I am moving house (fortunately upsizing) in a few weeks and seriously need to de-clutter my existing house before going as I don't want to take any unwanted things with me. The problem is that I have been in this house for 13 years and so there is quite a bit of stuff around eg filing cabinet full to bursting, books, CDs overflowing, duplicate kitchen equipment, utility room a nightmare etc. Also daughter's room still has her stuff in it from university despite the fact that she has her own home now and son who is still at university has all his things still here. My wardrobe is full to bursting as I maintain 3 sets of clothes depending on whether I am slim, plump or fat ( of course only last set really gets used!) And the loft... and the shed...OMG

As you can hear I am overwhelmed and don't know where to start so if anyone has any good strategies for tackling this problem please do tell me.

Thanks.

I took the wimps way out recently and hired some professional 'de-clutterers'! It was one of my better decisions. I had a great day, they made it really easy to make decisions about what to keep, recycle or throw out. By the end of the day, from my wee two bed flat we had taken out 15 bags of rubbish, 17 bags full had gone to the local charity shop and what I was left with was all organised, clean and tidy. Worth every penny.

Possibly not the answer you wanted!

Good luck with the de-cluttering and the move.

That's interesting. Where did you find these people?

I recall when we moved from Surrey to Wirral, I made 9 trips to the tip ! Its surprising what you can stick up in the loft ! And it was a substantial upsize. Now this house is cluttered, even though the children have gone.

Depending on how much time and energy you have I would try e-bay, car boot fairs and charity shops (not necessarily in that order).

Most importantly you need to be ruthless! We all hang on to clutter that we don't need, (I am the worst offender in our household), and which we will never miss, but parting with it is always difficult.

SB

I just posted but it disappeared!

There's definitely a de-cluttering thread on here somewhere

Take one room at a time and divide it into keep, chuck, charity (and boot fair if you have the time to do one before you move - making money on your unwanted things is lovely). As Swell Box said, be ruthless. Start with the room of one of the absentees; tell them you're doing it, give them a chance to say what they want to keep and give your daughter a time limit to come and collect. As you finish that first room, do the dump/charity run so that that stuff has definitely gone.

Once you've done one room you'll feel you're on your way.

Good luck - with the clearing and the move

Just one thing - does your daughter have room for her things? I have a husband and three kids and live in a small flat with no storage. My parents live in a very large four-bedroom house with a garage and a loft. I was not very happy when I was told they no longer had room for any of my things (and I don't have much stored there!)

If you want to sell things then I would suggest first finding out dates for car boot sales - then you also have a deadline to work towards. It is also easier to get rid of things if you can "see" where they are going!

That's a very good point

And I should have added: you will feel much better when you have done it!

SB

It is still a sore point that I have about 6 boxes in a wardrobe, 2 drawers of (ok I admit it) junk and about 2 shelves of books at my Dads house and get regular comments about taking things away. Whereas my brother has literally hundreds of books still there plus a couple of wardrobes full of stuff and doesn't get the same requests despite having a house at least twice the size of mine. I can only assume as his books are all classics (many in Latin or Greek) they are more respectable than my random collection

*watches thread with great interest to see if any magical solutions to clutter appear*

I've always said I would tidy up when the kids leave home, but our clutter level is approaching critical. Several rooms are virtually impassable. Cupboards full of junk, so I can't put anything away. Oh the horror of it all!

My excuse is that it would eat into too much practice time.

Bonza.

This is helpful Crotchetymum. I think that once I've got started and and actually cleared a room I'll feel better.

hmm, I remember being very ruthless clearing out my Mum's house after she died. I definitely regret throwing away some of the things I did, even 17 years later. Some things are irreplaceable.

Decluttering less personal stuff though is helpful. Try to focus on a small bit at a time and focus on getting that done. If a room is too much just focus on one drawer/shelf/ cupboard and don't think about anywhere else till that is done. It is easy to get overwhelmed so focus on a part small enough to complete.

Another alternative is to set yourself a challenge that is achievable e.g. find 10 things to take to the dump, 10 to take to charity shop, 10 to give to your daughter etc. If you get rid of 10 things every day it will soon start to feel more manageable. As soon as you start seeing space you will feel energised to keep going! Good luck

Not sure about your timescale. But I'm an advocate of "10 things from this room during the next hour" method. It's slow, but it can be fitted in to "life".

