I know how hard it is to declutter while moving houses. I’ve done it the wrong way several times! I don’t write a lot about moving strategies because I have lived in the same house since before I started my deslobification process.
I’m excited to share this reader story with you. I absolutely love hearing how the basic, game-changing decluttering strategies that have worked to declutter my home also make moving so much better!
Hi Dana (Nony),
I just wanted to send you a quick e-mail to say how happy I am that I found you when I needed you most!I started listening to your podcasts while cleaning up and I always felt like “Yes! She gets it!” I think I must have read over 1,000 articles on cleaning/organizing but still felt like I needed to figure out a better way. I have literally been looking for ways to be more organized for years. In fact, in a recent purge, I found an old Oprah magazine with the words “Cut Clutter Out Forever” splashed across the cover – that was about 5 years old. Obviously, it didn’t work for me. 🙂I started implementing some of your methods and before I knew it, I was running my dishwasher every night and unloading it every morning, making beds and wiping sinks – my house was looking and feeling tidier! I also started doing more decluttering projects and was feeling great!Then my hubby started interviewing for jobs out of state. I was a maniac about getting rid of things we didn’t need. The Goodwill people knew me by first name after 3 weeks of nearly daily donations. I also organized drawers and closets, and helped my husband to organize the garage so that we didn’t move a bunch of junk.We just moved and had our boxes delivered last Friday.Here is why I am so happy – this move is not like any other I’ve had so far (this is move # 6 in 13 years, so I thought I was pretty good at it):As I’m unpacking, I’m putting things where they belong. Right now. NOT just stacking them on the counter and getting completely overwhelmed. Even if it means walking to another room because something got randomly packed.I use ONE empty box next to the box I am unpacking to hold all the extra packing paper after unwrapping each item. When the packing paper box is full, I take it immediately to the garage. The newly empty box turns into my new packing paper box. Container concept. Woot woo!This is revolutionary! I’ve always felt so overwhelmed and out of control even during the best moves. This way, it feels way more manageable. I’m doing the same amount of work but because I’m using your methods on how not to make a bigger mess and am applying it to the unpacking, I feel happy and not like a crazed weasel. I’m sure I’m much nicer to be around during this move.It is so awesome to see the boxes disappearing and things being where they belong instead of just piled in the room where they will languish (procrasticlutter).I’m only on my first week of unpacking, but this already feels so much better than any other time I have moved.I just had to let you know that this is WORKING and I’m thrilled! I already ordered your book so the timing could not be better – I should be done unpacking and I’ll be ready to improve my daily routines.Thank you so much for sharing your heart with you and may God Bless you. I truly feel like this is your ministry!Hugs,A Reader in Transition
Mentioned in this letter were:
Well now I have to comment, because less than two months after I started (yes, I went back in my browser history to check) I have officially read your ENTIRE blog from the beginning! I desperately wish I had read a letter like this before my recent move this past summer, but I am definitely taking it to heart for the future. Taking things straight from the boxes to their home would be so much less stressful than getting everything out at once.
But hey, come to think of it, I’m SURE there are a couple of boxes that are still taped up and shoved in the closets in the guest room! What kind of slob would I be if I didn’t have some packed up boxes hiding somewhere, a mere 4 months after moving?
In all seriousness though, Dana, thank you SO MUCH for this blog. I’m definitely going to buy your books to read as I travel over the holidays.
I’ll spare you my entire life story, but like so many other readers, I’ve felt such a sense of *relief* as I read about your journey from the beginning. Plenty of times, I’ve been able to see that “I’m not alone,” in the sense that I’ve been fortunate to know other folks who really struggle with housework. I know friends in real life who are honest with each other about this, and I’ve been part of online communities where people talk openly about it. I’ve seen many, many celebratory “before and after” posts that are very helpful and great inspiration in the moment… but I’ve never seen the *whole* story of *one* ordinary individual who *figured it out,* who *got the house under control* in a meaningful, long-term kind of way.
It’s astounding to actually feel that I have *hope*. And it’s not an unrealistic, idealized hope–it’s not “someday when XYZ happens, I’ll be perfect!” It’s a grounded, rational, manageable hope: that if I keep doing these habits, if I keep the Container Concept and the Visibility Rule in mind, if I declutter in ways that work for me, if I *just* *don’t* *stop*, I too can have a livable home. I don’t need a fancy system or a team of professional organizers or a camera crew–I can do it myself! I can get to the point where being able to open my door to guests is the norm, instead of a two-week endeavor of panic. I can learn to recover from routine-free summers and big holiday messes in a few days of concentrated effort, instead of months of procrastinating and stewing.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I’m so glad I discovered your blog on September 19, 2019. 😛
@Suz, I completely agree with you! Seeing Nonny’s whole story is sooooooo helpful.
Bah, typos: Nony, not Nonny.
I have been reading your blog from the beginning for almost a week now. I’m up to 2014. I love reading the story of how you found your habits and how to work with your life and how your brain works. It has opened a window for me for how to find my own workable path.
My first non-negotiable daily task was: pick up the bathroom floor (mostly kleenex).
Then after a few days this inspired me to wash and return to their proper rooms, my four small wastebaskets. (Kitchen has a big one.). Now the bathroom kleenex (usually) lands in the wastebasket, which makes it a little easier to clear it out of the bathroom (empty wastebasket daily).
And that inspires me to go around to the other three rooms and empty their wastebaskets daily. Regularly emptied wastebaskets = no overflowing heaps of kleenex on the floor to be picked up with much moaning and groaning.
