Need Budget Decluttering Ideas!!

[mrsklamc]

No problem!!! I like the audio book because how can you resist his lovely Australian accent politely but firmly telling you "You don't need it!!!"

I recommend reading a chapter on what to do in a room, stop and do it, and then pick the book back up-even if it takes you a few days to get through that room. It's less overwhelming that way.

 

[greens_in_WA]

Another easy to manage tip from a friend: "10 things a day for 30 days"... Each day she removes 10 things from her house that she no longer needs. By the end of 30 days that's 300 things that are gone (woot!)... Easy to manage as a busy Mom and a short time period to focus on - for general decluttering.

 

[lisam427]

there is a free website on decluttering that has been very helpful to me. check out http://www.flylady.net. my house used to be a disaster. her ideadeas are very helpful and best of all you cant beat free.

 

[dyna]

It takes DH's willingness to declutter too. OR maybe I respect his junk to much. I know after 30 yrs I could write a book on different ways DH has found to shuffle his junk. NONE of them good.

Then there is my aging parents who has a house a 5 car garage a couple of barns full of junk an not able to deal with cleaning out junk an I will be the one left to deal with it in the end same with my brother whos health is failing.

Funny I know what DH is going to say about my parents junk throw it away!!!! Yet this same man recieves christmas gifts every year that he does not want that he SAVES it;s junk throw it away!!!! lol

 

[KandD]

I'm trying to declutter one room at a time, I have done the dining room, bathroom, and hall closet. Right now my dining room table is full with yard sale stuff.
Ehhh....I don't know HOW I acquire so many THINGS. I definitely have an issue with keeping things that I don't need, I get it from my grandmother. But I am hopeful that maybe this declutter will be the ultimate!!! I will finally have a clutterless house!! (yeah right...wishful thinking!!)

 

[StephMK]

I find moving every 5 years or so does the trick. Every time we move, I think "Gah, how did we end up with so much *stuff*?", go on a cleaning/sorting spree, and sell/donate/toss a ton. I don't know what I'm going to do now that we're in our "forever" house.

In all seriousness, when I get motivated to declutter, whether by an upcoming or recent move or just because I'm starting to feel crowded, I tackle one room at a time, top to bottom, every nook, cranny, shelf, cabinet and drawer. I keep decorating ideas, recipes, and craft patterns in binders so that I can clip them and toss the rest of the magazine into the recycling bin right away, and I've gotten much stricter about what books I deem keepers. After moving 24 boxes of books on the last move, I cleared out a TON in the past month. My biggest challenge is the temptation to keep everything the kids have ever made, and that's the one I haven't quite conquered yet.

We were also on the 2-5 move plan & that does help a bunch! Now we are in a long term home & my goal is to avoid that 30 yr of stuff type rooms -my parents have a few of those. Kids' projects is my biggest issue as well.

Another great book is Don Aslett - title says something about a packrat. Like Walsh, he goes into why you keep stuff, why it's not healthy & how to let go. It was funny cause some of the stuff he'd mention in his book that people hang onto - I had those - like my old prom corsage, long since tossed now. I'd read some of those books between weekend de-cluttering projects to keep motivated!

Good luck! I know I start getting crabby when the house gets cluttered & it feels so much better when things are relatively in place. I do have a certain tolerance for low levels of clutter but can't stand it out of control. I like having the house in order enough that I can open the door & not be embarrassed if someone comes over!

 

[annagirl]

Great tip on the Peter Walsh books - I checked and our library carries them!

 

[DopeysMommy]

I've read both the Peter Walsh books, skip Does this clutter make my butt look big. It's a lot of repeat from It's All Too Much, which I think is AWESOME and I read every year before my garage sale

 

[3boymthr]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I probably should start with clearing out the garage and then use it to clean each room out into for the "clean sweep", then get rid of the excess from that room and then repeat. Then I could avoid the POD maybe.... Of course then I have to make a decision about baby clothes and stuff.......

Here's a thought about the baby clothes; I saved all my oldest DS clothes. For years I washed, folded and put away oldest DS' clothes with loving care, but when I pulled his baby clothes out of the basement I ended up discarding most of them because the clothes had discolored wherever he had drooled on them or spit up on them or sucked on them and I just couldn't get the stains out. After several times of this I went back through all his clothes. I have found that with all kids clothes no matter what age they are worn at (even when they are 3 or 4 or 5 or...) that after a couple of years they start to change color, heat, cold, moisture, etc work on the oils, etc left in the clothes (despite washing). There are more than two years difference in sizes between my oldest and my middle so I've stopped saving my oldest's clothing as I often end up buying new anyway - I find could have saved myself years of clutter . So I would say that if your clothes are more than 2 years old or will be more than 2 years old when the baby is born donate or sell them. Also, even if the time is less than 2 years only save gender neutral clothing. If you sell the clothes set the money aside to buy more clothes for when your next child is born.

