In my dream world, I live in an immaculate, yet cozy home filled only with carefully curated items that I love and that have meaning and purpose. Everything unsightly would live inside a charming box or be hidden away in neatly organized cabinets. Clutter would not exist.
Unfortunately, my reality does not look like this at all, despite reading many issues of Real Simple magazine and ogling Container Store catalogs. We just have way too much STUFF. I don't try to collect things, but somehow our apartment feels filled to the brim. We've made some headway over the years, but not enough for me to feel truly happy with our space. Part of the problem is that for a long time I thought we would move "soon", originally because I wanted to live in the city, and more recently, because of a dramatic rent increase. But alas, I've finally accepted that we will probably be here for a while and it's time to make this apartment a real home. During my wonderemployment, I've tried to devote more time towards organizing our place, with some success. This last week, I've stepped it up even more, knowing that my time will be a lot more restricted in a few weeks.
Here are a few of my house cleaning highlights:
Magazine Donation
My boss often brings magazines in from home, and many days I will grab one for the commute home. I only return them half the time since no one else at my office seems to enjoy them. I don't know if other people have this problem, but I feel really guilty about recycling magazines. I love reading magazines, so it just seems like a waste to throw them in the blue bin where no one will enjoy them ever again. The result of this guilt is that they sit around forever, weighing down the poor shelf of our Ikea LACK coffee table. I recently realized the perfect home for old magazines is hospitals and doctors offices. After noticing the dearth of quality reading material at my doctor's office, I asked the receptionist if they accepted magazine donations. He enthusiastically said yes, so yesterday I brought a big box over (and got a free flu shot too!).
Over the years I've gotten pretty good about consistently getting rid of clothes that I don't fit or don't like anymore, but there are a lot of items that fall in the middle ground of "it still fits, and it looks alrighhhtt...I guess" or worse, "but I used to LOVE this!". I've been trying to get better at purging more of those iffy items. My friend Jessica hosts an awesome clothing swap a couple times a year, which is the perfect place to bring those clothes, but more often than not I end up bringing even more home! So this month, I decided to just be aggressive with the purging and take the items straight to Crossroads, a local consignment shop (first time trying that!), or Goodwill. In the process of sorting out my clothes I tried on a few things I forgot that I do really like! That's always nice.
Saying Goodbye to Wedding Paraphernalia
As we were planning the wedding, I was already worried about waste. It's part of the reason why we didn't have favors, and chose completely reused and recyclable centerpieces. But despite the best intentions, we do still have boxes of waste: extra programs, extra invitations, extra craft supplies, etc. It felt sad and wrong to throw it out right away, but now I have more emotional distance from it. It's still not all sorted through yet because keeping craft and gift wrap supplies organized is a whole different beast, but I at least managed to get through the wedding-specific stuff by creating a shadow box of some of the paper goods, and getting rid of the extras. It satisfied my sentimental need to save stuff, and my more practical need to make more space.
Managing Money
Organizing finances is a little less tangible since it's outside the home, but it's nonetheless very important and has been on my to-do list for a while. I have too many accounts floating around at various institutions because of different needs at different life stages, and it has only gotten more complex since Curtis and I got married and opened joint accounts. I finally went to the credit union today to move some things around, and make an appointment to sit down with a financial planner. I really can't say enough good things about using a credit union, specifically San Francisco Federal Credit Union. They have great customer service and make you feel part of a community. When Curtis and I come in, we have a "guy" and he knows our name. They always have little parties with free snacks and raffles to sweeten your experience. (Today I got some mints, an envelope opener, and Post-its.) Because they are part of a bigger credit union co-op, you end up with all the flexibility and convenience of bigger banks and just as many ATMs. I promise they do not pay me to say this... I just really like banking there!
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Organizing Files
Paper, paper, paper. As diligent as I try to be about going through and recycling mail, we still end up with little piles of paper everywhere. Mostly they are things we keep around because they have some personal information on them. We put them into a "shred pile", but we don't actually have a shredder...so that is the next item on the shopping list! For the things we do want to keep, I finally spent a few hours categorizing them, and putting them into file folders. Novel idea, I know. I'm not sure what took me so long to accomplish this, but for some reason I got some motivation on my birthday to do it.
Greeting Card Recycling
When I was kid I liked to save every single card I received. I loved to look at them and to be honest, they made me feel good about myself. As I've gotten older, I still appreciate cards, as it feels more rare to get them, but I am much less attached to them as objects. I have a special box where I keep the cards that Curtis and I have exchanged, and a board where I keep cards from friends and family displayed. But there is limited space for all of that, and I recently found a way to recycle the excess. St. Jude's Ranch for Children accepts greeting card donations, which they then use to create and sell new cards. I still like to keep cards with personal, meaningful messages, but this is a great way to give new life to cards that are simply signed with a name, or from people you hardly know. I found this card-recycling program on Clutter Free Organizing Services' website, which has a lot of resources for recycling household items and decluttering in general. They are based in the Bay Area, which is extra helpful.
We've still got a long way to go to turn our apartment into the nice, neat home we want it to be, but every step counts. It feels great to have a little more control over my life and surroundings. Now if only I could muster the energy to work on it every day (I did not inherit that trait from my mom sadly). If you've got any good strategies for controlling clutter and keeping your life more organized, please share!
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