What Do I Do With All Of This Stuff?

I have been in bed sick with the flu for the last couple of days, and nothing makes you appreciate good health like hugging the toilet for 12 hours straight! But I digress. Now I will continue with my regular posts.

If you've followed my advice in my last post, you have now taken out the trash, taken the dirty dishes to the kitchen, put away your clothes, and put away everything that has a home. Some of you are actually finished with your cleaning now. Yay! Just dust and vacuum and you're good to go!

However, if you're like me, you still have a pile of stuff that doesn't have homes. (Most of mine is my newly acquired Christmas presents.) This is called clutter. Clutter can eat you alive. It can actually cause you to feel depressed and drain your energy. It is not healthy for us.

The common way of thinking is, "I only have to be more organized." But ladies, you cannot organize clutter! You can only get rid of it! If you are out of space in your closets, dressers, cabinets, and drawers for your new things, then it's time to get rid of some old things! Nothing feels as good as a good purge. Being able to let go of the excess things that we don't use or don't enjoy or don't love anymore is very freeing.

But I also understand this can be very emotional for a lot of people. You've held on to certain things since high school or even earlier. Or your now-deceased grandmother gave you that outfit you've always hated, and it seems like giving it away would disrespect her memory. Perhaps you have a family heirloom that gives you the creeps. (Empire style, anyone?) But learning to let go will free you up, not only physically, but also emotionally and even spiritually.

While your great-grandmother's wedding corsage may not make the first round of cuts, I'm sure there are lots of things that you know you should and could get rid of without much guilt. We are going to use the simple three-box system. Get three boxes, bags, plastic totes, whatever you prefer. You are going to separate your stuff into three piles: keep, donate, throw away.

Now, don't go pulling apart the whole room! Only go one closet, one shelf, one drawer at a time until you're done. Only pull out what you know you'll be able to finish with in the amount of time you have. In fact, you may want to start with your pile of things without homes.

Once you have finished an area and weeded out the "donates" and the "throw aways", return your keeps to the same area to get it out of your way. Unless you already have a place for it somewhere else, just put it back where it came from for the time being.

Tomorrow, we will look more closely at determining what to get rid of and what to keep. For now, just repeat after me: "A place for everything, and everything in its place." :)