How to Get Rid of Stuff

As I surveyed our garage and home last Tuesday evening, I felt a happy peacefulness. We had re-homed 9 big boxes of belongings that day, in addition to the 1 Bin + 2 Boxes of recycling and 1 Bin plus 1 Box of refuse that was hauled away from our curb through our regular garbage pick up. I'm telling you, our space instantly felt a lot more spacious.

Even though we had been living with piles of boxes in our garage and lower level for almost a year now, in retrospect I'm glad we left those boxes alone for so long. We'd unpacked all the things we need and use regularly, so it was much easier to bid farewell to things we had not even seen in 12 months. I mean, if we haven't needed that toaster oven in the last year, are we ever going to need it? Or that coat that is now two sizes too big?

I also took a jumbo tub of new and like-new house essentials to World Relief, and 4 bags of books and CDs to the local library for their annual Book Sale in addition to these things that the Epilepsy Foundation picked up outside our garage. 

There are really two questions to ask yourself when you ponder whether you should get rid of something:

1. Am I using this?

2. Is it beautiful?

This simple litmus test is based on this quote from William Morris:

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

William Morris, according to Wikipedia, was a textile designer during the Arts and Crafts movement. I think these are pretty wise words, and I tried to employ them unsentimentally during our Great Stuff Removal of 2014.

Here's the thing. I'm sentimental. I like cute do-dads. I have had about 15 different apartments in my adult life. Les and I got married, and we both liked "our own" things. We had, and still have, a lot of stuff that we sort of like and sometimes use. But we've also gotten a lot better about scrapping things that no longer fit our present life. They may have been PERFECT in our living room 7 apartments ago, but they aren't part of our life today.

Here are some tips that I've found helpful when trying to clear out the clutter:

1. Designate a couple of boxes for "Maybes".   Maybe I'll wear this again. Maybe I'll decide to make creme brulee once a week in October and I'll need that pastry torch. Give your stuff a chance to prove itself. Put it in a box that's clearly labeled with the contents and tuck it into a corner of your garage or storage closet. MARK IT WITH THE DATE. If you haven't needed or wanted something in the box in, say, 6 months or a year, donate whatever is still in the box.

2. Use Boxes or Plastic Tubs as Visual Goal Posts. Decide "I will fill up this rubbermaid tub with like-new items to donate to the local refugee resettlement agency" or, conversely, "I will only keep as many photos of my chihuahua as I can fit in this shoe box". This was a tip I got from a friend who had had to clean out her parents' home after they died. She found herself wanting to keep everything, and knew that she would never need or look at most of the stuff again. So she told herself that she could only keep what she could fit inside 2 big plastic tubs, and promised herself that the lids had to close on both.

3. It's OK to Throw Away. Yes, in a perfect world, we'd all recycle everything or find a responsible charitable organization to reuse our old bed sheets for the Common Good. But let's face it: some of your stuff belongs at the curb. Don't donate junky stuff. And don't hold on to huge boxes of things because you don't know how to recycle all those CD jewel cases. Post your loot on Freecycle and see if anyone WANTS your old sneakers or chemistry textbooks from 1992. You never know! But if you don't get any takers, it's OK to throw things away. Let the pain of overflowing garbage bins be a challenge to you to be more judicious about what you bring into your home in the first place!

4. Get Inspired. Check out the Becoming Minimalist blog, read the book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess, or other simple living inspiration to rev up your motivation to simplify, simplify.

5. Give Yourself a Break. Our home is always going to have roughly 4,000 books. I'll always have an overflowing stash of DIY supplies. We'll probably have actual DVDs in actual cases on actual shelves at least until Netflix starts streaming our favorites. We have bins of holiday decor in our garage. Auggie's little toy basket is ridiculously stuffed. That's OK. Those things are, in a lot of ways, part of who we are as individuals and as a family. It's unlikely we'll ever have a streamlined, mismatched-mug-free minimalist home, and we're OK with that. The idea is to put a stop to the accumulation of unnecessary things, and things that don't add any joy or beauty to our home, and to clear out everything that weighs us down.

