Ok.... taking a break from my decluttering project to respond and consider. I just listed 25 books for sale on Ebay, and more to follow. I'll see if I can get them sold and try to recoup a little cash; if I can't, they'll get donated. Also found some stuff that I'd bought for a project and never completed; rather than move it around and whatever, I'm just going to do the project. So for now that stuff is moved out onto the dining room table for completion this afternoon/tomorrow, and then everything left will be tossed (except for the sewing machine, of course).
I think part of the reason this room has gotten so unruly is that, well--it is small. I moved into this 950 SF house (3 SMALL BR, 1 BA, no garage) from an almost 2000 SF house (4 large BR, 2 BA) with a 2 car garage. I got rid of a ton of stuff before I moved, more once I moved, and I keep thinking I'm going to buy a bigger place... but I really like what this tiny PAID FOR place is doing for my budget, so in the last couple years I've been leaning more toward staying here. But of course, this room has just gotten worse. (Interestingly, this room at about 9x9 feet is just a little bigger than my walk-in closet in Texas....). And the other reason is just inertia. It's easy to pitch stuff in here, and looking at the mess it's easy to say "Meh, I'll do it later, I'll just close the door." (A good reason to live alone). Anyway. Excuses, explanations, whatever. I still don't know what the hell to do with the bicycle.
I'm sort of observing myself thru this process, too. I'm a big fan of the "Hoarders" shows--they fascinate me. I just can't understand the motivation of someone holding on to a used napkin and debating with themselves about whether or not to keep it "because it might be useful someday." I scoff at that... yet I'm going thru some art supplies thinking "well, I might get back into watercolors again...." Granted, it's not a filthy piece of trash, but a new in-package water color set, but there may be similarities in that motivation. (I haven't decided to keep or not yet, for the record). Still, I have no trouble getting rid of other stuff, so I don't think I've hit terminal hoarder level yet.
Edith you are an intelligent, good hearted woman. But damn, just clean up your fucking room already.
This makes me laugh. I'm working on it, Dad!!
You remind me so much of my DD27 (xNTJ.) She is always so hard on herself, even though her overall functioning is almost always very high. She also always loved crafts and had a messy room.
Yeah, I'm an ENTJ (though I score just over the line into E-land) and I've always loved creating things, whether making things with my hands, cooking, or making up stories and writing them down. And I can be VERY hard on myself. On the one hand, I'd love to have a house that is perfectly organized, perfectly minimal.... my mom's house was like that growing up, and it was always a struggle between the two of us--while my projects and things never strayed out of my room or my basement project corner, it drove her absolutely nuts for me to have my stuff out of place. I think as an adult, with my own space, it's felt good to have "permission" to have my stuff any way I want to... but at the same time, my mom's voice in my head has probably made me keep in relegated in a single room and not all over the house. In my other, bigger house, I had an office/project room, too, but it was a lot bigger with a lot bigger closet and built in shelves. So I had a lot of stuff in there, I just had a place to put it.
One of the joys of late mid-life, which I must admit I haven't allowed myself to fully experience, is you can allow yourself the luxury of once again playing at the activities that were in your portfolio at age 10, or age 6, or even age 3. IMO, another important function of engaging in crafts such as knitting is that they are within the practice of self-nurturing, or taking care of your own juvenile feminine with your own adult feminine energy. Our culture, or any other culture which promotes masculine energy in all things, does not always make it easy for us to give ourselves permission to engage in less than efficient activities such as these, but I think this is simply another example of over applying reductionist thinking to the complexity of life in full.
I think this is really true. I appreciate a lot more the "zone" that my mind can wander into when I'm engaging it in some simple knitting, crocheting, or other cooking or crafty project. I think it's essential to me to have these things--I spend much of my day dealing with stressful situation, large sums of money, and people who are upset for one reason or another. (Just this past Wednesday I received as part of an investigation pictures of a person killed in an auto accident, pics of them removing her from the car, loading her into the ambulance, close up pics of her injuries.... I need a good bit of mental rest after seeing something like that, and it's nice to sort of fall into a "single crochet, double crochet" or "knit one, purl one," and hey this scarf is getting longer and look, I do have control over something in the world. I also find that engaging that part of my mind on projects allows my mind to wander in other ways that helps with my creativity on my writing side. And yeah--there's also that "hey, I'm 9 years old and got a new box of Crayolas--64 colors!"
if you’re keeping everything I think one huge bookcase or uniform wall shelving to put all the books and papers together and something similar for the crafts would greatly reduce the clutter factor.
Yeah, I don't want to go out and spend a bunch of money for stuff to store my stuff. But I think I probably need a bigger bookcase. Not to mention the shelves of the current one are bowing under the weight. But I really don't to get more stuff in my quest to have less (more organized) stuff. I'm channeling George Carlin here:
That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.
As I've been tossing things and listing things for sale on eBay, I keep having this thought that "well, I can just replace it if I need it." I thought about this piece in The New York Times or The Atlantic from a few years ago (I may have been directed over there by someone on these boards, now that I think about it) that talked about how minimalism itself can be a class signifier--basically there's an idea that you can be so wealthy you can have nothing (because the moment you need it you can buy it and just give it away when you're done with it). I think about my farmer grandfather who kept LOTS of stuff because he "might need it someday" (and often he did--he was very resourceful with the various things he kept), or my grandmother making quilts from bits of old clothing and left over bits from the garment factory up the road, things like that.
Anyway... the project continues. More pictures in the next day or so.