Someone on the tv says you need to kill a Swedish person to declutter.
The Missus never sought the kids' consent to declutter, and one time she threw away (or donated) our daughter's stuffed rabbit. I think the child was about 2 years old at the time, and literally for years afterward, she would ask after her rabbit or complain that she didn't have it. We tried to find another one, but even eBay couldn't help us out.
I think The Missus and I are more scarred by this than my daughter, who no longer remembers the incident (from around 15 years ago).
I've related my experiences on the other side of option (1) here before. It seems like the most effective method by far. My relationship with my mom is mostly pretty good now, so you should go for it; your kids will probably eventually forgive you.
I have the exact experience of 2 with a sacred jacket that Ace never ever wore, and apparently it was because it was so extremely special that it needed to stay right there in her closet. I tell myself there's an outside chance I saved it with the most sentimental clothes, but I'm scared to go look.
3: I think I'm scarred by your stories as well.
A lot of my clutter is old computers I still somehow think I have useful files on. No idea where to take them.
3: I think I'm scarred by your stories as well.
I need to declutter my own stuff, and I feel scarred by jms's story.
Hey look, a front page post on my favorite topic. My biggest problem with decluttering isn't the kid, it's Cassandane. We both grew up in rural places with basically limitless storage space and now live in a much smaller rowhouse and I think I've adapted to that much better than her. We have so much junk around that I can't possibly imagine we'd need or even want but she can't consider throwing away.
An anecdote: I found that a canvas bag, probably cotton, the reusable sort we use for groceries, had an inch-wide hole in it. I suggested throwing it away. She suggested either giving it away or patching it, I don't remember which. I looked at her quizzically. These things have a MSRP of a dollar or two when new and we have plenty to spare; is either one of those options worth the time? She suggested recycling it. I've never seen stuff like that on lists of recyclable materials before. I Googled to verify that it was compostable, i.e. trash, and a top hit said that cotton composts very well. I thought that would be the end of it, but she put it in the laundry pile. Fine. So now it's clean and hanging from the back of our bedroom door until it gets caught in a laundry-sorting effort, I guess. Now that I write this out I kind of worry a tiny bit about an actual mental health issue.
As an aside, Google has never been great for searching TFA but I think it's got worse in recent years. I'm sure I've mentioned this issue before but could only find the two links above. When I search for my name and declutter, without quotes, it pulls up uses of the word "organize", even though it's often in a political context. Artificial stupidity.
RWM is also always wanting to donate or recycle trash. Most recycling and donations are just sent to landfill anyway! You're just making someone else throw it out!
Goodwill is providing a great service by providing a fig leaf of usefulness to cover our shame for our wastefulness. If that's what it takes to get over the mental hurdle of getting rid of stuff, I'm not above using it.
We have luck with telling Pebbles that 'another baby' will use her bicycle or tricycle or favorite kitty dress etc, and it makes it easier to donate some things. The real issue is that shiv has no self-control at all when it comes to games or toys for the children which would be fine if they had their own house. Instead, they're taking over mine.
9: "Even Goodwill wouldn't take this if we brought it to them" might be a useful grounding for her?
But it's not true! Goodwill will take anything and then throw it out.
Somewhat the reverse problem in our household. My wife, and sometimes my mother in law who lives across the street, would go though the kids' discards (and sometimes even quite literally the garbage) and haul things back. They both loved to buy stuff, nothing expensive, just tons and tons of inexpensive unnecessary items, mostly for other people. And they hated, and still hate in the case of my wife, to get rid of any of it. It seems to have functioned as a sort of vaccine: 4 of the 5 kids dislike clutter and keep neat households, and the 5th who is [very] messy is an anti-shopper.
There was an article 4 years ago in NYT titled "The unbearable heaviness of clutter" that probably resonated with everyone who has a hoarder in the family https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/well/mind/clutter-stress-procrastination-psychology.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage
Not punitively, but as a service. "We'll let you pretend you've made a donation."
