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.