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The Declutterathon has been rolling along now for 10-11 weeks, and if you’re losing steam or need a kick in the pants, you’re not alone.
Last week we took a break to catch up on tasks that had fallen by the wayside, and, to tell you the truth, I’m having a hard time getting going again. I still completely believe that sometimes this is the best (and only) way to get motivated, but why does it have to be soooo hard sometimes?
If you’re struggling to get restarted like I am, here’s a trick to get your decluttering going again. Find a way to hold yourself publicly accountable. Give yourself a deadline, and invite someone (or a group of people) over to your home.
Our family started homeschooling this past fall and joined a homeschooling group that we wanted to try. It ended up not being a good fit for our family, but it was a good experience because I met another mom who decided to leave the group too. We are now starting our own homeschooling group. There are three families involved right now, and we’ll be taking turns meeting at different homes. I’m very excited for the group, but I’m a little less excited about the “people are coming to our house in two weeks” thing.
I love having people over, but sometimes all the work that’s required beforehand can feel kind of overwhelming.
Now two weeks sounds like is should be enough time to get this place together (or at least the areas they’d be seeing), but I feel like we have so much to do that I’m already exhausted. It’ll be a good thing though. Having a deadline and the looming threat of public humiliation forces me to get working.
I’m going to follow the tricks to make decluttering fun, throw on some music, open some windows (it’s a warm 40-something degrees here, afterall), and get to work!
So, how will you hold yourself publicly accountable, and what is your deadline going to be?
I think you’re very brave to invite people over mid-decluttering! It makes my heart beat faster just thinking about it. Good luck!
Brave or foolish, I’m not sure. Truth be told though, I’ve been “mid-decluttering” for years so if I waited until we were done we’d never have guests over. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can get a lot done.
Accountability is a good tip. I sometimes just need a kickstart!
My daughter is good at inviting friends over for a sleepover or a party she want to throw, which always throws me into a panic attack mode. Fortunately, she is also good at helping me clean and organize. She is the only person I feel comfortable and trust with decluttering my stuff. She’s my sounding board, she can ask me the hard questions about why I have something and my reason for keeping it. Do I love it, will I use it soon, and do I really need this item in my life? These questions from her don’t bother me, but coming from my husband or my mother… I totally shut down. I think it’s the tone in their voice, the feeling they would rather throw everything away then deal with it, and mostly it’s a trust issue. So, I’d find someone you trust to hear your concerns, but who cares enough about you to ask the hard questions. The clean up is a lot easier and fun with two people then one. My daughter helps me get my thoughts about things out in the open and out of my head, so that we can both see what my thought process is. Then we discuss the reality of what I’ve got time for, and if I’m really going to do something with it. For example, I had our basement crammed for of craft kits and items I planned on doing with my kids when they where younger, but we never seemed to get to. My daughter asked if she could help me clean and finish up the basement as her graduation project? I agreed, thinking this was going to be impossible. We started with the trash and broke items first. I held my breath through most of it, feeling some anxiety about throwing out stuff I planned on fixing some day. It was hard at first, but as we started seeing more and more progress and a cleaner area, I was feeling less stressed and more determined to make a change for the both of us. When we got to the craft kits, I took a big step and allowed my daughter to pick the kits she wanted to keep first. I was surprised when she kept only a few of them. She was okay with donating the rest. I then took my turn, and only picked kits that only I wanted to do, not ones I thought my kids would like. Surprisingly, I didn’t pick as many as I though I would, more then my daughter did, but not so much that I couldn’t find a home for them on the pegboard my husband put up for me under the stairs in the basement. We had six black trash bags of craft kits that we donated, and a bunch of craft supplies that my daughters art teacher said she could use for her classes. It took us a year and a half to clear, clean, repair, and paint the basement. The whole time my daughter kept a journal of the process, and she took before and after pictures for her graduation project tri-fold. I was a bit embarrassed about having my secret exposed to everyone at school, but no one commented on the mess. Instead they asked if they could hire her for their basement mess. It seemed I was not the only one with this problem in our town. A surprising thing that came out of this whole clean up, is that I don’t miss anything I got rid of. I love that I share the basement space with my family now. I have my craft space, my husband has his workout space, and my kids have their gaming area and air hockey table for visiting friends to play. My daughter helped me give my family the gift of sharing our home. I hope this helps, and I hope you find someone you can allow into your circle of trust. After many discussion with my husband, and both of finally hearing and feeling what each other is saying and feeling, I allowed or should I say I trusted my husband to clean out our shed, without my interference. I purposely stayed out of the shed while he was cleaning it out. I won’t say I wasn’t stressed, but I was thankful for his help, and his thoughtfulness when he set aside a pile of metal for me to take to be recycled, instead of just putting it at the end of the road for trash. We loaded up the metal into the truck after he was done, and I took it to the recycling place the next business day. I didn’t change or pull anything back into the shed, and again I don’t miss any of it. I love going inside the shed for my gardening tools, and not tripping over stuff to get to them.
What a great gift! I’m so glad to hear that you have your daughter and you work together so well. It would definitely be difficult to have clutter put on display, but I know for sure that you aren’t the only person struggling with it. My husband would happily get rid of 99% of the stuff in our basement, but I’m still struggling with letting him do so. I know you’re right though, I probably wouldn’t remember much of anything that was gotten rid of after it was gone. Did your daughter end up helping anyone else?