I also sell things on ebay at intervals. It's quite time-consuming setting it up (or for me it is, because I have to fiddle with the camera/computer interface, and I forget how to just pick off one photo rather than the whole camera load), but it is also very satisfying.

Lots of May fairs and suchlike out there at the moment, wanting books etc etc to sell, and have you thought of Freecycle - one of my pupils has just acquired a piano on freecycle.

Very helpful. I've never sold anything on ebay but I could find out how to do it. Freecycle sounds like a great idea. Thanks.

Sounds a truly WONDERFUL idea *awards sticker*!

Shuffles feet, feels guilty about the study... Better not talk about the triple double built-in wardrobe in my room It is tidy, just.... full....

Do Freeycle (or Freegle) as much as you can. It's amazing what other people find useful:I've got rid of odds and ends of paint and wool, an old football card collection, a guinea pig hutch, a box of spare plugs and bits of cable. And it feels so much better than throwing them away.



It is in 6/8 or 3/4?

This is a useful strategy. When I was decluttering I made lists on the computer for each room with the room divided into sections that had to be done eg. Bookcase 1, bookcase 2, DVDs, Cupboard etc. Then I pinned the lists up on the wall in the relevant room and ticked off as it was done.

For your extra kitchen stuff you might be able to find a charity to take the lot. I found a group who help to set up homeless people in accommodation. One of the problems is that when they are eventually found a place to live they don't have utensils and kitchen equipment and of course it costs a lot of money so there are groups who will accept donations of this sort of thing (and furniture too) as long as it is in good condition and they will come and collect it. When I emigrated I donated a van load of furniture and my entire kitchen contents! The charity were very happy!

So today I have decluttered 3 drawers, 2 cupboards and one work surface......feels GOOOOOD!

Better than de-cluttering is never to acquire (buy?) the clutter in the first place.

Yes, but it's not clutter when you buy it!! You don't get it, do you....?!

100%

You beat me to it!

How often do we buy clutter only to find it isn't quite as indispensible as we were promised.

My biggest gripe is computer equipment, which is invariably expensive, but then becomes obsolete and worthless within a few years even though it is perfectly serviceable. What do we do with it all?

SB

Anyone else have a collection of cables and remote controls that they can't remember what they are from, but keep them "just in case"?

And the boxes things come in. You keep them in case the whatever develops a fault and needs to go back, and then never throw them out.

Things people give you that you don't want or need, but it seems dreadful to throw them out because they are new and a gift.

Leftovers after a project has been completed, fabric, wool, wood, screws and fixings. You keep them just in case.

None of them were bought just to clutter the house, but the do it none the less.

Blame Edward Bernays, Bernard London, Brooks Stevens ...

When the original device goes, any dedicated cables and remotes go with it.


Most Boxes immediately go to recycling. Exception ia a small number (of varied size) kept for selling stuff on eBay. Items rarely fail within warranty. In the rare case where they do it is not too difficult to find a suitable box. Generic cables (SCART, SCSI, Firewire, USB, various audio cables) are kept, but sold when I see that a new standard is going to replace them (as chained SCSI devices have been replaced by USB in home computers, and SCART by HDMI in the latest TVs)


If you neither want nor use them, you will not miss them when they are gone. If they are new then someone will have a use for them, and will buy them from you.


A small number of items, in suitablely sized containers, properly labelled and stored methodically is OK as you may have to make repairs, and quite often it is useful to be able to haev bits of wood and screws in the house. But if you just throw the bits, unsorted, into a drawer or box, they will become difficult to find when you need them (especially if you save EVERYTHING rather than carefully selected items. In that case you might just as well have thgrown them away.

They are all stored neatly labeled not thrown in a drawer, and as for getting rid of cables it is often handy to have a spare for when the cable fails. The box something came in originally will always protect it best if it needs to be returned for repair, or sold. The problem arises when the item is thrown out and the box is in the loft and therefore inaccessible.

Cables don't fail of their own accord. They get broken by straining the connections or cutting through them. But what you say is all true, and if you have the space to keep stuff and the discipline to keep it organized then there is no clutter problem. It is also true that de-cluttering carries the danger of throwing out stuff that you turn out to need, and hanging on to a few items that you never use.

