Decluttering tip #25: Find a kid who likes Elmo.

We started phase I of the Great Closet Cleanout (I'll post about that later). Among the many oh-so-interesting things we found were:

Baby clothes

Baby bottle and accessories

Diapers

Baby shoes! Oh they're so cute.

Wait.....

Does my closet know something I don't? No, it doesn't. Sorry to get you excited!

Friends of ours moved abroad last year and left their son's outgrown things with us, knowing we were planning on having kids sometime soon-ish. They don't take up much room so I'm content to hang on to them. Unless I find someone else who needs them or would enjoy them. 

The box 'o baby stuff also contained this:

Item 135, an Elmo book.

As it happens, our next door neighbor's 16 m/o son is CRAZY about Elmo. All he can manage to say is "Memo" instead of "Elmo" but close enough. I took one look at the book and knew it needed a better home. 

And you know what? It was the best thing that happened to me all week. I walked next door and presented the little guy and his moms with the book. He squealed "Memo! Memo!" and gave me the biggest wide-eyed, toothless toddler grin I've ever seen. He toddled over to me as fast as his little legs could, took it from my hands, and instantly dropped down onto his diapered rear end and started reading. His moms were pleased and I had one less thing in my condo. 

But really, I don't care that I got this book out of the closet. It hardly took up any space. But it made a kid I like a lot really happy. 

Today's decluttering tip is simple: look at the stuff you own and figure out if any of it would make someone else genuinely happy. I mean falling-on-their-rear-end-and-squealing-like-a-toddler happy. As soon as you see someone's face light up you'll find yourself with more motivation to declutter than you've had in a while. 

What have you decluttered that made someone else really happy?

Dropping my drawers (decluttering tip #11)

I know, that's the same title we all give to our posts about cleaning out our desks. I'm lame.

Yesterday I started to take on the task of cleaning out the modular drawer cabinets from our old desk. We have three sets of drawers like this one:

And loads of junk in them. I was organized ...

until I got through the first cabinet. Then I gave up on the neat little piles. I'm already putting stuff on the floor. All hope of being 'neat' is lost. Time to follow decluttering rule #10: just dump it all out. ALL of it. Don't worry, you'll organize it later! Behold, the contents of cabinets #2 and #3.

It's a mess but sometimes that's what it takes. It can be hard to organize when you don't have a good concept of everything that you have in a space. Leaving items in a space and trying to declutter around them works, but only when you don't have an enormous amount of stuff in that space.

Then one item at a time, you can organize things into piles, or put them straight back into the closet/desk/garage/handbag/etc.

This kind of decluttering is also a really good excuse to have some good tea handy or a movie or audiobook ready. I typically get super exhausted on these mass clean-outs and have to stop for a while, sometimes even a couple days. Having something to keep me going or to refresh me during a break is a must. This makes it more likely that you'll get through the whole pile in one go. If you don't, that's okay -- but make a commitment to come back to it within a day or two. Otherwise you can end up making more of a mess for yourself.  

One small part of the pile is all that remains to tackle tonight. Why do my husband's dirty socks keep showing up there?

It sucks to be a hoarder when you move

We're finally moved in and mostly settled in our new place. But the anti-hoarding fun has just started!

Behold, the leaning towers of crap:

Don't forget the spare overstuffed queen-size mattress we squeezed into a 1-bedroom apartment in addition to our normal bed.

It's bigger than the oversized furniture!

The financial toll of my habit of hanging on to everything was almost $1000. It cost over $900 to move my junk three blocks away. Three blocks. $1000.

I've moved nine times in the last ten years and knowing that the next move always was coming soon helped get me through the emotional issues I have when I throw stuff out. But we bought this place so we're here for at least five years (hopefully longer!) The constant fear of having to pack and move on little notice is gone.

How do I motivate myself to stay decluttered now?