The stuff is a different matter. Anything expensive (over $100) or extremely sentimental (eg, your DGM made an afghan for your DD) find a place to store. Anything inexpensive (less than $100) sell then set aside the money you made and rebuy at a yard sale when you finally have your second baby.

 

[talulabelle]

there is a free website on decluttering that has been very helpful to me. check out http://www.flylady.net. my house used to be a disaster. her ideadeas are very helpful and best of all you cant beat free.

I also used FlyLady.net to declutter. She has a page on decluttering. Go one closet, one room at a time. Don't try getting a POD and doing the whole thing at once. It would be too overwhelming, expensive, and you won't get rid of much, because it will be too hard to make those decisions all at once, you will start clinging to stuff you shouldn't.

The one thing I would advise (and FlyLady would too) is to not try and sell it. The reason I accumulated so much stuff we weren't using was because I was thinking I had to sell it at a garage sale, or get it on hangers to take to a consignment shop. And life is busy, there was no time, so it sat. Just donate it all. It will make you feel good, save you way more in time (time is MONEY) than you could possibly make at the sale, and the best reward it the stuff will be instantly GONE from your house. The junk doesn't owe you anything, you got your use and good out of it, now bless someone else with it. You will not think of it ever again once it is gone.

Things that were harder for me to part with, like kids art projects, some of their old favorite toys...I took pictures of to put in scrapbooks, but then pitched. THe house is just not big enough to hold it all.

Keep a picture in your mind of what you want a room to look like and as you sort through the stuff, think if that item fits into your mental picture of your streamlined room. You need 3 boxes labeled "put away" for stuff you are keeping but it needs to put in the proper spot....""throw away" for stuff that is not nice enough to give to someone else...and "GIVE away" for stuff you are donating that someone else could benefit from. There is no "sell" box as that will just slow you down. Everything should go in one of those boxes...as a box fills, you attend to it right away...son't let the boxes sit...put the stuff in the "put away" box away...set a timer and see if you can it away before the timer goes off, make a game of it. When the "give away" box fills, take it to your car to drop of at goodwill on your next trip out of the house. Throw the "throw away" stuff into the trash can immediately. You can do it one rjoom at a time.

I am still in the process of doing this, and I am almost done reclaiming my house. The feeling of freedom is amazing.

 

[Suz D]

I don't think it's the system for everyone but you might check out flylady.net. It's a slower way to declutter, but it creates new and hopefully permanent habits.

One of my favorite tips for others with small spaces is to store extra sheets between the mattress and box springs. And only have two sets - one on the bed and a spare. Good luck!

I love flylady! I haven't done her system for awhile because I couldn't get things under control enough to get them under control but we're to the point now where I can actually do the system.

I have to say that I had never heard the sheets tip and think it's GREAT! I always have trouble figuring out which sheets are twin, full, queen. No more confusion on that one! Thanks so much for posting that idea.

 

[talulabelle]

Here's a thought about the baby clothes; I saved all my oldest DS clothes. For years I washed, folded and put away oldest DS' clothes with loving care, but when I pulled his baby clothes out of the basement I ended up discarding most of them because the clothes had discolored wherever he had drooled on them or spit up on them or sucked on them and I just couldn't get the stains out. After several times of this I went back through all his clothes. I have found that with all kids clothes no matter what age they are worn at (even when they are 3 or 4 or 5 or...) that after a couple of years they start to change color, heat, cold, moisture, etc work on the oils, etc left in the clothes (despite washing). There are more than two years difference in sizes between my oldest and my middle so I've stopped saving my oldest's clothing as I often end up buying new anyway - I find could have saved myself years of clutter . So I would say that if your clothes are more than 2 years old or will be more than 2 years old when the baby is born donate or sell them. Also, even if the time is less than 2 years only save gender neutral clothing. If you sell the clothes set the money aside to buy more clothes for when your next child is born.

