If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always had.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Stuck

My house would be perfect for a magazine lay-out, if there was such a magazine as Clutter Quarterly. It's something I've never been able to get on top of. Even when my house is surface clean for family visits, the clutter is lurking, usually hidden in my bedroom in a laundry basket. I'm to the point that I want to go through and donate about 40% of what's in the house. The problem is it's not all my stuff. My office space, which amounts to 20 square feet which should be exclusively mine, is also storage for a lot of crap that is not mine. I realize that this is what happens when one is in a family, but honestly, I'm sick and tired of having piles of stuff everywhere.

This is further compounded by generational stuff--the furniture and books and fiddly bits that have been in the family for three or four generations and has landed in my house because I'm the eldest/most responsible/most stable/one most likely not to wreck things/etc. It's not that I only took the stuff to keep it in the family. Most of it I really like. A few pieces I'd like to pawn off on other unsuspecting family members, but they're mostly from Eric's side and therefore not my call. Honestly, I thought my house was huge before we moved in. Now I'm trying to figure out how to arrange book shelves for maximum space usage, just like when we lived in Barbie's Dream House in Texas. I'm open to suggestions, except for FlyLady. Been there, doing some of it, ignoring the rest. No, I'm not wearing shoes. I'm going back to the salt mines now.

Labels:

1Comments:

Blogger Jean said...

There's always Living Simple.

Getting rid of family furniture that doesn't fit anymore is difficult. If your kids love any of it, you can save it for them when they get set up. If they don't, it's best to either find someone else in the family, or, horrors, find it another home. If neither your nor anyone else in the family loves it, it might not matter how long it's been in the family. You might have it because everyone else feels guilty that they don't love it either.

I like Flylady, but I don't do that much of what she advocates that I wasn't doing before. I use her more as a loose guide, which, I believe, is mostly what she intends.

I feel pretty good about the house, but, frankly, if I looked at it with a fresh eye, there's way too much clutter. I just keep chipping away at it. We're both incredible packrats who have a tough time getting rid of anything. Including cardboard boxes and packing peanuts. (I know we have more 40 paper boxes of packing peanuts in the garage.)

Hang in there and keep working on it. You'll figure out what works for you.

8:54 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home