Decluttering

As I have been home since the fall, I have finally had some time to tackle the decluttering and organizing of our home. I have always struggled with staying on top of our housekeeping in quite the way I wanted. I no longer want to spend all day on Saturday trying to catch up and I’d like to have some routine as well as start to minimize the clutter and things that we have in the house.

Enter FlyLady! I picked up the book, Sink Reflections, a couple of years back, but never got around to reading it. I finally sat down with it this November and began to come up with a plan of attack. According to the FlyLady, the first thing to do is to shine that sink. Mission accomplished (on most days). Also, rooms need to be decluttered before you can really deep clean them.

So, I set about trying to find some ways to donate or exchange items rather than just trash them. Two resources that have been invaluable for us have been Paperbackswap.com and Goodwill. On Paperbackswap, you can list all of the good condition books that you would like to be rid of and folks can choose your book. You mail it to them in exchange for a credit for a book that you would like. I’ve listed over 150 books and have seen at least 50-75 go out the door in the past few months. I use the service to get books that I know I would like to read and then relist and those that I would take too long to get back to the library on time.

Goodwill and other organizations will take donations of clothing and other household goods of which you are no longer in need. You can either drop off donations at a specific location or some charities will even pick up from your home. In the last three months, I’ve happily unloaded 4 large trash bags of clothes that we no longer need or wear.

I still have some areas to conquer in the house, but feel like I’m off to a good start. Next up will be going through all of my college books to see what I would like to keep and what I would like to sell on Abebooks.com. I also would like to organize and file my loose knitting patterns in a binder, and do the same with recipes that I have pulled from magazines or online sources. The pantry also needs to be pulled out and checked through and finally, all of my classroom materials need to be reorganized in the attic. I’m sure there are other projects that are lingering around the house. I’ll keep you posted about how it all goes.