As the year starts winding down, and the influx of new presents is just around the corner, my mind floats back to January – when I was starting to drown in stuff in my little apartment, stored in boxes at my parents’ house, in the back of my car. I decided that 2010 would be a year when I would focus on getting rid of things and trying to get more organized. The past two or three years had been so transitional – moving to Spain, moving back and being at home for a while, housesitting, packing up for some future life I wasn’t living. And so I decided to name this little project to make it seem more real – I dubbed it The Purge 2010 (you have to say it “twenty-ten” in this particular instance, fyi). During the past year, I’ve taken a couple of organizational classes online. I had a huge garage sale at which a number of us made a couple hundred dollars apiece and then we took an entire pickup load in to donate. I moved (yet again). And I’ve either thrown away or donated a lot of stuff.
Of course, the progress has gone in waves. When I realized The Purge was coming to a close (at least for this year), I immediately felt sort of panicked. I didn’t purge nearly enough in the past 12 months, and I added a lot of new stuff to the mix. Our guest bedroom is full of clothes I need to try on, things I need to decide about, suitcases and boxes in various states of disarray, needing to be unpacked and resorted. I have boxes from my move that won’t get unpacked in his house since my roommate has lots of things we need – but I need to look through them again and ask whether I really want to move cookie sheets that are 12 shades of brown, whether I’m ever going to use some of these gadgets, and on a bigger scale, whether these clothes are ever going to fit again, what PLAN I have for all of these papers I compulsively save, and on and on.
Having someone by your side helps a bit – a few weeks ago, my sister and I spent a Saturday cleaning my room, throwing away two garbage bags of stuff in the process – packaging and receipts and junk. We went through a half-empty box labeled Shoes, and with her, it was easy to ditch the Nine West platform sandals I bought on a high school journalism trip, the squared toed black boots she labeled “so, so 90s” and plenty of other things I’d been sort of putting off for one reason or another. I think I kept one or two pairs from the box. I just kept telling myself, I’m making room for the life I want to live.
I’ve figured out a couple of good tactics for all of this – having a box or a bag at the ready all the time for donations, for one. (I keep a crate in my front hall) Whenever something doesn’t fit quite right or I find something around the house I don’t really love, it goes directly into the box. When it’s full or I’m headed that way, I’ll take it all to the thrift store. But I only have to make the decision once, and that helps.
I’m wanting to get back into setting a timer for myself – 15 minutes to tidy a room, putting anything that doesn’t have a spot into the middle of the room. I always seem to find things to donate that way – and don’t miss them.
The new round of “get organized!” January magazines is on the horizon, and I’m actually pretty excited. I have some clarity about it all, even if sometimes I waver. As I said on January 12, in starting all of this, “In my case, I keep buying more storage containers, am convinced that living closer to an IKEA would lead to more general storage serenity in my life, and yet I know, deep down, that the real answer isn’t storage – it’s a deep purge of junk I have and don’t need or use.”
So The Purge may be drawing to a close, but the process of reevaluating my space will continue indefinitely. I’m reexamining some of my stuff priorities, little by little. And hoping the next year will bring a bit more clarity to it all, too. I’ll just keep plugging along.
How do you deal with the stuff that seems to come pouring into the house this time of year? Do you have a regular donation schedule? eBay? Perhaps most pressing (for me), how do you corral all of the papers? That’s a skill I’m still trying to acquire…
I like writing, photography, reading, music, design, typography, paper products, days in the seventies and sparkly snow, Spanish wine and cans of PBR. I spent a year in Córdoba, Spain, working as a 
Ugh. It’s amazing to me how quickly crap accumulates! Up until two years ago I had moved every year-ish, which was always my motivation to clean out so I wouldn’t have to move everything. But then I got married two years ago, and wedding gifts came in, and nothing left and now we have a huge mess! My organizing tactic is to throw it in the basement. Not. Good. I always tend to do a little cleaning after the holidays, but this year, starting next week, is going to be a huge overhaul. I’m so excited! I totally geek out over getting organized. 🙂
I never realize that I’m such a pack rat until I start going through my stuff…and honestly, I have such a hard time letting go of little things like pamphlets for exhibits, metro tickets. Of course, I have difficulty with more significant items, like my ever-growing stack of books I say I’ll get to sometime but never do. Then I think of all the stuff that’s back in storage in the US…
Ugh.
So, I’m very envious of your organizational skills. Tell me, what are these classes of which you speak?
[…] the book that I picked up this summer and of course, I’m going to continue with the, er, editing, because there’s just so much crap I accumulate especially when I think I’m settling […]