Marie Kondo and KonMari The Art, Science, and Nerve Wracking Process of Declutterization - A Follow-up

Almost exactly three years ago on 17 May 2019 I wrote a blog post about my efforts at 'declutterization' - my word, one which you won't find in any books about the subject of trying to remove clutter from the house. What brought me back to the subject? Reader 'im-hamsa' recently wrote a kind comment about the post. The comment did two things: a) reminded me about the post - I had totally forgotten about it and b) spurred me on to continue my efforts.

So what has changed since the post was written? Well, 2019 was a busy year for declutterization and boy-oh-boy did we get rid of a lot of crap! Not only things like old clothes and pillows (pillows? we had that many? - yup), and chachkis', but furniture as well. Our living room was home to a huge shelving unit we had bought while I was still stationed in Germany. It was a nice set of shelves but ultimately had to go because it was really just one big dust collector! We live in the desert, and anyone who has lived in this environment knows just how dusty it can get - IT'S HORRIBLE! In its place we settled on a small TV stand with drawers, and a cabinet for the grand daughter's toys - both from the IKEA store here in Vegas. Other furniture like a large coffee table and mis-matched end tables was replaced as well with more IKEA pieces. This took care of a lot of mess and clutter in the living room (okay, that is when we can get the grand baby to pick up her toys!!)

But then...

The end of 2019 saw me get busy with the train layouts and taking care of clutter took a back seat. Then 2020 came around and brought with it a pernicious little bug: COVID! I spent much of the year in telework status and 'worked' from home (a misnomer because my job requires me to be on-site, I can't do a damn thing at the house!!!). One would think that it would be a perfect time for decluttering but ultimately that's not what happened. Boredom and lack of self-control meant I did a lot of impulse buying. Yup, more clutter, but mostly confined to The Cave - no spillover into the rest of the house.

2021 came around and eventually we came off of telework and I got back to working, albeit in  odd shifts: two days going into work one week, then three days going into work the next week, then repeat. It was an odd sort of 'disconnected' time. My mind was 'disconnected' too. I just couldn't get back into tackling clutter. But I was awfully darn good at buying things! arrrrgh!

Welcome 2022! And welcome COVID! In January of this year the bug caught up with us and the whole family came down with it. I physically missed two weeks of work, but when I went back I was drained and very little got done! If that weren't enough, the same week we came down with the bug our clothes dryer went kaput. In order for the technicians to get the new dryer into The Cave, a whole bunch of boxes had to be relocated into the house temporarily - more specifically, I put them into our bedroom. Now you see, that wouldn't have been necessary had I been diligent in clearing out The Cave during the COVID lockdown period, but it is what it is. BTW, I did in fact sell a lot of toys that were in The Cave, but they were all small items, and made very little dent in the overall insanity out there!

That brings me back to decluttering and my original post back in 2019. With the bedroom now a mess from having moved boxes into it from The Cave, that room had to be tackled. My original spreadsheet for keeping track of my progress was accidentally deleted and a new one started. Why keep a spreadsheet? For no other reason than it gives me a way to track progress and is a sort of mental butt-kicker. I have it, I know I have it and it provides incentive to keep going by making updates. I bought a nice shelving unit - also from IKEA (can you tell we like that store?) - for the bedroom. Onto these shelves went all my 3-ring photo binders (a system I started while stationed in Germany for storing negatives and prints vs. putting them all in boxes) that were relocated from the hall linen closet. Bettina was against putting any shelves in the bedroom for many years but when you live in a small house you really have to utilize space as best you can. She finally relented to the shelves and it made a big difference. Towels and linens previously stored in the bedroom went into the linen closet where they belong. Photo binders went in the shelves in the bedroom (a better place may have been in the living room but that would then make the living room feel 'busy' again'), and most of those boxes from The Cave relocated back out there where they belong (still have a couple to go through). While working on the shelf and the photo binders and linens I was able to either toss out or give away nearly ten bags of 'stuff' (old bedding, clothes, blankets, etc.). Good Lord where does all this stuff come from?? 

Sooo, thanx to the latest decluttering efforts, the living room looks much neater than it did, the hallway linen closet now holds linens like it was meant to, and  the bedroom has far less stuff in it than it did - but is still a work in progress. Also in the hallway is a small walk-in utility/clothes closet that we've been using as video/DVD and photo album storage. Once the bedroom is finished, that'll be the next project.

