Please help!

[anahata]

Hi

To give some basic background, I have extensive physical health issues, and for the last 12 months depression has come to join the party.

Most days I am mobile. I live independently.

My husband and I split a while ago. I'm still in the house, he's at his girlfriends. We've agreed to sell the house and get it on the market by April / May time. It needs cosmetic work doing first, and this is where the problem is. The house is just full of stuff that we've accumulated over the years.

He's taken what he wants, but he's a hoarder and can't be bothered to sort anything else out. So I have a very full 3 bed house to declutter, clean and decorate.

I'm going to get some more bits on ebay tomorrow. I'm also planning if I can to go through wardrobes, chest of drawers and bedside tables.

I just feel very overwhelmed. I have some debt that I need to pay, so I will be ebaying everything in sight.

Can anyone just tell me roughly where to start? Thank you.

Hi. Sorry to hear you have such a big task ahead of you. Now I've not done what you're doing but still I think I'd say start with one room to declutter and start from there. You'll feel so pleased with your one room once it's finished and probably be inspired to keep going. Hope it goes well.

I agree with butter, choose a fairly easy room that will make you feel good about the task ahead. may I suggest the bathroom.

hi, when you have picked a room , bathroom is a great idea, make piles of keep, bin, and sell items. Maybe have a charity shop pile if you like.

I started concerted eBay effort in November and find listing a few things a day was less painful. I try and make them finish near the end of the week, then make one trip to the PO Saturday morning.

Can you do a boot sale? or a yard sale ?

Good Luck

Bathroom is a great place to start - with 4 bags - keep, bin, sell, charity.

Decant all half used bottles of shampoo, shower gel, etc into as few bottles as possible and chuck the empties into recycling.

Towels - 2/3 per member of the household, and give the rest to an animal shelter or someone who buys bags of clothes/fabric by the weight.

Combs/brushes - 1 or 2 each per member of the household. Same with toothbrushes. Bin the rest.

Once it's decluttered give it all a spray and a clean. Then run yourself a nice deep bubble bath and enjoy relaxing in that room. It'll spur you on to do the next one.

I'd start by hiring a skip or hippo bag and just start chucking the junk out so you can see what's there. Then you won't have to worry about piles of 'to be thrown out' stuff around the house, it just goes straight in the skip.

I like the fly lady method of chucking away 27 things (why 27 I've no idea!lol). So if you're watching telly or something, during the ad break fly around the place with a bag and bin 27 items of crap. Even one bit of paper counts. It's amazing what a difference this makes! And yy to picking a room and dealing with that first, is such a motivator to have one clear decluttered space. I'd make is into a wholistic project, so apart from the chunks of time that you do spend tackling one particular room / area, so bits and pieces constantly, like sort through a drawer when you're waiting for the kettle to boil for example. 4 cuppas throughout the day - one cleared space!

These are brilliant ideas, thank you all do much. About to do the bathroom, then will rest before doing the first batch of 27 things.

Thank you again.

Definitely do one room at a time. I find when I feel overwhelmed that it can be useful to realise how many things can be achieved if you simply do a few at a time - ie if you ebayed 3 things a day, that would be 21 things a week which would be 84 things every 4 weeks etc. In one year you would ebay 1095 things. The ebay app on your phone is a bit of a life changer in relation to making it quicker too. The last poster who says do a drawer whilst making a cup of tea is also right. Once you get in the swing of things you will feel encouraged. Good luck!