How about confessions of our own clutter....?

[CarrieH]

I am almost obsessive about NOT cluttering, with the exception of my one weak spot: the computer-room closet. It is my dumping ground for anything which doesn’t have its own place. The things I plan to sell on eBay are in there, and boxes for shipping once they are sold. I have everything from the good china and silver to my sewing stuff to old cat-boxes in there, and I can barely get the door closed. My kitten crawled in there one day and I was afraid I’d never see him again! :bigyikes: (he came out when he got hungry!). I try to go through all of my closets once a year and pitch everything I haven’t used, but life was crazy this year and it hasn’t happened.

When I do my annual cleaning, I pretend that I’m moving far away, and I only keep the things that I would bother to pack and take with me if I had to pay shipping based upon weight. That eliminates a LOT of stuff!

I keep two small bookshelves, and I only allow myself enough books to fill those. Any extras are donated to the library, sold on eBay, or if they are religious, given to my parish church library or put on the shelf at the Adoration chapel. I try not to buy books – if there is something I want to read, I check to see if the library has it first, and I only buy my own copy if I really,* really* liked it. Same for movie DVD’s – I rent the ones I want to see, and only buy the most special ones.

 

[Biblioassistant]

Book, books, books. I have books. Lots and lots of books. Periodically I go through them and make two piles - one to keep and one to give to the Friends of the Library Book Sale. Guess which one is bigger?

Sigh.

However, I figure I can’t die till I have read all my books. I may live forever

 

[Chovy]

I have stuffed animal issues. I have stuffed animals from my early childhood (I’m 33) and I can’t bring myself to part with them. In many cases they were purchased for me by my now deceased father and I would feel guilty throwing them away. Most of these are in storage bins in the basement. I once had one bagged and in the garbage but had to dig it out. Then I have about 100 others that DH has purchased for me since our courtship. Most of these are small (like 6 inches tall) that he picks up while visiting different places. I keep hoping we will have a child in our house who really loves stuffed animals so that I can at least explain why I have a bear room.

Oh, and I have the old barstools from my parent’s house (in the storage room downstairs), as well as the other-poster-mentioned secret lonely sock drawer and 2 rooms of overflowing, doublestacked bookshelves (plus boxes of books still in the garage from our move.)

 

[lifeisbeautiful]

Yes, you can let them go. No reason to keep them. I have recently got over this particular paper clutter problem when I emptied a 20lb portable filing box full of marked-paid bills from 1994/95. Info on cars I no-longer own, pay stubs from even before then. So yeah, now I pay the bill, I toss the rest. Buh bye.

You can throw out any ordinary bills, but make sure you keep any “final bill” that proves in writing that you closed an account.

Sometimes, company records get mixed up, and they’ll forget that you paid off your account and will send it to collections…several years after the fact. This can ruin your credit score if you don’t keep your final bill as proof.

(I read this in the news a while back…)

Gee, I must be the unluckiest one here. There have been many times when I have had to go back to my bills and have been thankful to have them in my file. One time I had made a payment and the next month the bill said I had not paid and that I had a fee for late payment plus owed double the bill. I called them and they insisted that my account said I hadn’t paid. I got my confirmation code and it turned out the money had been alloted to someone else’s account, they thought it was some sort of glitch in the system due to upgrades or whatever. It saved me a lot of time and energy to have that code. Another time I was looking at a medical bill and saw an expense that looked familiar. I went back to a previous bill and lo and behold I had been charged twice for the same procedure. I’ve heard this is a common mistake, but if I wouldn’t’ve had the previous bill I certainly would have paid it. I save my service bills so I have proof of when the last service was done, etc. If I have a dispute with a company I save paper with the information of who I spoke with on the phone, at what time, and what was said. It has served me later on. Lol, well like I said, I am definitely not virtuous in the department of organization, so maybe it is not the best idea, but it has saved me a lot of headaches.

 

[dranzal]

We, too, have loads of books, but they are housed nicely on five large bookshelves in our computer room. We homeschool so we have lots of stuff that I would find when they were little, convinced that we would use it .

We also have the lonely sock basket.

I have stored lots of the children’s clothes. My sister’s dh is disabled so I send her clothes from my stash. With four children, it’s a lot of clothes-boxes and boxes. But each time I have to go through them to take out some for the next size for one of the children I find some that are certainly not worth keeping. When I hit menopause, ebay here I come!

Our biggest problem is we are perpetually tired so we all have a terrible habit of just sitting things down rather than putting them away. Things as silly as just putting pencils down on the table/counter/desk rather than where they actually go, putting pay stubs on the desk instead of the file, etc.

Sigh, we’ve gotten better with each move and child, but it is such a drag.

 

[queen_anne78]

I never completely unpacked from the summer I worked as a camp counselor in 1983. There’s still a half-full paper bag of AC/DC t-shirts buried somewhere among my stuff.

L. O. L I wasn’t even born yet.

Yessssss too many books. BUT we live in a small 2 bedroom condo, so we only have room for 2 bookshelves. They overflow. I’m ok with it.

