I’ve been organizing and the pile in my living room keeps growing.
It all started innocently enough. I thought I could handle it. I have organizing training after all, and I am a Certified Professional Organizer®.
I decided to buy new pots and pans. Even though I prefer takeout, I am trying to cook more at home.
When the new pots and pans came into my life, it led to the purchase of a few new cooking utensils to go with them. The old pots, pans, and utensils were stacked in a box in my living room. Since one of my nieces is starting her own household with a fiancé and a baby, I put them aside for her.
She and her little family are staying with me for a couple of months while her fiancé transitions out the military and they prepare to attend college. The room she uses in my home was filled with remnants of my childhood and my last apartment – the kind of spare room stuff you stash away when you don’t want to make decisions on anything yet.
To make more space, I started organizing. I emptied everything into my dining room so I could take a look (here are three questions I asked myself to start the sorting process). Would my old Spirograph make the cut? Of course. How about the Everclear CD? Nope. It was time to make some decisions.
It might not seem like it, but organizing and breaking up with stuff was actually easy to do. Here are some decisions that I made as I sorted my things:
1. CDs. Thanks to those darn record company clubs of the past, I had developed a vast CD collection. It was easy to see when I stopped buying CDs and had turned to downloading music. I made an initial purge of the CDs, pulling out the ones that I didn’t want. For those where I wanted a single song or two, I downloaded those into my music library.
The purged CDs were scanned with the Decluttr app (iOS | Android), and I boxed up around 50 CDs to ship to them so I could sell them. I’ll get $30 by selling them. And, eventually, all of my CDs will be downloaded and moved out.
2. Books. I emptied the bookshelf in the spare room and sorted through the books. My precious Trixie Belden collection from my childhood stays, but some of the odd decorating books were added to the outgoing stack. While I was at it, I sorted through books gracing other shelves throughout my house.
During a recent trip back to my hometown, I took three large bags of books to the small local library where they will either use them on the shelves or sell them to raise funds.
3. Random Decorative Items. These were the things that I used in my last apartment but didn’t make the cut for my current house. Some of the things I found were passed down to me by married friends when they were clearing out things or moving, and it was time for them to find another new home. Candleholders, French-inspired wall plates, small photo frames, a vintage-looking fabric shower curtain, and my Interview with a Vampire poster were among the items that were added to the growing stack.
4. The Stuff I’m Keeping … For Now. I found several boxes of old photos that need to be scanned, old Valentine’s Day cards from grade school, the bound copy of my master’s thesis, and a container full of colorful Mardi Gras beads. If they make you happy, it’s okay to keep them.
The purging of stuff didn’t stop at the spare room items. It spilled over into the rest of the house. Purses, shoes, clothes, jewelry, assorted kitchen items, and other stuff made their way to the growing outbound pile. It seemed every time I looked at an area, I saw it with new eyes and ruthlessly purged the stuff I no longer wanted. I mused how my relationship with those items was over. It was time for those things to go out in the world and make other people happy.
When my niece arrives later this week, it will be like Christmas for her. Whatever she doesn’t take will then go to charity.
So, that’s how I did it. Easy and simple. Now if you don’t mind, I have to play with my Spirograph and then cook dinner.
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