Tuesday, September 28, 2010

De-cluttering

Lately I've been on a de-cluttering kick. I don't mind a little bit of dust on my coffee table (well, as long as I don't notice it), but I really hate having a cluttered house. For the most part I keep the house pretty neat, but every few months I let papers stack up and closets fall into disarray, and finally I get fed up and deal with it.

So for the past few weeks I've been de-cluttering different parts of my house, little by little. I've cleaned out the closets and now have a couple of bags of clothes to take to Goodwill. I filed important documents and shredded old bank statements that had piled up.

I have to admit that some of the de-cluttering has been challenging because it's necessitated letting some things go. For instance, clothes that I no longer wear because they either don't fit or don't flatter me or are uncomfortable or just out of style. Even though I haven't worn them in months (or years), there's still a reluctance to depart with some of them. But I have a rule that for every item of clothing that I buy, I have to get rid of at least one item, so if I want to pick up some new items for fall then I have to part ways with some old ones. Besides, it's silly to hang onto clothes that I don't wear and probably will never wear again.

My latest de-cluttering focus was my computer bookmarks. I love reading well-written, funny, challenging websites, and I have a long list of them bookmarked. There are several that I read every day, but there are also quite a few that I rarely get around to reading because I don't have the time to read them all, so several of those sites are getting the heave-ho. Ironically, one of the sites I'd bookmarked that I deleted was Unclutterer. A good site, but I need to pare down my "must-read" list.

How about you? Does the change in seasons put you in the mood to do some cleaning out of your own home?

1 comment:

Donna G said...

I was just thinking about that this morning. Mostly because I must dig out may fall and winter clothes (the few I did not cull last spring during my last decluttering). I have forgotten to cycle shoes out when I put new ones in so I MUST go through those!

I was so proud of myself a few months ago when I gave away a BUNCH of my books. That may be my most hard to part with possession...