Getting Started

To summarize the journey so far . . .

I started the New Year (and my wife with me) reading 6 de-cluttering books with the goal of de-cluttering our house.

Now nearly 3 weeks in, I have read nearly three of those books. My wife has also read nearly three of those books. We have read:

“The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo

“Decluttering At The Speed Of Life” by Dana White

“It’s All Too Much” by Peter Walsh

“Declutter Like A Mother” by Allie Casazza

We each read a book and then swapped. Now we have each read another book and need to swap, then we will do the same with the last two books.

So far, so good.

After reading the first two books (and the intros and first chapters of ALL the books) we were too excited to wait to finish all the books to start.

Marie Kondo suggests starting with clothing. Her reasoning is that there are many factors we consider when trying to de-clutter and two of those factors are rarity and cost. Clothing is pretty easy to find and not expensive to replace so starting there is an easy way to begin clearing stuff out.

So we took a weekend and for our Friday night date, we pulled out all of our clothing. EVERYTHING. From everywhere.

We had no idea we had that much clothing for just the two of us!

We did all the laundry and then put it on the bed. We took all of the clothes out of the drawers. All the clothes hanging. All the clothes folded on shelves. The clothing sitting in the sewing pile to be mended. The clothes in the gym bags and the sports bags. The jackets and coats in the closets. The wedding dress in the nice box and the hats in the hat boxes. The hats off of the hooks and the hats on the shelves. The shoes by the front door. The shoes at the garage door. The shoes in the closet. The shoes in the different bags for different events. EVERYTHING. We took it all and piled it on our bed.

It ran over onto the floor (mostly the shoes and boots) and surrounded our legs and feet. Our kids, upon seeing it, fled the house for the evening and it was just us and the clothes.

It was an impressive amount of clothes. All of that stuff, just for the two of us. It was a little sobering.

How did we accumulate so many clothes?

Just looking at the pile, it was obvious we don’t wear all of that. Even worse, I had a wild hair last fall (probably what led to this whole adventure). I was frustrated with how full my closet was and I cleaned out about 4 bags of clothing then and even after THAT, I still had all of this.

We started sorting using a combination of methods from the books. We poured through the easy stuff first. Items that we quickly recognized we never wear or no longer need. We made sure to touch EVERY SINGLE ITEM. That is a big point for several of the authors. It really allows you to get a sense of each article of clothing and to see if it brings you “joy” or if you are ready to let it go.

We started filling bags with the stuff we were letting go of. It was surprising both how quickly time went and how much stuff went. Before we new it, it was nearly midnight. Fortunately we had made our way down to the bed so that we could sleep, but we were still surrounded by stuff on the floor.

In order to get around our bed I had to run the bags of clothes and boxes of shoes and other extras down to the garage, with the intention to take them to a donation center the next day.

The next day we went to work again. This time was a little harder. More difficult choices had to be made. Your home is full of containers, according to Dana White, and each container is your limit for stuff. So our closets and dressers were the limit for what we could keep. Also, everything needs a home. So once a home is assigned, anything for that category that does not fit in that space needs to go.

That is where we were. We began putting stuff away and when the underwear or sock drawer was full, we had to make decisions about which socks or which pair of underwear was staying and which was going.

By the end of the day we were exhausted, but our room looked cleaner and more organized than it ever had. It felt like you could . . . breathe.

It was amazing. My wife had been very nervous to begin and worried about being able to even do this. After putting our room back together, she was excited! We couldn’t wait to get onto the next thing…

So we decided to listen to Marie Kondo again and tackle books next. I’ll write about that next time.

We are very excited to continue the process throughout the house and see where we end up!

At the end of the day, I took the load to the donation center first thing. It was 3 big boxes of shoes, 8 garbage bags of clothes and an assortment of dresses and tops from my wife along with a few other odds and ends we cleaned out from our room and closet. Not a bad first haul. Looking at the picture, just think about the fact that most of that stuff was in our room and closet!!

8 Bags+ of clothes & 3 boxes of shoes from just the two of us!

We are fortunate enough to have the time and energy and equipment to move all that stuff to the donation center or the dump. If you need help getting your stuff moved, give us a call! We would love to help you in your efforts to be Free From Your Junk!