Decluttering and home maintenance

[Smc]

Hi @Sophia1 (Hi @Determined et al...)

Can relate to the "depleted" and "burnt out" thing. It's very hard when the mental energy to make "keep or discard" solutions just isn't there.

Sorting papers- I try not to think too hard when it's going through them by the boxful. I keep the "keepers and maybes" and toss out the obvious rubbish ones. The "maybes" need to wait until I have decision making brainspace available, as does sorting the "keepers" into proper order, but if the junk is gone, at least there's less to deal with.

We've also got some lovely antique furniture we've acquired over the years, and have some heirloom-level pieces that need to come here from my parents' house, so I'm trying to get the so-so uninteresting pieces that were useful at some stage in the past out of the house. Problem is, often they're still "in use", and emptying them, then getting a "worth keeping" thing into their place is a LOT of shuffling.

We've had the spur recently of needing to make space for our Older Son to move back with us when his rental was going to be sold. Hubby and I both have a history of working in craft trades, so we'd gotten some art gallery style glass display boxes with the intention of setting up a gallery space in our home. That's not going to happen now... we've both had to stop working (burnout etc.) and have concluded that we don't want something that public in our house anyway. So those have been moved outside (neatly) while I find a taker for them. Also took advantage of our council's Hard Garbage collection, and put about two trailerloads out the front for collection. Mostly chipboard, polystyrene and polyurethane foam. Several boxloads of junk papers have gone into either the woodstove or the recycling bin, plus some other recycling, and some bagfuls of plain rubbish.

The downside... because we did all this to free up a room for our son, the house is actually more overstuffed than it was right now. But we're hoping to continue going through the stuff that had to come out of his room in a hurry, and sort that down to the things we really want to keep. And at whatever point our son can find a new rental... we'll have a completely "spare" room! 😃