How To Get Organized With A House Full of Shtuff!

How To Get Organized With A House Full of Shtuff!

Most of us weren’t taught how to get organized or stay organized when we were young. When we first move out on our own, we have few items to keep organized. As time goes on, we accumulate more shtuff. Unless we are taught about organizing from the beginning, the accumulated items can become overwhelming.

So here you are. You have a house full of shtuff. What do you do? If you can, find an organizing buddy. It helps.

1. Make a schedule that is reasonable. Plan a realistic amount of time each day, week, or month to work on this project. (Hint: We worked almost every Saturday and some Sundays for several months. When time permitted, we worked as many as 6 hours a day on the weekends.)
2. Get a notebook and pencil to list each room in the house and what needs to be done in each room.
3. Pick the room you’ll start in and only focus on this room.
4. Decide if you’re going to go through clothing, office supplies, toys or stuffed animals, etc.
5. Have a trash bag, give away bag, and boxes to pack things like taxes and such.
6. Go through the items and decide if they go in a bag or stay where they are. (You’ll go through the items you keep at a later time.)
7. You may have to go through each room two or three times, so I suggest finishing each room once, then go back through all the rooms again, one at a time.

In 1976, I went to the Bicentennial show at the Coliseum, where Evil Knievel rode around the stadium without holding onto the handlebars. Our family was in the front section when I ran onto the field to get pompoms that fell off of a cheerleader’s shoe. Those 10 yards didn’t look that far away. I heard a lot of yelling, only to realize that I was almost in the way of Evil Knievel. But I got those pompoms!

I had to relive the feelings and figure out why I was holding onto the pompoms in order to decide to keep or toss them. I did this for every box, throughout the entire process. In order for me to get rid of a lot of things, I had to mourn over some of them. It enabled me to purge shtuff and feelings, and then move on. By the way… I kept the Bicentennial brochure and pompoms.

If you can categorize all of your boxes, you will be ahead of the game. You will then be able to label each shelf or rack so that when you go through a box, you write what’s inside and put it in the right place.

It takes a lot longer to go through and get rid of things you’ve saved than it did to save them. So only commit to doing a little at a time so you don’t set yourself up for failure if you can’t get through it. This is part of setting up a reasonable schedule. If you’re able to work longer, GREAT!

©2012-2014 Susie Glennan
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