The “I have to do this before I can do that” decluttering frustration is real.
This frustration used to make me question the point of even trying to declutter. Trying to clean up my house felt so complicated.
My five step decluttering process helps me break through decluttering paralysis.
Today, I’m sharing what the decluttering process sometimes looks like in real life. How do I keep making progress (and never a bigger mess)? What do I do when I take something to the place where I’d look for it first and that place is a mess?
This isn’t a teaching post. It’s a real life example post. Welcome to my Slob Lab where you can see how the strategies actually play out.
There once was a cluttered garage. See this post for the explanation/excuse.
The most annoying thing in that cluttered garage was a bookshelf. It wasn’t a huge bookshelf, but it made a tight path even tighter.
I needed to move that shelf back into the house, but I had to clear it first. Random Stuff had started living on the bookshelf over its time spent in the garage. (I mean, it’s a shelf . . . )
So I started the decluttering process.
I needed to remove this lovely miniature Christmas tree to which I happen to be allergic. I’d shoved it out in the garage to keep it from polluting my air. I was sure someone else would love to have this rosemary bush, so I texted my neighbor right then to ask if she wanted it.
I just needed to put the plant somewhere safe while I waited to hear back from my neighbor. I looked up and saw the perfect temporary spot for the poison-to-me-tree, but . . . in that spot was something else.
Something else that was easy. I really thought about putting off the Something Else for its own decluttering project. Technically, I could just shove it to the side.
But I was already in Easy Stuff Mode. It would be equally easy to take the blue train case to its easy spot on the newly-painted-white bookshelf in my living room.
With my free hand and in the same motion, I put the rosemary tree-thingy in its new/temporary home.
I came back to the shelf and moved the easy red water carrier to the first place where we’d look for it, by the fishing stuff.
I came back to the bookshelf, again, and looked inside a box. I found the video tapes I chose to keep when I got rid of a storage chest. (When our flooring was replaced, I decided that storage chest didn’t deserve to go back into my house.)
I took the VHS tapes to the first place where I’d look for them, in our TV stand. But other things were scattered through that cabinet, taking up the room I needed for the box of videos.
Because my goal was to put the box of video tapes into the space where I’d look for them first and get back to my decluttering project, I needed to make some space for the box.
I thought of a red crate I’d recently stuck in a not-yet-donated Donate Box.
I unscattered the scattered stuff into that red crate and made room for the box.
Far from perfect, but you know what?
This.
The door closes. So yay for that. The TV cabinet is another decluttering project for another day. As long as its door closes, my home is no worse for having put that box of tapes in there, the place where I’d look for them first.
And my home is better off for actually finishing the shelf in the garage.
Back at the shelf, I worked my way through the other things. I had to stop myself from unconsciously, temporarily depositing a roll of tape on a nearby waiting-to-be-decluttered shelf.
Tape is easy. I’d look for it first in a drawer in the room right by the garage. I took it to that drawer instead.
Finally, I dusted the shelf and painted it.
And my path was clear(er).
While I did lots of different things, each step I took was to accomplish the goal of clearing that specific shelf and therefore clearing the path in my garage.
Moving scattered DVDs and photos in the TV cabinet into the red bin? That moved me forward on clearing the shelf.
Putting the blue train case in its home in the living room gave me the space to deposit the face-welt-causing miniature tree. Which cleared the shelf.
This is the difference between decluttering and Stuff Shifting. Except for the noxious mini-tree, everything moved to a home where it could stay indefinitely. Each movement made my house as a whole a little better, with no temporary solutions.
Yes, the TV cabinet will be a project in the future, but it’s no worse off than it was before. It’s imperfect, but not temporary.
It is something to be done, but not something left undone.
Yay for making progress and only progress.
About the miniature tree . . . my friend didn’t want it. Honestly, if I wasn’t a blogger, I probably would have re-gifted it. Alas, I couldn’t re-gift for fear the recipient or her friend reads my blog and would see this post. I should have texted some other friends, but time got away from me. I had to throw it away.
About the VHS tapes . . . we don’t even have a VHS player anymore. But these were memory-laden tapes like the one I made for our wedding rehearsal dinner. They’re a conversion project for the future, but they need a place for now and it needs to be the first place where I’d look for them.
About the dust in the TV stand . . . oh well. Yay for closing doors to hide some of it.
Stuff shifting. I’ll use that when trying to explain progress vs wasting time. Thanks.
Love this! It’s how I’ve tried to declutter, by making sure one thing is done and things are put into their homes. I have so many people telling me ‘just put it there and we’ll put it away later,’ but I know later is indefinite and could be a couple of years from now if I allow it.
As for the vhs tapes, I found out last week that my local high school will convert them for free. Now, they won’t be perfect since they’re done by students so I wouldn’t give them something like my wedding video, but personally I would be fine with them doing something like a birthday party. The kids need the experience and the teachers run out of material. I have a bunch of old performances I’m planning on having them convert probably to digital format so I could upload them to YouTube and have one less physical thing cluttering my home. Just a thought.
