Clutter Control and Organizing Solutions

A couple of years ago, I discovered freecycle. It has been an absolute blessing as we have attempted to declutter and organize our house. Merging two families together who had both been married and both had children was interesting to say the least and his house was C-L-U-T-T-E-R-E-D to the MAX!

Once I discovered freecycle, my mission, my job and the whole process became SO much easier. In fact, the hardest part was convincing him we didn’t need certain things. For instance, we don’t really need three toasters, two microwaves, four couches, two coffee tables, 143 forks, knives and spoons, four dish sets (because apparently it was too difficult to get rid of the other ones before), and a large number of countless other items. Donating the items are fine, but often times donation centers don’t take certain items, and you also have to wait for the company to send a truck out or you have to find a way to get the stuff there yourself.

There is a better way. Enter - Freecycle.org

Basically you join the list for the area you live in, and you receive emails which indicate when someone is getting rid of something or is looking for something. If they are getting rid of something, you can email them (better be fast) and if you are the person they pick, you will get to come get the item from the person. It’s a great way to fill your house up with useless junk you don’t need.

OR you can use it for getting rid of your own stuff - which is a much better use. You need to check out the way that people post the subject and then write a description of the item you want to get rid of. Send it to the group and get ready for the responses. You can to say when you want the item picked up by, etc. You CANNOT sell anything on Freecyle.org. Everything must be given for free (thus FREEcycle) but the beauty is, you just stick it out on your driveway or your front porch and they have to come get it. You’d be amazed at what people are looking for or want.

It has always surprised me but if you knew how much stuff we have gotten rid of - wonderful. I have more items to go on today! YAY!

So if you have never checked out Freecycle.org - do it. You can thank me later.

I haven’t left a “quick tip” in awhile, but this one is definitely a must. So - when you are busily organizing and moving items from one area to another, it is imperative that you clear a walkway. Clear a complete path with enough room to get from point a to point b without great difficulty. Be sure all items and pets are clear of the area you are working in.

Otherwise, this happens: (this was after 24 hours)

And then a day later it looked like this: (this was after48 hours)

And this was today - it’s about triple it’s original size LOL (about 80 hours)

I know it looks terrible, but it doesn’t hurt any more than a regular bruise.

So what happened? Well, I made the mistake of asking my 14 year old son to help me. He had been bringing boxes for freecycle upstairs to put in the garage. In order to stack stuff in our garage, he had to move a few things and when he moved them, he put them right in the middle of the walkway. I couldn’t see the bucket he had set there as I was carrying a huge box. I tripped over it, the moving box went flying and basically I landed on the kids bikes. Yeah. That was fun.

So yes, again my advice - be sure that all walkways are CLEAR before attempting to move anything LOL

I really want to post a picture of this dark dreary place, but I’m sorta guessing Mike might want to kill me afterward. LOL It’s pretty bad. Actually, now it’s LESS bad. But that’s my doing too.

I was out in the garage earlier hunting for something (I so cannot even remember what) and I moved something onto a dresser. I stood there staring at the dresser thinking, “Wouldn’t this be better in one of the kids rooms?” So I look at the other dresser (yes there are two) and I think - yep. I know it will make their rooms a bit more crowded but at least they’d have their own dressers. We have two girls per bedroom upstairs and my son’s room is in the basement. We want to build more rooms downstairs but until that happens, the girls all share. So now, they have two dressers in each bedroom so each child has their very own. They are actually pretty happy.

I also made Mike put together our oldest daughter’s bunk bed set. It is one of those lofty looking ones with the desk and all the shelves and drawers. It’s beautiful, but they have been using a trundle like bed and the one bed is NEVER pushed back under. This way the bed doesn’t have to be pushed back under and while the room is definitely full - they can spread out more on their own beds and they have places to put all the things little girls need. (don’t ask me what that is).

So now our garage has this huge area with nothing in it. That’s actually awesome. So - I’ll be working on the basement probably tomorrow and Tuesday to see what I can get done. Ever heard of freecycle? Check back tomorrow and I’ll explain more.

While blog hopping this morning, I happened upon this quote. Somewhere I remember seeing it in the past, but for whatever reason it hit home this morning, and I thought I would share.

“I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.”
Beryl Pfizer 

Yeah. So if we are doing our job and trying to declutter our lives, we won’t be spending time to look for anything because we would know just where it was. Unfortunately I have no way to declutter my mind, which means I do have to write things down to organize them.

I have a notebook that I keep on my desk. I have a purse that’s larger so the notebook slides right into it and I can take it places with me. I am a freelance writer for work, and I am always needing to jot things down - there is nothing like a fresh, clean notebook for listmaking, information, directions places, phone numbers, etc. The page that is opened next to me, has four ideas for articles on my other blog, an address of a wrong number that called me yesterday (don’t ask), the phone number for our riding stable, a friend’s cell # and a “we’re out of this” grocery list. LOL And there is still plenty of room on that page to continue on.

I did forget to mention all the doodles too.

I love that quote up there. It’s my motto.

Oh, and I’m still slightly buried (though maybe not as much) under cookbooks. I am hoping to have that project completed by this afternoon, so I can find a new project downstairs to work on. I’ll take pictures and keep you informed.

A couple weeks back I posted a post on my other blog about how many cookbooks I owned. At first I was embarrassed because at that time I was looking at an area in our home that had cookbooks in storage that we wanted to keep but don’t use regularly.  The ones we use all the time are on a shelf in our kitchen. Okay, so that’s a lie - shelves. I knew I had a problem then, but….

Yesterday I decided to work on one small portion of our basement that is generally where we store our holiday decorations, etc. Thinking it would be seemingly simple to just organize that area by holiday, I set to work. Boy was I wrong.

Earlier in the summer we emptied out a storage unit that was bigger than most people’s garages, and so thankfully we don’t have that monthly expense anymore ($160!), but we did get a plethora of stuff to fill our basement with , that I think we just don’t need. We were going to have a fall garage sale, but now its just to cold to do it, so it has been rescheduled for spring. In the meantime, we need to be able to move in our basement, and currently we really can’t. Well we can, but you always have to be aware of what boxes are around you, what things could get knocked over, etc and one of our kids rooms is in the basement. Yeah, so it really needs to be done.

After working on only one small section of the basement yesterday (remember there are two more places I keep my cookbooks). I wound up with this mess.

Yes. They are ALL cookbooks.

Do they have a support group for Cookbookaholics?