Category Archives: Clutter

What Was I Thinking?

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

I have two sewing areas. One is in the little sewing room on the main floor, where I sew clothes and piece quilts on one of two vintage sewing machines, and also have a serger squeezed in there. The other is in the basement, where my high-speed sewing machine sits on two large tables so I have lots of room to spread out whatever it is I’m quilting.

Nearby on an old dresser sits a basket full of thread for that machine, and a dish tub filled with extra parts and feet for it, along with other related items. That dresser was supposed to have been given to a relative 18 months ago, but then the pandemic came along.

I got to thinking that I would like a cabinet to replace that dresser once it goes; that way I’d have somewhere to park the thread, extra parts, feet, etc. I’d want something with cubbies up high, because I have a bum knee and have trouble reaching things in lower cabinets. I began looking at freestanding cupboards and cabinets online, trying to find just the right thing.

And then it occurred to me: I have no business adding furniture to this house! It’s got enough furniture in it. So I looked at the furniture we do have, thinking something could be repurposed as my new sewing cabinet. But nothing would work.

What to do…..as with so many other things in life, I realized I should just wait until an idea came to me. Within a few days it did. If I reorganize the storage under the big counter where I cut fabric (it was our kitchen island in the big house we gave up) I should be able to easily fit in the stuff that currently sits on the old dresser.

And here I was looking at new furniture. What was I thinking?

Home Decluttering to the Extreme

By Claire Posted in Clutter Tagged , ,

I’ve mentioned once or twice that I have a guilty habit: I’m a Realtor.com addict. I love to see inside of other people’s houses to see how they decorate them. I can do it from my laptop and it’s much safer than peeking into people’s windows and getting arrested for being a female peeping Tom.

As far as I can tell, there are four general categories of houses on Realtor.com:

  1. Neutered. They painted all the walls light gray, dark gray or white, and installed dark wood-look engineered flooring on all the floors.
  2. Trying to be trendy. They did all the things in #1, then went to Hobby Lobby and bought a car-load of wooden plaques with sayings like “Live, Love, Laugh” and “This is Us,” (and in the bedroom, “Always Kiss Me Goodnight”) and put them all over the house.
  3. Love it or leave it. This is what house listings used to look like before staging came into vogue. Each room looks very lived in. Surfaces have stuff on them, walls have paintings, bric-a-brac, and family photos. Often there are dog beds or cat climbing units featured prominently. These are the “before” houses when it comes to decluttering.
  4. Empty. These make me sad because there’s nothing to look at!

Years ago, when you toured houses for sale, most of them looked like #3, and you had to use your imagination to get an idea of how your stuff would look in their house. Now you just have to hope all of your stuff goes with gray. How times change!

Can You Predict Declutterism?

By Claire Posted in Clutter, My Books, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged ,

(I don’t know if declutterism is a word, but I just decided it should be one.)

I’m thinking about my kids and whether I could have predicted which ones would or wouldn’t become declutterers.

The messiest one is now into minimalism; go figure. The neatest one (well, let’s say the most organized) is still fairly neat. Another messy one has quite a bit of stuff in their house, but all of it is much loved and was curated to go together, so that it’s actually quite an interesting house and not messy at all. Then there is the one who is emotionally attached to everything and it must not be moved around.

They are fairly true to the way they were in childhood except for the one who’s into minimalism. That one has several small children and I think the minimalism is a reaction to the kiddie chaos. After all, it’s important to feel you have something under control when you live in chaos.

As I’ve mentioned in a few of my books, I was not a messy kid but I was very emotionally attached to my many beloved dolls, books, records, craft supplies, etc. I used all of my things and some showed the wear (I prefer to think of those items as looking well-loved.) I am certainly not a minimalist and was forced into declutterism out of necessity. I never would have predicted that I would someday live with a minimum of stuff. But then I didn’t know I was going to end up in a small house. (That life event was precipitated by another life event as explained in my latest book, Memoirs of a Downsized Declutterer.)

Do your childhood clutter habits show up in how you live today, or have you changed completely?

Extreme Wardrobes

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

During the pandemic, I became addicted to reading sewing blogs and watching a few sewing vloggers on YouTube. One thing they all seem to have in common is that they make a lot of clothes for themselves every month.

I realize they need to have a steady stream of projects to talk about. But speaking only for myself, I don’t want or need that many new clothes. And just the modest number of clothes I’ve made for myself in the last year caused me to go through my old clothes and winnow out things that still fit. I’ve been able to make the new clothes out of better fabrics than what I can find in ready-to-wear clothes, so for me it’s a no-brainer to get rid of some still-wearable clothes so I can wear the new things I’ve made.

The bottom line is that I have that rule for myself, where all of my out-of-season clothes have to fit in two big plastic boxes. When they make those boxes overflow, which they did not long ago, some things have to go, and they aren’t going to be the things made out of good fabric, things I put a lot of work into.

This makes me wonder if those sewists I follow keep their wardrobes at a reasonable size or if they don’t care. One of the vloggers has mentioned that she uses a spare room as her closet. No thanks! That’s too much for me. I can think of many uses for a spare room, but closet isn’t one of them.