Day to Day

I hit a KonMari wall and am just now trying to recover.

We did manage to look for joy in an entire room full of old electronic items and we found very little joy. Those items were moved into a rubbermaid bin and that bin is still in the dining room. Because my back hurts and I shouldn’t lift it but also because I think some more things need to go in there but I haven’t figured out what.

The things that spark no joy are still in the bedroom because I can’t figure out what to do with them. Should any of them go to Goodwill? Or, can they/should they just go to the electronics recycling station? And, there’s also the problem with my back. Some of this stuff is heavy and I probably shouldn’t be lifting it, even with TW’s help.

There are some things upstairs that need to go but again, too heavy to try and maneuver down the twisty metal stairs, so… we’re at a standstill.

We’ve also got 15 laptops/desktops that we need to figure out how to clean and/or retrieve data from.

I’m hoping we can get all of this electronic stuff sorted out this month.

In the meantime, we’ve moved on.

Before I went to visit JMP, I cleaned out a cabinet in the laundry room that’s full of… tools. Hammers, screwdrivers, nuts, bolts, nails, and fasteners. That sort of thing. There were many things that I don’t even know the purpose of. I ditched anything obviously junk and then put it all away neatly into the cabinet. TW went through the cabinet today and got rid of some things. I was hoping she’d get rid of more but apparently having 15 differently weighted common head screwdrivers brings her joy. Whatever. That category is done.

Then, I went through all of the household cleaning supplies. Why we have 500 old washcloths and dish towels/hand towels is beyond me. Whatever. Not much joy there, except in the organization and in learning that we have more lightbulbs than we will ever need and that we have a lot of Pledge multipurpose cleaner (thanks, BlogHer Con).

Next up… kitchen items. This is a big one and I think we’re both looking forward to it. I want this category done by the end of this month, too.

This category was primarily for TW this time around. I’ve already discarded almost all of my jewelry and what little I had left, Michelle has gone through a couple of times so there just wasn’t much for me to sift through.

TW on the other hand had a bunch and she got it done. We went from having a full popcorn tin (you know what I mean, right?) of jewelry to having just a few things in the bottom of the tin. We have some jewelry to donate and some jewelry that we may sell but either way, it’s leaving the house.

Next category for us will be… electronics/appliances. That means we need to figure out where we can drop off a whole lot of old laptops, desktops, monitors and a TV.

Now that I’m mostly recovered from #BlogHer15, I’m itching to get back into the life-changing magic of finding joy and discarding all of the things. But, I’m also working a lot of hours right now and by the end of the day I’m way too tired to even think about tidying up. And TW, well… she’s still dealing with the shingles issue and is even more tired than I am at the end of the day. So, we’re at a bit of a stand still. I need a list or a written plan in order to get moving again. So… here it is.

– We’re going to Kondo the jewelry this weekend.
– We’re going to take all of the accumulated discards to charity drop-offs this weekend.
-We’re going to put all of these not-blank-what-the-hell-is-this dvd/cds into a player this weekend and finish discarding that category.
– I’m going to coerce RJ into Kondoing all of the things in her room … it’s pretty much this summer or never, since it’s unlikely she’s going to want to Kondo when she’s home for fall or winter break and spring break will be too late since we should be deep into packing up by that point.
– We’re going to de-clutter the extra bedroom because just tossing things in there while we Kondo is causing a huge problem in there, since there are still things we need access to in order to Kondo the categories.
– We’re going to make a plan to go through the rest of the categories, so we’re all set for Kondoing in August. (Answering questions like “What does accessories mean in our world? Can we just skip that category?” and “Valuables? What the heck?” and “Should we follow the suggested order and do electronics next, then household equipment and supplies, and then kitchen or should we tweak the suggested schedule in some way?” Should we go through the basic list of categories and when we hit “other” move to Kondoing specific rooms or continue to try to categorize or some combination of the two?”) See, it’s getting kind of complicated or it’s getting complicated in my head.

In other news, I joined a KonMari group on Facebook. Oh boy. That’s interesting stuff. Also interesting and very amusing, hahahahaha

We don’t have a lot of makeup or skincare products so I turned this category into anything remotely personal care. Everything from shampoo to lotion to medication to hair bands.

