Right before Christmas I accomplished some work on the House On a Diet project. After discovering that we still had a fairly large number of old 3 1/2 inch floppy disks I went through all of them and checked to see what was on them and transferred anything I thought needed to be kept to a jump drive. Now that we no longer have any 3 1/2 inch floppy disks the ancient computer with the 3 1/2 inch drive can go too!
That's not all, It occurred to me that we had way more towels than we need so I went through all of those and only kept what fits in our linen/bathroom closet. I also went through our kitchen towels (we bought 10 TEKLA towels when we went to IKEA and we really like them, so far), and old towels that I had saved to use as rags. I was able to take a stack of used but not worn out kitchen towels to our church's soup kitchen and I took 2 big bags of bath towels, hand towels, and wash rags to our local animal shelter.
I was pretty happy with the progress I made in November and December and since I started the process over a year ago I think I have done pretty well. Even so I have to find ways to keep myself motivated. There are certainly no shortage of ideas. Just spend a few minutes on Pinterest and you will find all kinds of ideas, plans, and techniques for purging, de-cluttering, and organizing. Here are some of the ideas that I either considered and passed on or actually tried:
Pretend move -- A friend once told me that she was going to pretend to move and get rid of everything that she would not want to bother packing if she was actually going to move. This is a motivational technique that I have given a lot of thought to trying but I can't seem to overcome the fact that I am not really moving.
An area each week -- My mother and a friend of hers had really good results with this plan. Each week they each picked an area in their house such as a drawer, closet, or cabinet to clean out. Then they checked in with each other to talk about what they found and got rid of. That also gave them the opportunity to discuss things they weren't sure about getting rid of. They kept this up for quite a while and when they ran out of spaces that hadn't been cleaned out they started over. It was amazing how much they found the second and third times they looked at those same spaces. Just so you know how serious they were, my mom's friend decided to get rid of her wedding dress.
A garbage bag a day for X days -- One thing about having a small house is that although our house might be too full, we still have a lot less than the average household so this one doesn't work so well for me. Although I have challenged myself to fill up our very large garbage can a few times. For the most part I think filling up a lot of garbage bags quickly works well if you have a lot of clothes or bulky items like children's toys.
Blog de-cluttering and organizing parties -- A couple years ago I started to do one of these but I don't have many of the typical spaces (no coat closet, no pantry, no laundry room) that the parties tend to emphasize and once they came to a few of the spaces I didn't have I stopped and didn't follow through. Since I actually keep my kitchen cabinets, medicine cabinet, linen closet, and such, pretty de-cluttered and pretty well organized this could be a helpful way for me to maintain what I do have in order. Maybe I should try one of these again.
100 Thing Challenge -- I used to see lots of bloggers doing these. (There seem to be two versions of this. One where you get rid of 100 things and one where you try to live with just 100 things. Just to be clear, I have never tried that and don't plan to.) A few years ago when I first heard of the 100 Thing De-Cluttering Challenge I started following along with one of these. I was on my second 100 items when I found out that I was doing it wrong. I was counting each item as one thing on but I was supposed to be counting each category as an item. Therefore, the 30 magazines I had parted with only counted as 1 item rather than 30 items. I know this is silly, I could have made my own rules, but I got discouraged and quit.
30 day purge -- This is one that I read about recently and decided to try. Here is how it works. On the first day you get rid of one thing, on the second day you get rid of two things, and so on and so on. If my math is correct, at the end of 30 days you have gotten rid of 465 items. I started this mid-November and at first it was easy. I was breezing through those single-digit days and I was even ahead going into the teens but then I got bogged down around 17. It was a lot harder than I anticipated to round up stuff and I wasn't very good at keeping count. While I didn't get all the way to 465 in one month it did provide me with some motivation.
Being asked for donations -- This is what has worked to motivate me the most. I have been asked for donations for fund raiser yard sales. These requests always prompt me to take a good look around and gather up some things to donate. It's a win-win. Right now I am working on finding things for a yard sale that will be held in June. The organizers have storage space so I can drop things off as I find them which is very nice.
To keep myself accountable, I plan to share more of my House On a Diet progress in the future.
P.S. My mother tells me that she just ran across a box containing all of the curtains for a house that she has not lived in for 10 years. None of the curtains fit any of the windows in her current house. She is wondering how she has failed to notice this box in her closet for the past 10 years.
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