Spring cleaning
empanadamn
1,462 Posts
I'm trying to do this, but I always fail. I end up looking through stacks of old personal letters or photos, putting promos aside to listen to (that I never will), and not throwing out things that I convince myself I'll be able to use at a later point, which I only end up uncovering the next time that I attempt to clean / downsize. How does someone with collector tendencies move to living more "minimal"? How do you guys deal?
Comments
basically look at the item and think "do i really need this in my life?"
if the answer is no then either throw it away, give it away, or sell it.
got some work to do!
I have gotten better at approaching things (esp. things in boxes) and trying to figure out what's in there before opening it. If I haven't opened it for over 2/3/4/5+ years and can't remember what's in there (of course I peek too), then I trash the whole thing. It feels good, and I don't really wonder too much what was in there cuz clearly it wasn't all that relevant to my life now.
I still have plenty of ridiculous, hoardy type things that I also don't use regularly but see all the time but can't bring myself to throw away.
I should throw away some olde vitamins today tho and get rid of some books that never get read.
More often than not, this is me. But over the past several weeks, I've been on a tear of actual cleaning.
It mostly started when I decided I wanted to straighten up the main room of my apartment, but I discovered that in order to put some of these things away, I needed to make room for them. And in order to make room for them, I needed to get rid of some things. So, as if proving the adage that one must make a mess in order to truly clean, I made a mess. I started pulling things off of shelves, going through my various boxes o' junk, and generally trying to be harsher than usual about what I'll keep and what I'll chuck. I ended up taking a whole lot of stuff down to the thrift store (old clothes, mostly) and chucking a bunch of stuff in the dumpster, including an old footlocker that was useless as a piece of luggage and had been taking up a bunch of space for years.
Once I had this done, I was able to do the minor straightening up I wanted to do in the first place. The whole process felt pretty good, actually. My apartment seems much bigger than it did before, and it's certainly less cluttered. I'm not even done with the process, either--I still have some more boxes of junk to sort through, and I'll probably end up getting rid of some furniture as well. I still have pack rat-ish tendencies, but at a certain point, some things just have to go.