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Amy’s husband brought a lot of sentimental items when they combined households, but she has learned to handle it well. She’s now tackling her garage/storage that she wants to clear so she can park a new car.
In this episode we discuss:
- Finding a new Clutter Threshold after combining households in her late 40’s
- Letting go of “valuable” and sentimental items out of storage that are never used
- Getting her husband to let go of the empty tv boxes!
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**DECLUTTERING FOR OTHERS BY DEBULKING**
Amy talked about her plan to rebox the speakers her husband is thinking of selling to debulk his part of the clutter, and Dana said that will probably lessen his overwhelm. That tactic worked for us.
About a year ago, I took advantage of Spouse’s trip to Comicon to declutter a layer in our bedroom. I got virtually everything out of “my” corner of the room, and I decluttered our bathroom.
Then I looked at “his” corner of the room. First, I threw away obvious trash and put away easy things. Then I noted boxes of chaos that could be tidied and debulked.
I sorted his things into nice clear bins and sturdy boxes with labels: Games; Cycling; Clothes; Electronics; Model trains. I put the ones I could fit onto the top shelf in the closet, then restacked the rest into a smaller, vacuumed and dusted space in the same corner.
He was so very pleased with the tidiness of the room when he came home! Once I showed him where all his stuff was and explained the kinds of things I’d thrown away, he was comfortable with what I’d done.
In the months since, he’s been well- motivated to declutter the closet and bedroom corner on his own. He got rid of about 50% of his clothes, moved all the games into real homes in the game room, and went thoroughly through his cycling stuff and electronics.
He’s now talking about the things he uncovered that he’s going to try using and donate if they don’t work for him anymore.
He’s mentioned repeatedly that me decluttering my stuff and debulking and labeling his stuff made it much easier for him to see smaller non-overwhelming chunks and feel that he could tackle them.
I highly recommend this tactic for helping someone who is overwhelmed – as long as you honor their belongings and can help them feel comfortable about it.
**DECLUTTERING BY FEATURING**
34:45 Amy talked about honoring her husband’s collections and her plushie by featuring them as decor.
We had already been doing this with Christmas decor by rotating themes from year to year – Santas, nutcrackers, angels, and snowmen – and by having smaller theme trees – birds and fantasy beings.
But this year, I found a way to also use that tactic to fight Seasonal Affective Disorder. The last half of winter is extremely hard for me, and the techniques I’ve tried in recent years have been of only minimal help.
Realizing that my son and I have collected quite a bit of dragon decor that doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves, I instituted Dragon Season from January 15 to February 28.
We had:
– Dragon fountain, which my mother had made for me, on top of the piano
– Plush baby dragon in a basket
– 2 dragon figures on top of bookcases
– Cardboard dragon sculpture my son had made on top of bookcase
– Dragon ornaments on an ornament tree
– Dragon towels
– Dragon hot pads
– Dragon cup & mugs
– Dragon games: Tsuro & Wyrmspan
– How to Train Your Dragon movies
– Dragon books: The Bakery Dragon & Temeraire series
Having a separate season focused on so many of our favorite things was so much fun! The dragon decor cheered me up, and the themed activities really elevated the whole season, just like Halloween and Christmas.
This experiment worked out so well that I’ve declared that we’re doing a similar thing in my secondary S.A.D. season. August 1 to September 15 will be Ocean Season!
I plan to have:
– Movies like Splash and the Pirates of the Caribbean series
– Books like the Earthsea Trilogy and Hunt for Red October
– Games like Oceans and Finspan
– Decor like my sea creature ornaments, blown glass jellyfish, and large ceramic tropical fish
– Ocean tableware like a ceramic tropical fish-shaped covered dish and sand-dollar coasters
Having time set aside to feature more of my favorite things, plus fun activities to remind me of a favorite setting now far away, will hopefully be a great way to endure the oppressive heat of late summer.
I’ve also noticed that actually featuring our collected items instead of just stashing them away has made me think more critically about which items display or function well in which places and whether I really need to collect more or not. Having a full ornament tree seems to suggest that I don’t *need* more dragon ornaments….