I just tackled a pile of crap, saved a little and collected the rest to recycle. As I was taking the large pile out, it occurred to me that Ace and Rascal have had a running game of School over the past two weeks or so, and I might be gathering up all the old notebooks and stickers and detritus that is actually the game they're currently playing.
14: OK, they probably do that in practice, but they do explicitly ask people not to bring anything damaged or soiled in their policies.
My mother deals with unwanted items by bringing them to my house and expecting gratitude. After I asked her repeatedly to stop doing it, she started smuggling her discards in with things that I ostensibly do want.
"Can I bring you some seedlings/firewood/cookies/crayons?"
"sure"
"Here's a box full of paperbacks, dishes, tableclothes, and something random from the garage, storage unit, shed, and/or junk store, have fun!"
When I was growing up she handled this issue by mailing boxes of things to her siblings instead. If you keep it in the family, you're not REALLY getting rid of it, and then if someone else throws it away it's their fault.
A note- if you have a local option that's not Goodwill, use it. Goodwill is bad news for disabled people.
So, if you're sending junk that will have to be thrown away, maybe Goodwill is the choice?
One thing I've noticed in the midst of our housing shortage is that there seems to be new self-storage facilities going up everywhere. I think that means that more people are moving their crap to self storage so they can fit more people into existing living spaces.
AIMHMB, I knew a woman who ran a charity thrift shop. Her husband had the most remarkable collection of Protestant Fuck-All pants because he could buy them first and because the old Protestants donated to that shop.
One thing I've noticed in the midst of our housing shortage is that there seems to be new self-storage facilities going up everywhere. I think that means that more people are moving their crap to self storage so they can fit more people into existing living spaces.
We've had the same thing going on. I hadn't thought about the connection to the housing shortage but it makes sense.
Or maybe people are just living in them, like Sideshow Bob.
A note- if you have a local option that's not Goodwill, use it. Goodwill is bad news for disabled people.
Well dang it, okay. Is it shitty employment practices mostly? Or accessibility for shoppers?
I interpret the proliferation of self-storage units in the past couple of decades as a sign of (your choice) vibrant/decadent capitalism: the commodification and sale of empty space. They've found a way to sell even the oink of the pig.
I am perfectly happy to play along with the donation/recycling fiction. Broken stuff needs to go. We have very little to get rid of that's genuinely useful as a charitable donation. AJ doesn't like to imagine it in a landfill. I don't like to imagine it continuing to take up space in our house. I am hoping to throw more stuff away this summer.
My father gave me multiple large boxes of saved papers from my childhood - handwriting exercises, birthday cards, stuff like that. This kind of thing seems to frequently contain items that just gut me, like a card from my grandparents, whom I miss terribly, even after all these years. I need a ton of energy to go through this kind of thing. A few Christmases ago, he gave me a gift bag "From Mom" that included a baby toy that was hers, then mine. It needs to go, but I kind of hate myself for just binning it. AJ stashed it in a closet for the moment, so now I have the added overhead of remembering there's this Thing To Go Through hidden in a closet I don't open . . .
22, 27- Basically, Salvation Army and Goodwill are both too big to be reliably benign. They do all sorts of nefarious nonsense including shipping rejects (including health hazards) to third-world countries, overcompensating executives, undercompensating peons, exploiting disabled workers, firing whistleblowers, etc.. Individual branches vary; local, independent thrift stores are a better option all-around.
13-15, 20: Thanks, I'll try to find a pithy way to phrase that. Or just encourage her to read this thread, if I decide it's inoffensive enough.
16: LOL. I went looking for a comment thread about that article, and didn't find one, but did find another comment by me on this same issue. It really is a theme.
Re: self-storage places, I didn't know they've been proliferating lately, but I've thought about using one to deal with the clutter and just didn't get around to it. Procrastination is also a problem. They didn't seem sinister or dystopian to me until this thread. People have stuff and sometimes it's nice to put that stuff someplace other than their house, right? But it isn't necessarily related to the housing crisis or anything else because living spaces have to have insulation and plumbing and natural light (not truly required but usually very preferred) and you don't need all that simply for extra books or clothes or whatever the clutter is. It takes time and work to adapt spaces for different uses and isn't necessarily an example of NIMBY/YIMBY issues or capitalism run amok.