I turned my couch into a shoulder bag

Les and I got a new slip cover for our glorious hand-me-down IKEA couch last December and I could not bring myself to throw away yards and yards of lovely white canvas. I'm not sure what I thought I was going to make with it. A boat sail?
Anyway, after many MANY canvas-inspired ideas but little follow-through, I decided I would make a bag. An easy, cool-looking bag that I could use to stow my unattractive Fancy Camera bag and still have room for all my other essential stuff. It had to be a project that would not require me to spend a lot of money on additional supplies, and it had to be something I could complete in one weekend. I searched for online freebie instructions until last week, when I saw THIS tutorial on How About Orange.

After a quick trip to JoAnn for some 60% Off faux leather for the straps (PS - faux leather NEVER goes on sale, so I was elated to get 1/2 a yard for $7), some heavy duty thread ($3), and a box of gray fabric dye ($3 each), I turned this:

Into this:

While not as chic as the tutorial version, it did use a substantial amount of canvas. And after 2 dye attempts, I finally got it the shade of gunmetal I had been aiming for. As long as you don't count the vaguely pink splotches that I assume are the result of couch stain removal attempts that perma-bleached the fabric. I think it just adds a certain "hand dyed" marbling mystique. Right? Um, yeah.

Anyway, the best part about making your own stuff is that you can customize it.
Like the handy elastic Sock Bottle holder I added to the lower side edge:

Spill Proof!

If I were to make this again, I'd go for a different/darker dye color and I'd probably make it a liiiiitttle less tall. It's great for holding all my gear, but it feels a little more shopping bag than a fashion piece. Could be the fact that I had trouble converting centimeters to inches and just eye-balled it. I do have a huge sheet of pretty dark denim that I could use if I want to totally copy-cat the tutorial piece, but it was very gratifying to finally use a hunk of couch to make something practical.

Not the most flattering shot, but you get the idea.

I spent about $19 and have thread and lots of faux leather left over, so I'd say that the only real expense of this experiment was the 2 boxes of gray dye for $6. Plus, I now have a prototype and some trial-and-error insight for my next attempt (which will probably be with the dark denim, since I do LOVE the look of the tutorial version).

So there you have it. My repurposed couch fabric got a new life as a MegaTote. Not bad for an afternoon's worth of work.

If you were going to toss it anyway...

Some cool re-purposing ideas from people much craftier than I on Re-Nest:

A cool, practical way to Re-use your plastic bottle tops
(Or, you can reclycle them if there is an Aveda near you)

Bird Feeder Made Out of Bottles

DIY Hanging Herb Garden

Use VHS Tapes as Shiny Ribbon

These are great ideas to help get my creative juices flowing.  The May goal to reduce the amount of plastic coming into the house has been semi-successful, but must obviously continue as an active goal for the forseeable future.  REDUCE REDUCE REDUCE. My new mantra. Reduce, and Refuse (as in, I refuse to buy new lip gloss because I have 15 tubes already, not Refuse = Slightly Affected Way to Refer to Trash).

Les and I have begun a massive apartment cleaning project for our decidedly un-massive apartment. It's incredible how just moderate amounts of clutter feels oppressive in a small space. But we're still struggling to figure out what to do about all of our stuff. Wishing I had Refused some of this crap before I had to figure out how to Reduce the piles.

Our Recycle bin is constantly overflowing, the trash can has been emptied more often in the last 3 weeks than I would like to admit. And even as I try to assuage my guilt with the growing "donate" pile on the floor, I have to wonder why anyone ELSE would want/need to bring my 37 slightly used candle votives or the 2 of my original 6 puffy vests that I know I can live without, or the "too lazy to figure out how to fix it" DVD player into their own fortress of stuff. Ugh.

I have way too much stuff already. And yet I always find myself wanting MORE. New. Better. Prettier. Or, even Greener. Living Simply is not that simple. For me, anyway.

The June project of the month is going to be to cook from scratch more often, thereby reducing the consumption of packaged and pre-made food Les and I have grown accustomed to eating. And I don't mean "putting our own toppings on a frozen pizza crust." I mean cooking for real. Taking the time to put food in our food. There's a twinge of dread mixed in with my excitement about this project, but I think it dovetails nicely into May's plastic-reduction project. Less packaging = less plastic, right?

Plus, it is way less scary than the project I have cooking for July...