Quote:
Originally Posted by
nstewart 
I ventured into the office this evening...such a scary place that I've avoided it thus far. I only got rid of one stack of papers and found 1 craft and 4 games to donate. So only 6 items to add to the list, plus one random item chucked from the pantry makes 7. It's a small start to the disaster that is our office but it's a start. We're headed out of town for a week on Friday so I likely won't be doing any more de-cluttering until March.
New Total:
1021/2012
$17.96.35
Well, a week of holidays with DH and DS and no decluttering, and I'm home and ready to get going again! In fact, coming home to STUFF after being in a rented condo with only the bare essentials for a week is making me even more determined to purge, purge, purge. I get what you all are saying about stuff weighing you down. I'm looking at DS's toys (which are small in number compared to a lot of kids) and just seeing them is driving me crazy. And looking at my kitchen counters with STUFF on them is driving me mental!
I used to be a "maybe I should keep this, it could come in handy later" person, but I've moved to a "does this add value to my life" approach (for the most part). As a starting point, if it's hard for you to get rid of things I found it helpful to consider if I'd used/wore something in the last year. If the answer was no, it was gone. Exceptions for items with sentimental value were made (I have my stuffed animal from when I was a kid still), but mostly it was a rule which made it easy to stick to.
A few items gone today: 4 books of DS's to recycle, 6 to donate and 3 rockband instruments sold for $40 (finally!). I've also listed a food steamer and a NIB chuggington train toy for sale, but won't count them till they sell or are given away.
I really have to tackle our office. I need some major motivation because (a) it is a disaster zone and (b) it involves doing things that are mentally/emotionally taxing for me like going through old paper work/filing, books (which I have a hard time parting with), mementos, photos which should really be in albums and are not, and WORST of all, the paper work for filing my taxes which I am 4 years behind in doing (which is not organized and goodness only knows if it is all in there somewhere or missing or what). 
Sigh.
New Total:
1034 1037/2012
$1836.35
ETA: 2 items from the kitchen (an electric wok that I never use and a plug in grilled cheese maker from college). It feels like WAY more though as I totally reorganized a ton of stuff and went through a pile of mail and papers for filing too (so I'll count the pile that was recycled as 1 item too) so my kitchen looks a million times better and there is less clutter to drive me batty now. Oh, and DH and I bought a stand-up freezer to put in the basement kitchen (it was a basement suite before we took over the whole house) to replace the chest freezer we have outside. So I'm not counting getting rid of the chest deep freeze as an item, as we're replacing it and we're replacing the big kitchen fridge with a bar fridge but it'll be so great to have the storage space under the deck outside and not have to go out there in the dark to bring stuff in! Tons of emails re: the fridge on kijiji already and the chest freezer will be posted for sale as soon as I move the food from it to the new deep freeze.
Edited by nstewart - 3/4/12 at 8:27pm
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