I'm sure we will get a storage unit when we do the renovation we're planning just to have a place to put stuff while our house is unusable. And now that I write this out I'm sure we'll start using it then and continue using it long after we finish the renovation. Ugh.
But it isn't necessarily related to the housing crisis or anything else because living spaces have to have insulation and plumbing and natural light (not truly required but usually very preferred) and you don't need all that simply for extra books or clothes or whatever the clutter is. It takes time and work to adapt spaces for different uses and isn't necessarily an example of NIMBY/YIMBY issues or capitalism run amok.
I mean, I have nothing against them. We have one that we mostly use for Amadea's work stuff that we were formerly storing in our house (so her work pays for it, which is nice). There's a definite role for them in our society. I think Spike is right, though, that the recent proliferation of new ones is due partly to the housing crisis meaning that people are squeezing more people into smaller spaces and need to outsource their storage. I would add that another factor is that our land-use planning systems make it a lot easier to build new storage places than to build new housing. They rarely get much objection from neighbors.
From a search, I see Marie Kondo's change of heart re: her personal clutteredness after having her third child did come up in January. As a reminder:
Kondo says that, for many, the perfectly organized space is not realistic. "Up until now, I was a professional tidier, so I did my best to keep my home tidy at all times," she said at the event. "I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home."
One thing I've noticed in the midst of our housing shortage is that there seems to be new self-storage facilities going up everywhere.
Definitely there's a secular trend of people needing places for their shit, but I think there are some other explanations for it going up in city centers (there's a six-story one half a mile from an Oakland BART!) or inner-ring suburbs where housing or offices would produce much more private and public value:
- There's not nearly the NIMBY opposition or zoning straitjacket there is for housing
- In states with Prop 13-like property tax limitations, cities prefer the sales tax revenue
- They're relatively cheap to put up and serve as a kind of private land banking - the owner gets at least enough revenue to cover holding costs while passively waiting for a better opportunity to arise
Interestingly, I search building permits to see if the BART-adjacent one was built recently, and I didn't find construction date (it might be renovated), but I found a ton of permits modifying an array of cell antennas, suggesting another use.
I think self-storage would be pretty harmless as a business if there were socially correct prices for landholding (LVT) and gasoline/road use. They would probably relocate to the outer suburbs.
6: there are usually electronic recycling facilities with some connection to your county or local government. I took the extra step to reformat/wipe all my old hard drives myself but some places offer that as a service.
When I moved out of San Jose, I went here. Very painless, just had to pay a small fee for a couple items. I wished I'd gone there years earlier.
37: To be clear, the place you link doesn't transfer data, does it?
If you're looking for a place to transfer the data to an external drive and recycle the computer, Best Buy does that.
Best Buy still exists? The one by me is now an Urban Air.
There's one by me. This may be an "always yesterday in Alaska" thing though.
Anyway, whoever does computer repair in a given area should be able to do this sort of thing.
38: right, it was just for getting rid of the stuff.
I can't remember the last time I actually went into a Best Buy, but there's one in DC and several in the suburbs. It's not defunct like K-Mart or whatever.
I just bought a monitor from Best Buy yesterday. Not very many places to go these days if you want to see a range of monitor sizes in person.
My office at home has four monitors.
Amusingly, I seem to be equidistant between two Bests Buy, each 12-13 miles' drive.
Only two connected to anything, but they are all different sizes.
34: I went looking for that Kondo quote and in the process found two other unrelated comments by me about clutter. Maybe Cassandane doesn't have hoarding tendencies, maybe I just have an obsession with alleged hoarding tendencies.
(Or maybe I'm just commenting a lot today because this is a lucky front-page post for a day when I'm not on my usual computer. Unfogged is more work-safe than my usual procrastination methods.)
