In keeping with my goal for this year to improve my physical environment, I put on the schedule to post about decluttering today. When I saw this topic on my calendar, I was filled with dread. I hate decluttering. I am a hoarder. I have ADHD. My executive dysfunction is in peak display all over my home. However, I know that I must work on it if I ever hope to have a better life.
Why do I hate decluttering? Because people tend to equate "declutter" with discarding. And, I hate to throw things out. Not trash - I'm not that kind of hoarder. But "Stuff" is triggering. I buy things for a reason. I spend my hard-earned money to purchase things I like and want. The idea of throwing them out (or donating, or selling, or recycling) freezes me where I stand. I can't do it. And usually there's no reason to. But I have legitimately outgrown my office/craft room. So it's time to get rid of some stuff. The question is, what do I let go of?
My current goal (according to my husband) is to clear the dining room of my Cricut, Silhouette Cameo, printer, and laminator. I brought my cameo downstairs to make some planner stickers in November or December. Then I bought a new printer since my "sticker printer" I bought a year ago was a piece of trash that kept disconnecting from wifi and printed poorly. (Did I get rid of the problematic printer? Of course not. It's still taking up half my desk in the office.) Then, I watched a video on how to make floating tabs for my planner and dug out my laminator from the office and brought that to the dining room as well. I had a lot of stuff down there, so I bought another 3-tier rolling cart to keep my supplies and unused equipment on. I was inspired by all the videos and Black Friday sales on Cricut, so I bit the bullet and bought an Explore Air 2. So I added that to the dining room table. In order to use it, I had to move my Cameo from the table to the bench seat, of course. Along with the Cricut, I bought more supplies which came in a sizable box. The box went on the cart, but I honestly don't even know if the machine would fit there when not in use because I haven't tried putting it away. I have a mountain of half used vinyl rolls from Hobby Lobby from making my mom & I different things with Iron-on in December. Some are on the cart, some are scattered on the table. It's a complete disaster down there.
Why don't I just clean it up? Because that stuff belongs in my office, which is currently overrun with bushels of miscellaneous other crap. Most recently, I decided to bag each skein of sock yarn or skeins of lace weight for shawls into individual clear plastic drawstring project bags. I bought 100, I've used probably 60 so far, and I'm nowhere near done with it. I haven't figured out how to store or display them yet. I would like to maybe hang them in my office as inspiration to finish a project so that I can choose another skein for the next pair of socks or shawl. So they are all over the office. I had half of them in a basket, but it was teetering on top of a pile and crashed over sometime in the past couple days.
The closest I've gotten to decluttering in there was throwing out a few mostly-done sweaters that I had no idea of what pattern they were. I got rid of some yarn I knew without-a-doubt I wouldn't use (Pomp-a-Doodle was such a bad idea). I threw out a knitting loom that had pegs broken off of and that I'd already purchased a replacement for. (The replacement is in it's box in the living room where I dropped it when I walked in from the store with it back in August or September. I HAD to have it right away, then lost all desire to use it.) Again, trash isn't a problem - I will throw that out without issue. Or if I know I'm not going to deal with it like those sweaters. All that work down the drain, but I knew I wasn't going to invest the time to figure out how to finish them. But when it comes to organizing what's left, I get overwhelmed. I think that the right bins or boxes or jars or shelves are going to make a difference, so I decorated the room with a ton of cube shelving and closed cabinets with shelves on top. And inside some of them there are organized bins or jars or other organizing tools that are in use. But a majority of the cubes are empty and 2 of the cabinets I think are empty or have unnecessary stuff in them that I should probably go thru and discard.
So this week's goal is to get to decluttering the office so that I can put together my new yoga ball chair and fit it at my desk, and empty out the cabinets so that I can make use of them to store the stuff I actually use. The January goal is to get the dining room table cleared off and all my vinyl crafting stuff back into the office. Wish me luck!
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