Declutter While Moving Houses: Using Dana’s Decluttering Methods! Leave a comment

I also found you a while back, and have been helped a LOT, especially by the container concept! This post on moving inspired me to write. I’ve moved a lot. At one point (quite a few years ago!) I was 32 and had lived in at least that many different houses, though it was only when I started moving as an adult that I realized just how much hard work it is! Now I have back problems which severely limit my activities, and that makes moving even more difficult.

So, about a year and a half ago, I moved across country to be nearer to my two older daughters (youngest is mentally handicapped and lives with me). I decluttered before the move, taking several pickup loads of stuff to thrift shops, and more to the dump. There was still stuff to get rid of as I slowly unpacked here.

A few months later, my middle daughter came for a short visit, and helped me declutter some more (she had just started a business organizing for people).

Recently I went through my books and got rid of over half of them. Now, there is something about this house that I haven’t mentioned – it’s an old farmhouse in need of a ton of work. I knew it needed work when I bought it, but I loved the location, and it was cheap enough that I was able to pay cash for it (I think being in debt might be one of the worst types of ‘clutter’ there is!). The work has been slowly getting done as finances allow. Initially, all the plumbing under the house had to be fixed, because it had been allowed to freeze.

Then the house I’d sold was paid off in a lump sum, so in a few days this whole house will be getting rewired, and the downstairs completely gutted and dry walled. Guess what this means?!? If you guessed that everything has to be moved out of the house, stored, and a couple of weeks later, moved back in, you would have guessed correctly! We aren’t going far – our belongings will be stored in a barn on the property, and daughter and I will camp in a travel trailer in the yard. But I have to pack everything, again. (We will have help for actually moving things – bless the men at our new church!).

So I am taking advantage of this opportunity to do still more decluttering. And MORE decluttering! I think by the time we are finished, our stuff should fit neatly in a Tiny House! The container concept has been extremely helpful in helping me make decisions about what stays and what goes. For instance, the books that I mentioned? I have three bookcases, plus a large desk with two hutches, and the books filled all of those and were overflowing on top of things. (I had left two large built-in bookcases in the old house). Now they fit neatly. Of course, my Kindle is still overflowing! But that is much easier to move than boxes of books.

And when we moved, I had a whole bunch of fabric left from being the chief costumer for a tiny rural community theater group. It hurts to get rid of perfectly good fabric, and I still have some overflow, but no longer an entire closet stuffed full. I’ve made a rule that I can’t buy any more fabric until there is room in one of the two boxes I’ve allotted.

I could go on,but the biggest container of all is sitting out in the front yard, waiting for the cheap old paneling and many-times-wallpapered sheetrock to come out of the house – a great big dumpster. I am somewhat tempted to put more than sheetrock and paneling into it, LOL!

All that just to say, thank you for good advice and encouragement – and for being part of the inspiration for my daughter’s organizing business!