Ironically, I bought a monitor model that wasn't on display. Partly because it was cheap and I'm not ready to wade through tons of reviews just to feel better (or informed, whatever) about buying something higher-spec, and partly because it was immediately clear that 32" monitors are too large for my current home setup.
I actually have a 32" tv but don't consider it a good comparison because it's old and not 4k. I'll stop cluttering this thread now.
I've gotten better at getting rid of stuff. My guiding principle is: go fast, don't think too much. You might later regret throwing something out, but that's okay - life is full of regrets.
Sometimes my biggest regret is not keeping a record of what I threw out so I can stop looking for it everywhere.
I absolutely hold on to books and papers, and I'm fine with that. (Drives my sister crazy.)
I have gotten way better at decluttering other stuff by having a few broad categories in my brain/space that I can sort things into.
1) Clothing to cut up into rags (I do this while sitting on boring conference calls and then dump them into the rag bag)
2) Clothing to donate (I have a brown bag ready all the time for thrift shop donation; that way when I get exasperated or realize that I'm DONE with a piece of clothing it goes right there and then when the bag fills up I donate it -- rather than having to go through clothing ONE PIECE AT A TIME and make a ton of exhausting decisions)
3) Making robust use of "Free" at curbside (at my current location) or the local "Buy Nothing" group to get rid of random crap that I can't legitimately donate (literally, multiple people bizarrely wanted a MOTH-EATEN cashmere sweater that couldn't possibly be mended and was only suitable for pet bedding or the like).
4) Rapidly donating food/drink that I will never ever eat to a local community fridge or the above Buy Nothing group. Someone gave me turmeric tea? Gone in 24 hours! Not deluding myself that I should hold on to it for two years of feeling guilty that I don't want to try it, and then ultimately trash it.
5) Making a small corner in the basement for electronics recycling. There are 2x-a-year events held by local politicians. As long as I don't have to LOOK at the useless electronics crap, I'm fine with holding on to it until time to recycle.
But probably the most important thing I've done in the last 10 years is really, really deeply internalizing that is not helpful to the planet or people if I engage in "wishful recycling." It lets me dump stuff without a qualm if it's it's truly useless, and deal with my conscience by settling up various monthly $10 donations to people/orgs who are working on these problems at scale.
I have had basically exactly the conversation described in 9.2, but the bag in my case was not even entirely cotton canvas -- it had plasticky woven straps which were partly unraveled, and bottom of the bag had a hole. M did not want to throw it away because it was a "gift" from a friend of his. Which, give me a break. His friend did get him the bag when they were at a venue together, but it's not like it was a gift from the heart, the bag was clearly from a promotional table and was probably either free or like ninety-nine cents. Also, if he wanted to remember this friend, he could just go visit her -- she lives like ten blocks away. I even offered to cut the logo out of the bag and sew it as a patch onto a t-shirt or another bag, but he refused, so I guess this scrap of rags will live in my home until I die.
I even offered to cut the logo out of the bag and sew it as a patch onto a t-shirt or another bag, but he refused
Oh man, that was going to be my suggestion to you. I've gotten over the sentimentality hurdle with some things by cutting a scrap to save for a "memory quilt." Whether or not I ever make the thing is immaterial; it allows me to have one small box with fabric scraps rather than every ancient fabric thing I have an emotional attachment to.
I also just remembered that when we were kids, my siblings and I sometimes altruistically broke hideous objects that my parents had been given as gifts. "Mom, we had to throw it out! It was BROKEN."
Honestly, it was a genius tactic. I know my parents were relieved.
I don't know why, but memory quilts seem terrible to me. Is the idea that either way the items collect dust on a shelf, but the quilt/blanket packs down smaller?
I think my wife had some company make a quilt out of our son's old t-shirts and such. It takes up less room than 4000 t-shirts.
