The Year of the Household Clean-up #1: Guidelines

I don't even know how long these were marinating in my bookmarks list before I found them again:

1. How to Declutter the Closet
2. When to Donate Clothes
3. How to Organize a Closet in 5 Steps 
4. Stop Hoarding

This series of posts may well have been the reason why I began on this cleaning quest that has turned into quite the nesting monster. I bet that if I didn't feel so overheated and exhausted all the time, this house would have far less junk in it than it still does.

I am a hoarder in a family of hoarders. This probably would not be so bad if we hoarded the same things but we don't. We each have a specific type of item or set of items we hang on to until we are ready to let go.

My specific scope is paper. I can turn our home into one serious fire hazard from the stacks of notebooks, books, and sheets of paper I have inside all shapes and sizes of boxes. Some of these date all the way back to my childhood, some are reminders of the past, some are utter nonsense, and yet others have lost all meaning. But I have hung on to them mostly for forgetting that they were even there to start with. It's that bad.

My second scope is clothing. I am hardly the most fashionable or stylish person in the world but I hoard clothes and I can't seem to stop myself from keeping them in my closet whether or not they still fit or are still in use. The worst part of this is that I don't always even have the right set of items to pair up with anything. Or didn't. The last round of shopping I did because of my pregnancy has allowed me to reflect a little bit more of my current style and tastes in my wardrobe.

I try to deal with my disposals in a swift, decisive manner. It was this that was lacking in all the years I've tried to get rid of the junk I've accumulated so far. In dealing with this collection of magazines, for example:

I chose to toss all the issues except for the 2012 ones. The pile started as six odd piles of 30 magazines per stack that I reduced to a total of 30 magazines (split into two piles--filed and for reference) and two two-inch thick file cases filled with inspirational articles, style peg images, and recipes.

By the way, if you're reading this and live in the Metro, I am looking to donate the taken apart Cosmopolitan Philippines, Preview, and Good Housekeeping magazines somewhere they will be needed/wanted. And probably not where children are involved in case they stumble upon those articles on achieving the perfect orgasm or something similar.

Clothes are more difficult to deal with but with much determination, I managed to fill up (compactly) five boxes of clothes--the boxes being the Friskies canned cat food boxes which are probably the sturdiest boxes in the house right now since they were made to hold cans of cat food.

It's amazing, the feeling of freeing yourself from clutter. Slowly, usually, very slowly, but once the piles and piles of junk begin shrinking. Or, as in my case, shrinking only to be replaced by other things. Like these June versus December photos.

I'm still happy with it despite the junk being around because I know that this is other stuff, not the old ones getting tossed back into the fray.

Of course all this activity will be put completely on hold shortly. In fact, the activity has slowed down greatly because of the impending arrival. But I don't mind. As long as I'm getting even little bits of progress done, I'll be satisfied that I'm doing what I need so we can clear the house of clutter.