Hark, sentimental hoarders

Hark, sentimental hoarders!

January 24, 2013

Here's how you can share and bless others with all of your stuff—and end up with a cleaner, more peaceful home while you're at it.

Kitchen

Drawers

Place everything—all the spatulas, rubber scrapers, pie servers, and so on—into a carton. As you use a utensil from the box, put it back in the drawer. After a month, check what's left in the box. Keep those once-a-year items that remain in the box, like a turkey baster or candy thermometer. But donate the rest.

Coffee Mugs

Coffee mugs and cups are hogging valuable cupboard space at my place. They are stacked on each other and jammed behind plates. I must have 20!!

Plastic containers

Plastic containers have a secret life (probably killing time with those AWOL socks accumulating in my washer). If I buy gummi bears or the like, I can’t resist saving the container. I especially liked the one shaped like a Christmas tree. Blush.

Now I have only two containers of each size. Each container has the correct lid. The rest have been sent off to LaLaLand.

A larger family would have a few more perhaps but, hey, how many leftovers do you need to store? (Hint – check out your fridge.)

Pans, machines & Co.

Take everything out of your cabinets and only put back what you use regularly. The things that you leave out that didn't get used much, you have to choose. If you put one thing back in the cabinet, you should pick one thing to donate or sell. Or you could trade with friends for what you do need.

Vases

Got vases from the last three Mothers Day bouquets? Put flowers in them and give them to someone who doesn’t expect them. A neighbor or a colleague perhaps. Or take them back to the florist.

Food

Do you also have cupboards full of food you're not sure you're going to use?

Some solutions:

•Check the expiration dates on everything in your pantry, fridge, or freezer. If it's about to expire, put it on the menu for that week.

•If you know you're never going to use an item—and it's still good—give it to your local food pantry.

•Have an "Eat Out of the Cupboard or Freezer" week. You'll be surprised at how creative you can get with your menu planning when you're only using the ingredients on hand. (I’ve even seen a show on TV that does this. The contestants must produce a three-course dinner with the products they are surprised with.) When you throw away food, imagine you're throwing dollar bills in the trash can!

Spices

They don't mold and don't appear to go bad, but spices don't last forever, not even cayenne pepper. (Cinnamon's an exception.) Dried is one thing, tasteless is another. I still have spices I brought back from my Morroco trip three years ago. Out you go!

Give your spices the smell and taste test and if they've gone bland and boring, ditch them. When you buy new spices, mark down the date on the package.

Living Room

Magazines

Do you have a stack of magazines that you haven't read? If two months have passed and they're still sitting there, consider donating them to a retirement home, hospital, or doctor's office. Many schools take magazines for art projects (if not for reading material). Or do the flip-and-rip: Rip out recipes or articles you want to keep and throw the rest into the recycling bin. Put the recipes and articles in special binders. Then check every few months if you’ve read or used the articles/recipes. If not, “off with their heads!”, er, too ‘em.

I like to tear out articles and put them in my purse for when I know I'll be sitting and waiting (think doctor's office).

If you're a techie, you can get many popular magazines as digital editions for your phone or electronic reader. I have a whole year of certain magazines on my iPad and it hasn’t grown a bit!

Mail

Is this your habit? You fetch the mail, flip through it for anything interesting, and then set it on "the pile" that accumulates until the day you start searching for overdue bills. "Scan and stand" is the system recommended by many professional organizers. Standing is the trick - don't be tempted to sit down: Bring in the mail. Leave your coat on. Find a place by the wastebasket, recycling bin, or shredder, and stand and handle each piece of mail. Put bills in a basket or designated container, take magazines to where you read them, scan any newsletters and bulletins for important information (you can probable toss them right away), and discard the rest. Your goal is to make the mail disappear quickly.

If you don’t have time at the moment to implement this system, don’t even take the mail out of the mailbox!

Other rooms

Linens

I have so many towels, I could put Bed and Bath to shame. Well, maybe not that bad. Most of us have way too many towels and sheets. Some people no longer even have beds that the sheets fit! I still have a straight sheet from my college dormitory years – yikes.

How about keeping two sets of sheets per bed and keeping the extra set under the foot of the mattress or in a drawer in the bedroom to free up room in the linen closet?

Medicine

I checked my medicine cabinet for expired prescriptions and over-the-counter drugs, but didn’t throw them in the trash. Instead, I took them to my local pharmacist for proper disposal.

Curb It

Most towns charge to have the garbage crew haul off a piece of furniture or other large item, but — in my experience - almost anything remotely useful or recyclable will walk off on its own if you put it on the curb a few days before trash day. We have a scrap metal collector who drives through our neighborhood and is willing to haul the thing away for free.

Have a party!

I’ve even thought about having a “Give-Away” party. I could invite my kids and friends and tell them to pick out anything they want from a designated space. Knowing my kids, though, they wouldn’t want any of it!

I won’t let stuff cramp my style!

People like myself live with their clutter for years and become anesthetized to the drag it adds to their life. It slows you down, cramps your style. It makes it hard to move around and hard to concentrate. It means you’re stuck where you are because relocating to a better environment would be too much hassle.

As part of creating a simpler way of living, I have found myself feeling a massive urge to declutter, to get rid of all this stuff that seems to arrive in my apartment of its own free will. Okay, okay - I voluntarily brought it in. Sheesh.

Here’s the deal: Our living spaces are basically 3-D portraits of our inner lives. You can’t declutter your living space without decluttering your inner life and vice versa. I am ready for a change even though I liked a lot about the „old me“.

Coach Marth Beck uses a Pray Rain Journal to structure the change. A Pray Rain Journal is basically a written vision board in the form of a small journal. You get yourself a very small empty notebook. Each day, write a page as if you were living your ideal life and are journaling about it (kind of like a „Back to the Future“ kind of diary). Use present tense and write about all the wonderful things that are happening and the ramifications of every event. Then think of at least 10 reasons why the things you want actually can happen.

If you have trouble letting go of your stuff, create something called a Limbo Box. Limbo is where some religions believe God puts souls before deciding if they will go to heaven or to hell. Give your Limbo Box to a friend who is not afraid to purge. Together, choose a date six months in the future. If you have not asked for anything in the box during those six months, your friend will then take everything to the donation center without even mentioning it to you.

Now I am off to get rid of the corn holders I’ve had for twenty years and only used once.