Packs down smaller, theoretically has a practical use, and if nothing else looks prettier than a pile of used t-shirts. Never had one myself but I'd encourage Cassandane to have one made if clothes specifically were the problem.
Also, I imagine it might be helpful psychologically to focus on that as opposed to focusing on the trash.
if he wanted to remember this friend, he could just go visit her -- she lives like ten blocks away.
I'm cutting out this part of the comment to save it. (The rest was fine too, no worries.)
I'm at the point with a couple favorite pairs of pants where I can maybe get 3-5 more months of use out of them by mending the pocket-corner holes, and so they are flopped on top of my sewing machine waiting for me to sew, which I'll do after I fuck up the whole yard with the string trimmer, which I will do ere the apocalypse cometh. It's preposterous because they're MY FAVORITE GARMENTS. However, as you might infer, everything in my life is like this.
For someone with catastrophically poor executive function, I have a relatively uncluttered environment -- I don't feel much need to own stuff, but whatever I do possess, I can't process quickly at all. The idea of having mountains of stuff I need to deal with is so aversive that I've kept accumulation low. The combination of actually liking/wanting stuff and having a poor ability to manage it seems unlucky.
Possibly on topic, but I've made a small improvement in my ability to start to work on a project. I just say to myself, in my best Tim Meadows voice, "Moby Hick has to think about his whole life before he writes." Then, I'm no longer procrastinating, but readying myself.
This thread inspired me to replace my TV. But now I have to figure out what to do with the perfectly serviceable but decade-old one. It's actually kind of great to have clearer pictures.
I used to have a job that involved working a lot with old technology, so I've actually kept the TV before last because of the variety of connectors and input sources it supports. But this last one is nothing special.
26: I've often wondered if people were living in them.
We had one when we had stuff that people had given up as part of downsizing that was important but before we had a house. Basically, we were in an apartment for too long.
It was handy for the winter and summer tires when they weren't in the cars.
Once they're on a roll, just don't stop before home.
When my parents got snow tires, the other tires stayed at the garage.
The idea of having mountains of stuff I need to deal with is so aversive that I've kept accumulation low.
This is how I always handled cleaning and tasks, ie "buy a trash can and game your behavior to minimize how often you have to take out the trash/deal with dishes/buy gas/do laundry/etc." Jammies and I were both flabbergasted to deal with the opposite of ourselves.
Buying a trash can is for suckers. Once a week, they are just sitting out on the street.
70: Well, now that I have a house with a garage we do that too. For a while, we had them in our downstairs locker, and it was a complex balancing act to fit 8 tires in. The 4 Honda civic ones were ok, but you added on my Prius c, and it involved a lot of maneuvering. When Tim got, a Subaru Outback, the tires were enough bigger, that we knew we needed to get a storage locker. We have a special rack that holds the tires and rims.
My modest 1950's single-family house is such a luxury that way with its 2-car garage.
Our place always feels cluttered, and Mrs ttaM complains about it a fair bit, but, if I'm honest, we don't really have that much junk. We just live in small 2 bedroom apartment with no cupboards. There's technically two of them, but one contains a washing machine and the boiler and the other contains the air recycling heat exchanger unit (and a couple of household things like the vacuum cleaner and our printer).
We could always de-clutter more. We did a load of it last year, but need another round. xelA isn't too bad about "precious things". He does have some of his toddler aged toys for nostalgic reasons, but he's mostly OK with them going. Luckily the family across the hall have a kid who is 2 years younger than xelA and he likes to give him his old stuff.
Our printer is right in the middle of the living room, so the Xbox doesn't get lonely.
The Xbox is in the middle of the living room because that's where my wife's TV is. I don't even own a TV.
76 yes you do, Pennsylvania is a community property state.
The TV is a resident of Florida for tax purposes. It spends 183 days a year in a bar outside Tampa.
Speaking of clutter, it's perfectly normal to have seven backpacks and keep looking for another one, right?
79: Of course, you need that many, so you have a backpack that matches with any outfit.
They're all for hiking. I don't have that many hiking clothes.