My second non-negotiable daily task is: make my mother’s bed. She lives with me, but is too unsteady to make the bed. Plus she really likes a freshly-made bed so it’s something nice I can do for her. I’m not yet ready to put my own bed on the daily making list, but I’m ok with letting my life tell me when it’s time to add it.
Today I was inspired to make a list. I will build the habits for these tasks one at a time, not try to do them all immediately. But here’s what I will work on developing (the things that seem most urgent in my life, and most like I need a reminder):
Daily List:
* Pick up bathroom floor
* Make my mother’s bed
* Clear kitchen hotspot
* Process mail
* Wash dishes
Weekly List:
* Do laundry
* Sweep
* Clean bathroom
* Shop
* Declutter
I think I’m going to start by aiming for Saturday as my weekly task day and see how that goes. I see how it works in your life to make a separate day for each weekly task. But I like to clean in the daylight, and I work outside the home during the days. Saturday is the day I have energy. Well, Sunday too, but I like to have Sunday clear of things so I can enjoy the last weekend day before going back to work.
I’ll see how it goes (building one task at a time), and if I don’t like it, I’ll try something else (which I learned from you).
Thank you for the wonderful blog!
I also found you a while back, and have been helped a LOT, especially by the container concept! This post on moving inspired me to write. I’ve moved a lot. At one point (quite a few years ago!) I was 32 and had lived in at least that many different houses, though it was only when I started moving as an adult that I realized just how much hard work it is! Now I have back problems which severely limit my activities, and that makes moving even more difficult.
So, about a year and a half ago, I moved across country to be nearer to my two older daughters (youngest is mentally handicapped and lives with me). I decluttered before the move, taking several pickup loads of stuff to thrift shops, and more to the dump. There was still stuff to get rid of as I slowly unpacked here.
A few months later, my middle daughter came for a short visit, and helped me declutter some more (she had just started a business organizing for people).
Recently I went through my books and got rid of over half of them. Now, there is something about this house that I haven’t mentioned – it’s an old farmhouse in need of a ton of work. I knew it needed work when I bought it, but I loved the location, and it was cheap enough that I was able to pay cash for it (I think being in debt might be one of the worst types of ‘clutter’ there is!). The work has been slowly getting done as finances allow. Initially, all the plumbing under the house had to be fixed, because it had been allowed to freeze.
Then the house I’d sold was paid off in a lump sum, so in a few days this whole house will be getting rewired, and the downstairs completely gutted and dry walled. Guess what this means?!? If you guessed that everything has to be moved out of the house, stored, and a couple of weeks later, moved back in, you would have guessed correctly! We aren’t going far – our belongings will be stored in a barn on the property, and daughter and I will camp in a travel trailer in the yard. But I have to pack everything, again. (We will have help for actually moving things – bless the men at our new church!).
So I am taking advantage of this opportunity to do still more decluttering. And MORE decluttering! I think by the time we are finished, our stuff should fit neatly in a Tiny House! The container concept has been extremely helpful in helping me make decisions about what stays and what goes. For instance, the books that I mentioned? I have three bookcases, plus a large desk with two hutches, and the books filled all of those and were overflowing on top of things. (I had left two large built-in bookcases in the old house). Now they fit neatly. Of course, my Kindle is still overflowing! But that is much easier to move than boxes of books.
And when we moved, I had a whole bunch of fabric left from being the chief costumer for a tiny rural community theater group. It hurts to get rid of perfectly good fabric, and I still have some overflow, but no longer an entire closet stuffed full. I’ve made a rule that I can’t buy any more fabric until there is room in one of the two boxes I’ve allotted.
I could go on,but the biggest container of all is sitting out in the front yard, waiting for the cheap old paneling and many-times-wallpapered sheetrock to come out of the house – a great big dumpster. I am somewhat tempted to put more than sheetrock and paneling into it, LOL!
All that just to say, thank you for good advice and encouragement – and for being part of the inspiration for my daughter’s organizing business!
I’ve been following you since you were anonymous! ❤️❤️❤️ And I’ve benefitted greatly from your honesty and advice. I just went through a 3 year transition where our family moved across state, downsizing from 6,000plus square feet to les than 1/3. During that time there were multiple heaps of items that had to be sorted that were not ours;) due to family obligations. Your methods worked during such overwhelming times! When we were on double-sized dumpster number three in the driveway of our current farmhouse, digging through mounds of garbage and plastic items that had been in storage for years in the barn we “inherited”, I remember thinking, “I can’t store items and leave this type of mess for my children and grandchildren. I love them too much!” As I go through closets and drawers and nooks and crannies in our much smaller home, I think about that day and think about those I love. Stuff only matters if it is able to be used, enjoyed, etc. and what’s out of sight is NEVER out of mind. I realize from this transition that I was always in a state of panic over responsibility I felt regarding the (many) attics in our former home! I can truly rest with less. What a blessing! Thank you!
I used your declutter methods prior to a move this summer.
Weeks before the move I started throwing away trash. Then came decluttering. While I can’t say I was systematic, we essentially decluttered twice. First without packing stuff up and then a second look through before boxing it up.
I didn’t want to move into a new place and throw away stuff upon opening boxes.
For the most part it worked! On arrival we were able to declutter the kids toys a bit further – it was hard to push them when we were leaving behind so much of what we loved. Other than that almost everything found its new home in our new home 🙂