Decluttering is a lot of work, but is doable if you just set your mind to the task. Don't expect all that extra junk to go away overnight - it takes time. To borrow a line from the movie Finding Nemo:  "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Marie Kondo and KonMari The Art, Science, and Nerve Wracking Process of Declutterization

'Declutterization': The act of cleaning house and organizing as defined by Opa Fritz - don't look for that word in any KonMari work.

Have you ever heard of KonMari? It's basically the latest trend in house tidying and reorganizing as devised by Marie Kondo, the tidying expert and best selling author of a series of books on the subject. Now, that being said I haven't actually bought any of the books (I mean really, if I buy yet another book, aren't I adding to the clutter???) but have read a bunch of articles about her system. But then, I've been reading articles on house organization for many years. Here's my take on the whole thing: house organization methods are like exercise regimens, and diets - you stick with whatever works for you. Wellll, somewhere along the line I took this whole thing seriously and whether or not it was reading about the KonMari system or something finally "clicked" in my hard-headed noggin, this past couple years has seen a gradual acceptance that I'VE GOT TOO DAMNED MUCH STUFF! ahem, sorry.

But that's it in a nutshell. I've been a collector since childhood. Somewhere in me that old hunter-gatherer gene has been working overtime and with a passion from the earliest age. But when my main interests can't be enjoyed anymore because the hobby space looks like a scene from the TV show 'Hoarders' or when stuff gets tucked away in cabinets and drawers, and on closet shelves where no one even sees them, then something has to be done. In the past most of my misguided reorganization efforts have been hit-&-miss, tackling a single drawer here, a box there, from any room that happened to be in my sights at the moment. That kinda, sorta works but really you don't see any real progress after a while. Yup, that box, or that drawer is a little bit emptier but the rest of the house is still full.

Soooo, what practical advice have I been able to glean from all this? Well, ya gotta have the will to start and keep at it!! Just keep plugging away. Some days will be more successful than others, some times you'll suffer from re-organizing burn-out. Some decisions may even be gut-wrenching: letting go of what once was prized possessions. This past year or so you may have noticed a distinct decline in postings in large part due to me wanting to do other things and partially because if I spend time divesting myself of thing's I have no material for the blog. Another warning: this is not an overnight process for any of us with houses full of stuff. It takes time. Here's a tool I use to kind of keep my spirits up. I use a spreadsheet to keep track of things I've gotten rid of. It has four columns in two categories and is over-&-above what I'm already keeping track of for my on-line sales.

The two categories and column breakdown are:

A) Things I've given away (to friends, the thrift store, whatever)
  -Column 1: Numbers only in this column as it keeps track of the amount ('1' for one item of whatever given away, '4' for four items given away, etc.)
  -Column 2: Item name (clothes, toys, furniture of any sort)

B) Things I've thrown in the garbage (usually old clothes but 30 year old school papers from the kids are targets too)
  -Column 3: Numbers only in this column as it keeps track of the amount ('1' for one item of whatever thrown away or perhaps '4' for four items thrown away)
  -Column 4: Item name (clothes, toys, furniture of any sort)

Using the formulas in the spreadsheet I add up the amounts separately in column's one and three. Sometime's  I'll count a bag full of ratty old clothes as a quantity of '1' even though there may be 6 pieces of clothing in the bag - hmmmm, maybe I should change that. The spreadsheet is not a hard thing do and only takes a couple of minutes to set up and keep updated but I can look at it and show progress (heck, a piece of paper with a hand-written tally will work just as well). I started this at the beginning of the year and so far have tracked over 260 things gotten rid of PLUS about 70 items sold on-line. That's nearly 350 thing's gotten rid this year alone. And now, I can actually see a little progress. My approach so far has been to concentrate on the kitchen and living room with all our cabinets full of chachkies with an occasional foray into the bedroom closet. Admittedly, a lot of the stuff is now sitting out in The Cave waiting for me to photograph and put it on eBay, but sometimes the hardest part is to look at a prized possession and say to yourself  'I don't need this anymore. I don't want this anymore'. Once that happens I have mentally divorced myself from it's possessive hold on me. I can look at it in The Cave as it sits there waiting for me to prep it for sale and think to myself, "Say 'Bye'!" - and it has no meaning to me anymore!

Well, there you have it. Throughout all of this Bettina has had to weigh in on what she still wants to keep so at times there is a sort of tug-of-war going on, but through it all we are on  the track declutterization (a totally made-up word by me BTW). Can anyone out there relate to our struggles? Well, as this whole process continues I'll keep ya posted

Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina