One thing that has been keeping me away from blogging is handling my business. Specifically, I am working very hard on de-cluttering. In late August and September, I spent a great deal of time on preparing items for two different consignment sales.
[Silly me, I thought I would participate in two different sales in the area to see which one was the best for cosigners, even though I could have entered most of my items in just one sale. This made things more stressful for me and maybe more time consuming. However, in the end, this was actually useful for me. I found that while I thought I would like one of the sales better because it was closer to my home, I found the further away sale to be more likable because their facebook consignor group was more positive and my interactions with the workers while dropping things off were better. I might end up consigning at the smaller sale that is further from my home in the future for the simple fact that they seemed to have a more positive vibe.]
I may have mentioned this before, but I have been thinking about the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo since I read it two years ago. I have even tried to implement the steps a few times. In the meantime, however, I had another child and expanded my belongings in the process. It is nobody’s fault. It is just the way it goes. Babies need gear and clothes. Pregnancy requires gear and clothes.
According to Marie Kondo, though, you aren’t supposed to tell people that you are cleaning up. It could worry them. So readers, please don’t be worried. While the initial impetus for my de-cluttering jag was to figure out what items I wanted to consign, the process helped me re-remember that I have a dream of a less cluttered house. I don’t think I have to give up on that dream just because I have small children. Too much clutter makes me feel bogged down and it gets in my way of doing things. I start to feel owned by my possessions instead of the other way around.
While I was getting fired up about cleaning, my husband was re-reading a book that also ignited a spark in him to clean up. So now we are a couple on mission. The book that lite the fire under his bum was Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. It has a different spin than Marie Kondo’s Life Changing-Magic, but there are some similar themes such as, if you don’t know what you own then how can you use your stuff?
Sometimes I see people and they ask me what I have been up to. I say, “oh Mr. Man started preschool” or “Baby Nugget has been getting some teeth”. Those are true statements about my sons and those are new developments in our lives that are important to me. But my cleaning project is also important to me. I hope I don’t lose steam. I plan on this project lasting until the end of 2018 . I might need some encouragement to keep going. Sometimes there is emotional baggage wrapped up in possessions. I might need some encouragement to be brave and keep going.
If you are working on a cleaning or de-cluttering project and need encouragement, let me know, we can encourage each other!
What is going on with you this fall? Let me know!
***This post contains affiliate links, if you decide to purchase I will make a small percentage of the sales
Great idea- don’t wait to tidy up and downsize until you’re my age- the job will seem impossible !!
Your house looks great!
I used Marie Kondo’s technique to go through clothes and got rid of SO MANY. It’s so nice to only have clothes I actually want to wear. Makes laundry more fun too. I only folded my clothes the suggested method the first time – for me it is too time consuming to be worth it. (Even though I know the more I do it, the faster I will be!)
I must admit, I do not fold my clothes the way she suggested. Maybe I need to get the book out of the library and try again