Cleaning & Organizing
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Feeling like trashing or donating everything and starting clean!
My mom is a pack rat and I grew up in a cluttered environment. My parents bought everything and never took care of anything.
5 years into marriage, my house is starting to pile up. I buy way too much. I have since stopped the buying but I am stuck with so much stuff. I just consigned a ton of stuff and donated a bunch of others. I still have so much work to do!
I really want to live a simple clean life.
Can anyone give me some tips, like the two below to help me clean up my act? Also, any great books out there about simple living?
Instead of buying books, get them from the library.
Buying used children's toys and clothing a good portion of the time.
Re: Feeling like trashing or donating everything and starting clean!
My DH & I work really hard to live simply and cleanly, here are a few things we do:
Limit the number of hangers in your home. When I buy a new shirt an old one must go to make room for the new one. If the shirt is tattered it becomes a rag, if it is still good it gets donated. This ensures that you like and wear the clothes you have.
If you don't use it within a year, get rid of it.
Have a place for everything and keep everything in its place, that way if you buy something new--you have to really need it or want it, because I have to have a place for it.
Only bring things into the house that you love and want to display, have sentimental value and you want to display, or will use. When you keep only the things that you love you give them a place of honor in your home. When you have a bunch of clutter the things you love also become meaningless clutter.
No one trick wonders in the kitchen. Things like bread makers and popcorn machines only do one thing & take up space. Popcorn can be made in a pot on the stove, bread can be made in the oven, lemons can be zested with a knife. I have only 1 exception to this rule and that is my garlic press. I love garlic and put it in everything so it is a highly useful tool to me. If you keep a one trick wonder make sure it is something tht you use frequently.
Hope this helps!
For us it has worked best to start small. work room to room and really look at stuff together. We each brought int he mess so we each work on getting it under control.
We each have a tub that stuff we can't part with goes in, mostly memorabelia type stuff. From there we sorted for purpuse or room.
Good Luck. I just got done purging over 10 trash bags worth of stuff and still feel like we have way too much more to go through.
One incentive for me is keeping track of the items (and their relative $$ value) each time I make a donation. This amount can be deducted from our taxes under "charitable donations," and every little bit really adds up at the end of the year. (The receipts, of course, are filed neatly with my tax info.) Incentive= I do it more often
Oh! And I found that if I had a tote bag designated specifically for items to donate, it made it easy to just toss things in there as I'm cleaning, and when it's full, take it to Goodwill/Thrift store.
I grew up in a VERY cluttered environment, so I know the struggle of trying to live cleanly and simply. Good luck!