And, once we got going, it went pretty smoothly. We’ve needed to clean out the medicine closet for awhile now so yay for getting that done. And yay for throwing away a full bag of things that do not bring joy and finding a couple of grocery bags of stuff we can donate.

We’ve got a basket full of things that the little girls may use so that’s still hanging out, waiting for them to take a look. Once they’ve gone through it, we’ll figure out which of the stuff can go to the nursing home and which of it needs to go to a shelter.

All in all, I’m calling this a success.

I also will not be buying any of these items until after we move:
– Shampoo
– lotion
– bandaids
– tampons
– soap
– cough medicine
– hair bands (I may never buy any again, whether they’re free or NOT. Someone remind me of this at Christmas when I know they’ll be free again…)

Things we will need to buy before we move:
– Conditioner
– razors
– shaving cream
– advil, tylenol, allergy and cold meds that aren’t cough medicine

Next category appears to be jewelry. Hmmm… not much jewelry in this house, this should go quickly. Maybe we can even get it done this weekend.

The thing about this KonMari Method is that it sticks in your head. Or maybe it just sticks in my head because I listened to the book about 10xs? Whatever, it’s in my head.

We’re doing a pretty good job of sticking to her suggested order for Kondoing stuff but I keep finding myself noticing odds and ends that are sitting in places they do not belong which leads me to ask whether these things bring me joy — and the answer has been no, no, no, also NO, so into the trash they go.

I can’t decide if that’s the correct thing to do or if I should leave that stuff be until we get to those categories. It probably doesn’t matter but I’m a stickler for rules unless I’ve pondered the rules and decided to make my own rules. Random rule-breaking is not my thing. Spontaneous rule-breaking, without forethought makes me anxious.

Still, it felt good to toss an old extension cord into the trash. And some random hotel-sized bottle of lotion into the trash. And that feed sack that I thought I was keeping for some good reasons but really just because I was temporarily nuts.

Also, every time I find myself throwing one of these random things away, I feel some urge to find something else to throw away. I really would like nothing better than to just take 2 weeks off of work and Kondo the entire house from start to finish. Make it all go away! Keep only the joyful things!

Seriously, I can hardly wait to start the next category. Except, we still have boxes and bags of books and other discarded things that we need to take to donation places. Or something. I did an awesome job of getting the discarded clothes out of the house but I’ve dragged my feet with the books (and now the DVDs/CDs.)

My new goal is to get those things out of here by the end of July. MUST do that. MUST. (I’d give myself a shorter deadline but I’m not an idiot, it’s BlogHerCon time, after all.)

Ooops. I know I said we were going to do videos, cds, albums, etc next but plans changed. TW reminded me that Melisa, who we were re-homing some “third grade” books to, would probably be able to use some of our no-joy school and office supplies. TW was right — it’s expensive for teachers who are setting up their first classroom (or setting up any classroom, really.)

So, we switched gears and I wandered around the house gathering up all of the writing utensils and scissors and notebooks and glue and paper clips and staples and thumb/jump/usb drives.

Luckily, the earlier tidying up made this a little easier than it would have been if we still had all of that PAPER all over the darn place. I had already put most of the notebooks and notepads in a box, while pulling paper out of our desk drawers and such and every time I’d seen a usb drive in recent weeks, I’d put it in a pile on top of TW’s desk.

We ended up with more writing utensils than I can count — many still in packaging and/or unsharpened.

– I went through these first, looking for anything that was obviously broken/dead and threw all of those into the trash.
– Then I touched each pen/pencil/marker and asked whether it sparked joy. Generally speaking, not much sparked joy. Any Micron or Pitt pen sparked joy, most Sharpies but after you’ve touched 5 black Sharpies, how much joy can the sixth one really bring you? Some pens due to how they felt in my hand, the design of them, or a memory of how they wrote.
– After that, I tested each item from the joy pile to make sure they all wrote and/or still brought me joy when writing with them.
– Then, in my no-joy pile, I looked for things that were obviously new and never used, things I thought Melisa could use in her classroom, and things that I knew would bring TW or a kid joy.
– TW walked through at this point and I asked her to go through the no-joy pile — I don’t think she added a single thing to our joy pile.