I HATE clutter. I am excellent at getting rid of things. If I haven’t looked at it in a week, it’s gone. My problem is that other people give us “stuff”…random dcorative figurines, framed artwork, etc…and since we are the “religious” ones…it’s like anything that has a cross on it “looks like us” so we get vases with vague cross shapes on them. I used to feel bad getting rid of that stuff, but…we have no room. And it stresses me out. So it goes right back out the door. I LOVE throwing things out. It feels so liberating.

I used to have too many clothes, but then I got pregnant and my chest grew a ton, and most of my shirts either didn’t fit or weren’t “nurse-able” so I finally purged…to my sister. At least I still get to see all my cute clothes. Just not on me.

 

[BlestOne]

L. O. L I wasn’t even born yet.

Yessssss too many books. BUT we live in a small 2 bedroom condo, so we only have room for 2 bookshelves. They overflow. I’m ok with it.

I HATE clutter. I am excellent at getting rid of things. If I haven’t looked at it in a week, it’s gone. My problem is that other people give us “stuff”…random dcorative figurines, framed artwork, etc…and since we are the “religious” ones…it’s like anything that has a cross on it “looks like us” so we get vases with vague cross shapes on them. I used to feel bad getting rid of that stuff, but…we have no room. And it stresses me out. So it goes right back out the door. I LOVE throwing things out. It feels so liberating.

I used to have too many clothes, but then I got pregnant and my chest grew a ton, and most of my shirts either didn’t fit or weren’t “nurse-able” so I finally purged…to my sister. At least I still get to see all my cute clothes. Just not on me.

OK your hired!!! Come on over and help me de-clutter!

 

[CarrieH]

One time I had made a payment and the next month the bill said I had not paid and that I had a fee for late payment plus owed double the bill. I called them and they insisted that my account said I hadn’t paid. I got my confirmation code … It saved me a lot of time and energy to have that code.

I keep my bills for a year, just to be on the safe side in case something of this nature comes up. But I have gone “paperless” with most of my accounts, and I pay the bills online. If I need to print out a hard copy, I can simply log onto the website and print it, but I don’t do this routinely. I made a spreadsheet with the dates that I paid, the amounts, and the confirmation codes, so I don’t even need to print a hard copy of the confirmation page.

Like you, I save my service bills for the life of whatever was serviced, or until I sell it, in the case of houses or cars. Those papers don’t take up that much space, and if you do this in an organized manner in a file cabinet, it doesn’t count as “clutter.” It’s nice to have these records when it’s time to sell, to prove to prospective buyers that you took good care of things.

 

[Sr_Sally]

Just paper with me. Tons of old bills, advertisements, junk. I’m pretty good in the things category, but just can’t seem to make myself sit down and go through all this paper junk. Although really-I could probably cart it all to an industrial shredder and get rid of it–I’m absolutely sure there are no $1,000 checks from an old auntie in the piles!

 

[Zooey]

We live in the Library of Babel – our biggest problem is books. Stacks upon stacks of books. We have, let’s see… four huge bookcases crammed full (to the point where we wedge books in horizontally ON TOP of the others) but it’s nowhere near enough. There are well over a dozen – probably almost two dozen – large boxes FULL of books shoved against the wall of the spare room, and more books just lying around on every available flat surface! The kitchen counter, inside the silverware drawer, the bathroom sink, the scanner, the cabinets, the bed, closet floors, tables, chairs: you name it, there’s probably a book or a stack of books balanced on it.

Ah, but do you also have a bookcase covering the entire wall (wall to wall, floor to ceiling) with books not only horizontally on top of each other, but with an entire ‘hidden’ bookcase of them BEHIND the ones that can be seen?

And no, it’s still not enough. They’re in the drawers, in huge precarious stacks on the table, on the bedding case, on the floor…

I think it is really sad that you poor dear people have so few books…Personally, I have a pile 4’x4’x2.5’ (approximately) piled in http://bestsmileys.com/peeping/3.gif my living room. In between 2 bookcases, & under a third one. (Those are just the living room bookcases. I have others. Everywhere).

Book, books, books. I have books. Lots and lots of books. Periodically I go through them and make two piles - one to keep and** one to give to the Friends of the Library Book Sale**. Guess which one is bigger? Sigh.

I can’t do that; the reason there is such a pile of new books on the living room floor, is because the third living room bookcase is http://bestsmileys.com/peeping/3.gif full of the used books that the librarian’s husband put in my car, after the library book sale was over…

Oh, yeah…Did I mention, that the Third Living Room Bookcase mentioned above washttp://bestsmileys.com/peeping/3.gif hand delivered to my house by the same librarian & her husband, after the library board decided to throw it out??

Ummm…Did I mention that the pile in the living room was actuallyhttp://bestsmileys.com/peeping/3.gif three feet tall at one time ? Before we suffered the:blush: Great Book Pile Subsidence of 2007???

 

[housewife]

I confess…
I have a collection of lonely socks. I truly believe that one day their mates will show back up… A whole overflowing basket of the suckers!

LOL!!!

Too funny!