It’s finally time! After over a decade in my house and a lifetime of clutter, it’s time to start decluttering. I’ve read many books, including Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up as well as Margareta Magnusson’s The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. I need to do a step-by-step approach. I’ve done certain areas of my house, like my kitchen cabinets, my bedroom, and my one bathroom already, but I really need to go through my entire house and every single one of my possessions.
When you’re several decades old, this is a really daunting task. You have a lifetime of accumulation. This is true especially when you’re someone like me—who loves to shop, who loves kitchen gadgets, special items, and special clothing. It really starts to pile up. This is also true if you have extra hobbies as well, and I have more hobbies than I can even name.
So this year, I decided enough is enough; it’s time to declutter. Between decluttering, donating, selling items on eBay, and throwing things in the trash, this is going to be a long but much-needed journey. If you’re like me, you don’t know where to start. I was searching for different tools, watching different YouTube videos, and gathering as much information on the decluttering process as I could possibly think of. Talk about information overload!
That’s when I came across this 52-card deck by Nikki Boyd. This gives you one task per week to go through every single part of your house and every single item in your house, room by room. Now again, there are different theories on how you should declutter, and for me, I think the room-by-room approach makes sense. I work two jobs—one of them full-time and one of them part-time. I also do volunteer work and, as an independent person, I also have to do all of my daily and weekly chores. Everything in the house is my responsibility. I also tend to the needs of my two special-needs senior cats, which also take up a lot of time and money, but I love them anyway.
Starting with these cards, the very first thing I’m starting with is card number one: decluttering your entryway. Now, I live in a small condo, so I don’t have a hall or a closet or really much of an entryway at all. It’s just where my door opens up at the bottom of my stairs. What I do have is a set of hooks on the wall for coats, hats, and other miscellaneous hanging items. I have shoes by the door that I need to grab quickly. I also have a set of key hooks as well as a set of three drawers where I often put things on top. This is a great place to start because when you come into a cluttered home, it does give you some stress.
That’s really the reason I want to do this decluttering—just to relieve the stress and the burden and just feel less chaotic in my life. I’m a very busy person with very limited free time, and the last thing I want to do is come home and have more work to do. So, this is my journey.
I started with a coat rack. I took the winter coats away, since it’s spring in the state where I live, and put those in the wash so I could wash them and hang them up properly where they live in the off-season. Then, I left just my hats, my raincoat, and my lightweight coat so that they’re ready for spring. Regarding my shoes, I’m going to donate some of these rain boots that don’t fit right and probably try to sell a pair of shoes on eBay that I think might be worth something. Finally, for the set of drawers, I cleaned off the top, removed some extra packages, and reorganized the drawers one by one.
This whole process didn’t take very long, but it did take me several weeks to get the motivation to even start this project, which is why I’d like to document it in this blog. My Inspiring Things is going to be about a bunch of different things in my life since, again, I have a lot of hobbies and interests and tips and tricks that I want to share. However, this whole home decluttering project is definitely going to be a huge topic, as well as the selling of some of these items on eBay. I have a little experience from the past but would love to grow my eBay store as well, just as a way to make sure the items find a new home where they’ll be loved and appreciated, but also to get them out of my home so somebody else can enjoy them while they’re just collecting dust.
Join me in this 52-week decluttering session that will most likely take me longer than 52 weeks, as I often go on vacation or have weeks where I simply am not going to have time to tackle one of these cards. There are also going to be a couple of cards—since I’ve kind of looked through the deck ahead of time—that I think are going to take me longer than a week. Especially because, as I said, I have multiple things on my calendar every week as it is, so I don’t have unlimited amounts of time. Oh, if only I had the time to do this all at once!
Please join me as I continue in this journey, as well as writing about all kinds of other fun topics and all the things that inspire me. Thanks for coming along!
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