Which left us with a pretty small pile of pens, pencils and markers.

It also left Melisa with a pretty good size pile of pens, pencils and markers. Yippee!

I did pretty much the same thing with various other categories of stuff. All the crayons, colored pencils, kids’ markers. All of the staplers/staples/paper clips. All of the glue, glue sticks and tape.

Then we got to the paper and note pads. I want to know why we had so many different packages of mailing labels, business card makers, and other weird papers for the printer. We NEVER use that stuff. NEVER ever. NO JOY, none, zero zip.

I did save quite a few notebooks but almost no notepads. I’m a list-making doodler so I need some sort of paper on my desk all of the time. Notepads are fine but I much prefer an actual notebook — even a smaller than average notebook is better than a notepad.

And, did I mention we have (HAD!) a ton of post-it notes? I haven’t even gone through them all because I have an entire container of stuff like that in my Filofax supply section — but OMG all the post-its and flags and gah. I was pretty amused (also, annoyed) — TW didn’t really feel much joy for any of the stuff in this category but when it came to post-its and flags, she wanted to keep everything. She was sure one of the children would want/need/feel joy for all of those things. I reminded her of just how many we had. Just how few the children took to school with them last year. And, we purged. Melisa got anything brand new and unopened. The rest went into the recycle bin.

There are two items in this category that I haven’t really talked about — USB drives and scissors. I think they deserve their own KonMari Problems post. For now, I’ll just say… we have enough. More than enough. Ugh.

We started this task with a rubbermaid bin, two of those cardboard storage boxes from IKEA, a half dozen drawers and shelves full of office and school supplies and ended up with one IKEA cardboard storage box and one rubbermaid bin, neither full, of supplies.

I’ll admit to not being obsessive about making sure all of our office and school supplies were gathered. In the 24 hours since we finished this task, I’ve already seen two pairs of scissors and three pens that never got rounded up. (I discarded them.) I’m ok with that. I know what we have, now. I’m pretty sure that 99% of what we find lurking in the hidden corners of the house can be discarded without any problem at all. Excluding the stuff upstairs in the girls’ rooms. I intentionally saved their supplies until they were home — I’m really trying not to Kondo their stuff without at least SOME feedback from them. So, we’ll do theirs the next time they’re here for more than a couple of hours.

Next up is CDs, DVDs, Albums, Video Games — and cassettes, lol.

Well that went well. Mostly. We had paper everywhere! We definitely still have paper up in the girls’ rooms but we’re ignoring that until they’re both here and can participate in the Kondoing of their paper. I’m sure we’ll also find more paper tucked away in various places as we move through the process but the bulk of it is DONE.

I gathered up the paper from our desks, from our bedside tables, from the cubby in the bedroom, from various junk drawers throughout the house, the two plastic file boxes jam packed full of “important papers”, and from the drawers of TW’s dresser in the cold room.

We ended up with three bags of trash and a bag and a half of paper to shred. We also have a box of “sentimental papers” to go through at the end.

One of the file boxes is completely empty and the other isn’t even close to being full. We also stumbled upon dozens of gift cards and I’ve gone through the annoyingly tedious process of checking to see if any of them have balances — most do. The ones that didn’t, were cut and thrown away so we don’t have to go through that process again. I’m pretty sure there are more gift cards in the “sentimental” box because our sorting piles got a little confused for a few minutes and I was not going to go back through the box to find a few darn gift cards. We’ll deal with them later.

I’m pretty pleased with our progress. Now I just have to decide if there’s a community shredding event scheduled in the near future at a time that’s convenient for us to go shred. Or, if we should just buy a shredder… I’m leaning toward NOT buying a shredder but I want this stuff out of the house ASAP. It defeats the purpose of sorting it and bagging it if you’re just going to leave the crap sitting around in bags. Hmph.

Next up: DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, albums and video games… those are all over the house, too. (What isn’t?)