Be Organized Now

  One of my favorite authors on the topic of clutter and living clutter-less is Sandra Felton, author of Messie No More and The Messie's Manual , now updated to The New Messie's Manual .  Sandra, herself a "reformed messie" [sic] has some useful surveys helping people get clarity about the base reasons for their struggles with clutter.   via GIPHY Sandra has broken down cluttering behaviors into essentially 3 categories: "Saving" clutterers, "Messie" clutterers, and "Time Wasting" clutterers.  In summarizing Sandra's categories, I've consolidated them into only two: "Saving" and "Messie" clutterers.   I'm also including some anti-clutterers thoughts  (AC T ) , to help you work toward a new mindset for managing possessions. As was outlined in this post , one part of the problem with "M.E.S.S." is often emotional , and Sandra's breakdown covers a large number of the emotional factors. They will

  Decluttering your spaces is a whale of a decision-making "fiesta".  As an organizer, I find it a pleasant kind of challenge, but that's beside the point.  The big deal about all that decision making, however, is that you're left with a hefty pile of things to be dealt with in one of several ways: keep them,  give them away,  sell them, or   trash them.   And trashing them can often be quite a puzzle and cause some real angst.  Fortunately, there are some great options for many of these items, and I'm giving a big shout out to AARP for a recent article they published about this topic (they publish some really great material on downsizing , pertinent to the decluttering process whether you're moving households or not!). The November 2022 AARP bulletin included "How Do I Get Rid of This? A handy guide for disposing of those items that shouldn't go in the trash".   Sadly, it is not available on their Bulletin website, but it is a very helpfu

 Moving Cross Country - Part 3   As I began this story with this post , we moved cross country to northeast Florida, to a little community called Yulee, near the beach community of Fernandina Beach.  We had lived in the same house for 32 years, and we made the move using a 16' rental truck, without having to declutter too dramatically. Our initial decluttering resulted in just one shallow box about 18"x20", including some small kitchen items (shared with a neighbor), a few pieces of clothing, and some other odds and ends that I, of course, cannot recall, because they had no real importance! 😏 Over the course of continued packing, there would be other things "edited out" of our household, most of which were shared with friends and neighbors:   Canning jars--couldn't believe I had 12 dozen empty jars in my basement... 😟 How did that happen?!?!  I LOVE to can! But, it is just the two of us, and we realize we will have to learn to say no to people shari

My own experience relocating as an adult has been:  (A) from my parents' home to a studio apartment, about 150 miles away, when I was in college. I had a small stereo, a piano, a single mattress, my clothing (pretty minimal even then), very basic kitchen/ cleaning supplies & items, and a smallish dining set given to me by Dad & Mom. (B) from the apartment into the 2-bedroom house of about 900 sq. ft. that my husband & I rented when we got married; same stuff moved from (A) to (B); (C) from the 2-bedroom house into a newly built home that had approx. 2500 sq. ft.--we lived in that house for 32 years. By then we had a 5-year-old son and a bit more furniture, but it was a very easy fit, and we attempted to keep things pretty pared down through those 32 years.  But, there was still the subtle "collection creep" of held things that should have been let go long ago... 😏 (D) from the house of 32 years in SE Washington to a 2500 sq. ft. house in NE Flor