February 2025 Decluttering Continues

[Twins' Mom]

If you got the year off to a good start with decluttering that's wonderful! If not, now is the time to jump in.

A recent NYT article suggests "Soft Decluttering," or doing mini projects as a way to work. Instead of the "Declutter your Home in a Day" approach this suggests carving off small tasks - junk drawer, under the sink, taming a collection - and doing just that.

Steps:
Identify your personal pain point. (What in my house is really annoying me right now?”)
Clearly articulate your goal. (Maybe it's only clearing the DR table for guests?)
Make peace with some piles. (Instagram worthy is probably not achievable - we all have some of those piles of stuff.)
Quit while you’re ahead. (Consider the small projects to be building blocks - go for the small wins.)

Gift link to article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/well ... =url-share

[Nancy]

Top 3 wins this week
1. Old tv out of here & has been recycled as well as the big box it came in.
2. Old Planner purge happened
3. " " and old bujo's went on pitch & toss today too yea!

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Working on it ~ Used the time blocking method brain dump ahead... timer was involved.
A pen pal asked how I do it she is going to tackle her's
so I'm thinking of what to write her.

Last week's Focus:
Journals note books and planners & planner pages / aka paper taming continuing.
Did a pitch and toss of items I'd been sorting considering.
After a free one note book workshop I listened to this week.
Up until Tues. then it goes in to their pay portion.

Pitched old bujo's that I was done with and had processed previously.
Tossed old planner pages from 2 yrs. ago when I dumped the trash this morning after
doing a planner purge the other day yea!

Some morning pages journal I kept for my legacy writing project and for historical content going thought a
pandemic.

Step one was round up the notebooks ~
ACK! I found them and journals in three diff. rooms butterfly room & planners too, spare room, sewing zone.
Talk about over whelm. 1st I did the planners purged sorted as I'd been waiting for the 1st of the year to do the last ones.
That went well was after a break from old dead files of financial acct. stuff I shredded last mo.

Then step 2;
I worked on sorting journals from note books & bullet journal the soft covered ones I'd previously done
you know the I might need this some day syndrome.

Step 3
After that is was on to the smaller daily page ones / sorting out years and topic ones.
Now they are in the rec. room near the table and sorted the ones like trip journal in to the keep pile
on a diff. desk in the other part of the rec. room.
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Next Up:
The good news is that this cleared out another shelf in the sewing zone my next focus
I put the containers in there for fabric sorting after I dusted off the empty spaces.
Got the equivalent to one shelf cleared off yea!

[Nancy]

De-cluttered and emptied my email junk and trash folders. Yea!

[Harriet]

Great job on all the steps you've taken this month, Nancy. You were really focused. If it got a shelf in sewing area clear, it was a big success, or would be in my house!

Twins' article spoke of "building blocks" of small projects.

I got building blocks done by dealing with some baskets we have in cubbies in the den. They are, in my mind, decorative mostly, but realized there was some stash-and-dash in 2 of them. Worked with HRH when some turned out to be his. We found a few things we were happy to find but mostly were thinking why on earth did we save any of this, lol.

And why was there a small umbrella in one? Who knows - it's hung in the hall closet now, with coats.

Twins', that idea of a personal pain point of annoyance is interesting. Lately when I'm supposed to be doing short stints, I've been thinking in terms of what's the next biggest bother to me.

[Nancy]

I have deconstructed the microwave box.
It was taking up a lot of space so glad I got that out of the spare room.