out. Good luck!

Honestly, it's very energising to find that there are people who have the same issues that you do and to look at how they tackle them. Always having a bin-bag in hand is one thing I've learnt. Don't make a rubbish pile to deal with later. Instead, take the binbag, have it beside you, declutter junk straight into the binbag and then take it immediately out to the outside bin. And then that's one bag of stuff out of your house! Sounds simple, right? Well, apparently not to me since it didn't occur to me until I watched someone doing this. Instead, I was making piles of rubbish, which then needed to be moved into the bin to go out, and the extra steps just left me demotivated.

My personal tip is that, if you live somewhere where charities will collect stuff from your door, which I do, schedule weekly collections for a month. It's a real push to get stuff out if you know actually, someone's coming to collect it that day. You don't want to let them down by not giving them much - you at least want to give a few bagfuls of decent stuff per collection. So this overcomes the guilt of trashing perfectly good/unworn items like clothes that were never returned or hardly worn expensive school shoes. It's easy to get rid of rubbish, it's harder to get rid of ill-judged or superfluous items which represent lapses of judgement as it feels wasteful and disloyal to yourself. Giving them to someone helps, but what you need to avoid is making it into a faffy, time-consuming process.

Don't try and sell things on Vinted etc - the money is gone. Don't bother with charity shops for clothes. Black sack every item you will never wear again and pop them into clothes bins at your local supermarket. You can clear a wardrobe in an afternoon.

Grab a black sack and focus on clearing a part of one room for 20 mins. Do the same again later in day. Repeat each day. Within a week you will have 1 clutter free room. Give it a good clean then start in next room. I have a 1 in 1 out policy. If I buy 1 new item 1 old thing has to go.

Highly recommend the YouTube Channels & Podcasts of Cass - Clutterbug and Dana K White - A Slob Comes Clean.

Very motivating and lots of great tips especially for people with ADHD. I often have them playing in the background while I clean & declutter.

Be ruthless, book a skip for all the stuff that is beyond repair, usually the longest you can have one is around a week, get lots of strong rubbish sacks & have a weekend when you can have a blitz, I recently did this with ds, we booked a skip that would take 12 wheelie bin loads of rubbish & filled it in a weekend, it was easier than sorting stuff for the charity shop that would never get there or taking stuff to recycling bins at Supermarkets that are full before you arrive.

Nit much to add to some very good posts but I would avoid that if you dont need the money, then DONT try to sell the stuff. It's such a drudge, just bag it and get it out of the house.
If theres toys then get rid to charity shops ASAP. They want toys in before xmas, it gives parents who cant/dont want to buy new the chance to buy their xmas presents and means the charity shops move their stock quicker ( rather than donating after xmas).

Ive been doing a small amount a day, I literally started with a kitchen drawer at first, then another. I followed a lady who started with a15 minute timer as thats 'doable'. I quickly worked it up and with help from family members, we can do larger areas quickly. We are pretty much sorted except for our 'box/junk' room which I'm hoping to complete soon. Ive got a little of paperwork which I need to sort through. I bought a filing 'insert' which goes in a kallax unit (inside the fabric drona cube) which is really helping!

Good luck it makes such a difference to have a sorted home?