The stuff is a different matter. Anything expensive (over $100) or extremely sentimental (eg, your DGM made an afghan for your DD) find a place to store. Anything inexpensive (less than $100) sell then set aside the money you made and rebuy at a yard sale when you finally have your second baby.

Yeah, trust me, styles change fast...don't keep the baby clothes after 2-3 years. There was 4 years between my boys and the 4 year old stuff looked ridiculous on the second one. Pant legs were too narrow, the colors were wrong (bright primary colors were popular for babies with my first and had toned down to lighter earthier colors for the second) Drool spots came out. I ended up pitching most of it. Baby clothes are not that expensive. Nice things can be bought at Target. Don't give a second thought to it. It will drag you down. If you have another baby, yu will reach for the new nice looking things as that baby will deserve them and the old things will just take up room in the drawers.

 

[talulabelle]

FlyLady's site can be a little overwhelming at first and is cumbersome to navigate, so I put a link to her page on how to declutter incase you couldn't find it...

http://www.flylady.net/pages/FLYingLessons_Declutter.asp

 

[semo233]

FlyLady's site can be a little overwhelming at first and is cumbersome to navigate, so I put a link to her page on how to declutter incase you couldn't find it...

http://www.flylady.net/pages/FLYingLessons_Declutter.asp

OH thank you so much!! I do get her e-mails, but it's too much for me. I need to do one or two things per day and that's it. 8 e-mails a day are too much!

 

[talulabelle]

OH thank you so much!! I do get her e-mails, but it's too much for me. I need to do one or two things per day and that's it. 8 e-mails a day are too much!

No problem. My basement (kids playroom) had become a disaster zone! Really, so bad, that they couldn't even get in there to play. Every game was out with pieces and cards adn boxes strewn about...toys every where, bins dumped over to look for something and nothing put back... not one square inch of carpet was showing. There were so many broken toys and things they weren't using. They couldn't even find or get to the toys they might actually like to play with. Literally it sat for almost a year that way just making me feel horrible everytime I had to pass it on the way to the laundry room. It was just too overwhelming. I would start, but then when I came back to it, I didn't know where to start and you couldn't even tell where I had worked before and I would get so frustrated, I woudl throw my hands up in the air and give up. I would try to get everyone in the family to help, and they would give up, not knowing what to do with it all.

I went by FlyLady's decluttering plan to the letter...started at the door and worked around clockwise with my 3 boxes. Sometimes I was working in one little area of floor for so long and would get stumped about what to do with something and want to skip it and move on, but I didn't let myself. I worked until that area was clear. When I would stop and come back later, I was not discouraged because I could see exactly where I had left off and my progress was clear. It was the best! After several days, I made it around the whole room and my kids have their playroom back! and best of all it is staying tidy (for the most part) because all of the crappolla they weren't playing with is GONE! Much easier to organize.

 

[EthansMom]

I totally agree with the folks who say, "it isn't worth trying to sell your old stuff". Decluttering is much easier when stuff is divided into 3 piles: keep, donate, and throw out. And the stuff that is to be donated, should be put directly into an automobile to be donated while you're out and about.

 

[worm761]

Thank you for starting this. I really need to go through the house and get rid of stuff. We have a 2000 sq ft house. It is me, DBF, DS, DD (when she is born, due Dec 2) and my dad when he is in town (long haul truck driver). We have 5 bedrooms. We cleaned out one room for DD when she gets here. But really, all we did was move it to other rooms. I was so proud the other day when I organized the clutter! I looked at it today and said it just needs to go. Some I will keep but most just needs to go. I think I will make a list of things and work my way down the list. I do good with lists so that will be my method. Thank you again for the motivation. I would love to have this done before DD comes.

 

[hsmamato2]

quickest,most budget minded? go through all your crap....decide what you 'need'- then take another 50% from that pile,and then fill up the back of your car and donate ALL of it to a charity. I kid you not,it's the easiest,most budget way to do things. And the best part comes next,don't but more junk to replace all the unneeded stuff! ....like magic....your house is cleaner!
seriously,pods,sheds,storage places...all for junk we likely can live without.hardly budget minded......
for the stuff that is necessary,use shelves,and plastic bins that match. Just remember,if it isn't used regularly,why do you still have it?

 

[mrsklamc]

I wish flylady sent fewer emails a day. I subscribed but had to unsubscribe because of the e-clutter! How's that for ironic?

 

[Soben]

If I buy a 6 pack of socks, 6 pairs of old socks have to go.

I didn't know that old socks existed....around here they just disappear or vaporize.