Maybe I'll buy a Polar Tech Alpha hoodie or seven.
Maybe I should get a not-hiking backpack first.
As well as the rest of the psychological tricks, for items that have sentimental value but are too worn out or broken to ever be used again, I find taking a photo helps. You take the photo, upload to whatever photo storage, as a kind of tat memorial, then throw out the physical item. I think this trick probably came from Bruce Sterling. Digital clutter / storage is cheaper.
The idea goes back to the Romans. They built a big column with images of their conquest of Dacia. They still have the column, but not Dacia.
||
Completely off topic, is this as big a deal as it sounds like? https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/05/the-reconstruction-congress-preempted-qualified-immunity
|>
When my wife was in planning grad school, 35.3 was the dominant explanation for storage facilities - they could be put up cheaply while waiting for a better opportunity. They even referred to the phenomenon as "ground cover".
We got a storage unit when we converted our attic to work-from-home office space early in the pandemic, but it does mostly feel like a slow and expensive way to throw things away.
87 I can't imagine this becoming a big deal. The Court has known about this for decades, and no one has done anything with it.
89: thanks. That is what I'd expect, but it seemed like such an interesting troll of originalism.
And what they'll say is that Congress has known about QI the whole time and never did anything to restore the missing language.
Decluttering:
1. Before you start, have a couple of drinks. Don't get drunk and incapable, but if you're slightly buzzed you can go quicker and be more decisive IME.
2. Make separate piles for donating, offering to friends, and garbage.
3. As has been said, work fast and NEVER look at the stuff in the piles to go until you've finished.
That's how I clean squid, but the piles are "to stuff", "tentacles", and "plastic bit".
92: I could see this going wrong in a variety of ways.
For me it would go
1. Before you start, have a couple of drinks
2. I fall asleep
For a different kind of person
1. Before you start, have a couple of drinks.
2. "I feel great! Who cares about clutter anyway? How about another drink?"
OT: It's kind of remarkable that he managed to die near a town which outlawed churches.
To 94, the town also outlawed bars.
On topic because they count as clutter: Crom, having swollen over the last two weeks to quite remarkable size, has been brought to bed of a litter of six pups. Two male (Stoor and Brand) and four female (Tephra, Scoria, Ember and Thera). All are healthy and surprisingly vocal.
That's great. Puppies are fun, mostly.
Do they have life plans yet, or do you intend to sink slowly under a rising sea of terriers?
Those are great names, but was the birth process especially reminiscent of volcanism?
Point the dog's head down and kind of.
100: we've sold two already to good homes. I think the other four will go fast.
101: the names are references to Crom's real name, which is fire-related.
96. Many towns outlawed bars. It was called prohibition. Eventually sanity prevailed.
95: What town was that? I can't google it up.
105: Chambers. It's named in the article.
107: Any more I can read about it? I did google Chambers with associated keywords but I mostly got articles about Ernie Chambers.
Everyone knows Chambers can't have churches or bars. But I can't find a source and Chambers clearly does have a church. In conclusion, the internet did exist when I was learning things.
I might have to edit the Wikipedia page and cure cite this thread.
Anyway, I found a picture of my dad in 1960. A new lawyer was front page news.
He got a speeding ticket in January 1962.
Searching is hard because Ernie Chambers sued God.
The case was dismissed because the judge said you can't serve notice to God. Chambers said that you don't need to serve notice to an omniscient defendant.
My googling did inform me that in 1997 Russia banned churches from religions less than 15 years old.
Oh man. The Satanic Temple gave the opening prayer at city council this past week and it's been my absolute favorite drama of the moment.
103.2 You gave your dog a pseud on the blog? I thought Crom was her real name. It's a cool name.
119: I respect Crom's privacy.
Things will become complicated if and when we acquire a second dog, which the Selkie wants to call Crom as a real name. In that case we will have to call the other dog (actually Crom) Garm or Fenris or something on the blog to avoid confusing "Crom" with Crom.