I admit that de-cluttering can be hard. It is normal for those of us born in the 1950's or earlier to hate to throw away something that is in nearly-new condition, and potentially useful. But there is peace of mind that comes from having only useful, high-quality stuff, and only what you need or like intensely, and having your home and workplace well organized.

So I still prefer my method. Get rid of (almost) everything that I do not have a strong reason for keeping.

Nowadays, when I get the urge to buy something that might possibly become clutter, I stop and think for a few days. Often I end up making a donation to a charity. So I end up just as poor as if I'd bought the thing, but at least my place is not cluttered with it, and I do not have the hassle of getting rid of it!

And I aim to sell things that are getting old before they become obsolete, and while they still have some useful life left, so I don't have the problem of disposing of defunct items, and wondering what to do with their cables and controls.

Indeed. I got a new wireless router a few weeks ago because the existing one would only boot up properly about 50% of the time. Now I don't know what to do with the old one, because it sort-of still works. My work colleagues keep saying you can do this clever thing where you use a second router to boost the wireless signal in certain areas of your house. Umm - but I live in a 1-bedroom flat. I don't HAVE areas that are so distant from the router that they need the signal boosting!!

I replaced my old router which needed to be re-set 2x a day, with a faster, more easily managed, more reliable router (has now run for months without ever needing attention).

The old router cost over 40 GBP. The new one was 12 GBP.

That is technological progress for you.

Give it away on Freecycle - depending on the model, it may still be able to be used as a non-wireless router and someone with the right computer skills will be able to do it. They can even reload new software onto it in some cases.

VH2 - you sound so well organised. I used to be tidy and well organised before the husband and family happened. Now I just can't keep up!

I'm guessing that'll be because he lives by himself

I like to keep boxes for cameras and lenses, as boxed items are geneally worth more secondhand.

Boxes for computer equipment get recycled at the first opportunity, as their contents are generally worthless by the time the box has been opened.

SB

We have somehow ended up with 5 indoor TV aerials and we have Sky so we don't even use 1! We're looking at moving house sometime in the next few months so I will also need to de-clutter, and last time I sold quite a lot including my old keyboard to help pay the deposit on the new place. The one thing we probably won't part with is any of the books, it's our dream to have our own library.

This is probably blasphemous on here but I really ought to sell some of my old instruments that I know I'm never going to play again - I have a violin, a viola, a 5-string electric violin, a classical guitar and an electric guitar - but I feel guilty selling the ones my mum bought me, and I think I may have to convince my girlfriend to let me sell the Fender Strat. I know I'm not suddenly going to start playing it again but it is lovely...

I have quite simply given up on this one. The choice is either have a nervous breakdown trying to clear the mess or ignore it and go zen. I might surface from the morass one day but for the moment I am mostly to be found underneath it. Hopeless case.

Aquarelle - the solution is simple. Invite me over for a long weekend, and I'll chuck it out for you. I am the King of de-cluttering!

*invites stetenorve to live in her garage for a weekend*

Oh Cyrilla, how could I refuse?

I'll join the queue - and while you're at it, you can advise on the garden too!!!

You haven't seen my study, either...that'll be another weekend visit...

Trouble is my partner is the Ruler of Recluttering and I reckon as fast as you chucked it out, it would get chucked back in!!

It so happens that a number of my Facebook contacts appear to have taken up the dreaded Flylady way of life, and are posting endlessly about shiny sinks, mopped surfaces and trips to charity shops and the dump - now it's reached here too .

And I'd always been led to believe that the best time to do spring cleaning is in autumn ...

*half heartedly goes to locate, and then dust the top of the chest of drawers in her bedroom before fetching a cup of coffee and putting her feet up*

Well, that's a start! Of course, if the top of the chest of drawers is really cluttered, it won't need dusting.....!

I have de-cluttered the computer desk (mostly) and the kitchen table (a popular dumping ground) today.

Do I get a sticker?

Only if they are still in that state in 2 days time...
(was going to say a week but decided to be generous).

*deeply averse to stickers, which end up in the laundry in 'orrible rolled up shreds of paper*

just as well my chest of drawers automatically re-clutters the moment my back is turned then

I did manage to de-clutter the lounge a few weeks ago and it has more-or-less survived. The study is a lost cause, or at least several days of superhuman effort to resolve...

Most definitely!

*awards sticker*