When you are ready to get those videos converted, I recommend Lotus Media. They are in Washington state, so it’s scary to mail them off, but I had no problems at all, results well worth it. Less expensive than I Memories, plus you have your own digital files, so you can (and I have) copy them into external hard drives, other computers, etc., so that I have several backup copies. It has been so great to see my mother (dead since 2001) and my grandparents (both died in 1987) as well as to see my sister’s kids when young, etc. I had converted a few at the local Walgreens, which gives you dvds and is pretty expensive, but this digital way of doing it is much better, I think.
You always make me feel so much better about how I’m doing! Right now I am clearing my craft room/office/guest room so our nephew can move in with us. My goal is to totally empty it so he feels at home and not just temporary. Oh my, I have so much stuff. But I’ve been going through things in other rooms and making new homes for everything. Plus lots has been leaving the house since I actually have to look at everything. It is starting to seem doable.
We are also looking to remodel our house in the near future including replacing all the flooring. I’m so overwhelmed by that! But you give me hope that it won’t be as bad as I’m thinking it will be. Thanks so much for all you do and please don’t stop!
“What do I do when I take something to the place where I’d look for it first and that place is a mess?” Finally ! Thank you for clearing this up. I’ve been asking myself that question ever since I started reading your blogs. I have 2 rooms that need decluttering and it seems like everytime I want to put something in its “home”, I’m confronted by another mess. Maybe now I can make some progress.
Ahhhhh….and I feel soooo complete. Great post!
Stuff shifting … story of my life!! Ugh. I’m trying to get rid of it.
Thank you for posting real pictures from your home.
The dust in your TV stand makes me love you even more than I already do.
I can’t keep a rosemary plant alive in my house to save my life, and here you have one neglected in the garage that looked absolutely lush. Oh, the irony! They must thrive on neglect! LOL
One of my favourite things about you is the realness. Thank you for posting the REAL pictures – the ones with the dust and the stuff tossed casually into the cabinet. I’m guessing you didn’t even notice it was dusty until you looked at the picture. I know I wouldn’t have…and it helps immensely to know that there are others like me in the world. Thank you for all you do. (Sidenote: I am a new mom to a 7-month-old, on maternity leave for another 6 months, and I always thought being a stay-at-home mom would mean I would have my ducks in a row. I mean, it would be SO much easier than teaching high-school English full-time, right?! How very wrong I was. We bought a new home last year, and between the limited mobility during my pregnancy, needing to reno some of the rooms before unpacking, and then having a newborn to care for, this house is in a constant state of chaos. I have rooms that are a hodge-podge of still-packed stuff, random furniture, and things I’ve put there because that’s their EVENTUAL home. This includes the room my son should be moving into…but can’t, because there’s no way his crib will fit in there let alone it be clean enough for a baby to live in. The rooms that aren’t a schmozzle are just a cluttered mess all the time, and the bits of progress I make always seem like two steps forward and one step back. This is compounded by the fact that my TPAD worsened about 1000% when I had a baby. I’ve lost track of whole days – sometimes multiple days – because there’s so much interruption to my sleep. I am trying to keep your “better than before” principle in mind and have been listening to your podcasts and books while I work. The container principle and the layers of a clean house have been really helpful. But, if you happen to be looking for podcast topics, I would love to hear your thoughts on getting control of one’s home during big life changes (eg. moving, becoming a mom, etc.) You could call it ‘Why Adulting is So Hard’. Kidding! (Sort of…) 🙂
Do you have a yard, or maybe someplace where you could plant a tree? I know it’s too late for the rosemary bush, but for the future…? That’s what I do when I’ve got a plant (because someone gave it to me! I don’t buy them myself); I’m not good with house plants; their chances are much better out in the yard.
But yeah, I’m often stymied by the “I have to do this before I can do that” dilemma . Thanks for the tips!
Brilliant!! Thank you so much!! This has always been an issue for me!! After hours of decluttering, I would end up with several big messes and everything looking worse!! Thank you for being you!!
Well thank you for this perfectly-timed blog post. I’ve been following for years I think and still so far to go but this post is exactly what I needed to read before cleaning off a table that I know will bring more questions than answers.
I like this story. Filming the process would have been nice. I would like to see updated videos.
Three years after downsizing, I am still struggling with way too much stuff and feel like I have done the easy stuff. (even though every bag of groceries brings more packaging trash with it.) Maybe I am just stuff shifting at this point. There are days when I do this and I feel like I am just going around my house in circles all day long, not seeing any progress. However, if I look back further, there is progress – my living room and kitchen are mostly functional now. I think I would have given up by now, but I am working my way through your second book and the blog posts keep me going.
Stuff shifting.
A brilliant description.
I do that, too. And naming it will encourage me to stop.
Thank you!
That is so much like me. Sometimes I feel like I am playing Tetris with extremely large objects.
I noticed when I clean the garage, my Fitbit thinks that I’m climbing five flights of stairs. I finally realized that it is because I am stepping over large objects.