Flexible change

If there’s one thing that’s been consistent in my journey over the past five years, it’s been my inconsistency. I prefer to think of it as flexibility—being able to adapt or change course when things aren’t working. Doing the same thing over and over seldom produces different results, but making changes to what we’re doing may brings different results.

All of which means that I’ve yet again changed course. Again.

Back in July, I wrote about my latest attempt at wrestling the garage into some sort of order. I did very after that post, and the ongoing cold temperatures were definitely part of the reason.

Also, August and September held the last two of the three significant anniversaries I was facing this year, and I was a bit preoccupied. Surprising as it may seem, though, at first I didn’t realise that the fifth anniversary of Nigel’s death would be five years to the very day, a Friday. As the date drew near, I decided to invite the family in Hamilton around for dinner, like we used to do nearly every Friday. Getting together on the fifth anniversary seemed appropriate, especially to do so at my home now, a symbolic acknowledgment of my progress in my journey.

It was good plan, but there was a slight problem: The living area of my house was overrun with stuff I’d brought in from the garage (not for the first time…), and I needed to clear it. And that’s when an epiphany struck: I’ve been dealing with this decluttering completely backwards. I realised that I should move the clutter from the house into the garage, not the other way around, as I’d been attempting to do. So, I decided to put all the clutter into the garage, grouped together by the room it came from (because, disordered as it is, I nevertheless know what’s in each room—mostly).

What led to this new plan was the fact that there was nowhere I could go in my house that didn’t have way too much stuff in it. I’m well aware of the research that’s demonstrated that living with clutter negatively affects one’s mental health, and, specifically, is often a factor in depression. I realised that clearing the house out will inevitably help my mood and, I hope, my energy levels, too.

Unfortunately, this brilliant idea occurred to me only days before the family was coming round. Clearing the living area was easy, but, newly filled with enthusiasm, I wanted to keep going, so next I took stuff out of my bedroom.

I realised that I could take all the boxes, etc., “temporarily” stored there (most of it for at least two years now…) and move it out. A huge amount of stuff stored in my bedroom was actually stuff that I intended to donate, plus two small boxes that could contain stuff I might want to try to sell (or else donate). I put all the donation stuff (mostly clothes, and also some linens) on the guest bed so it’d be easy for me to go through it and box it up. As a result, nearly half of the stuff stored in my bedroom was gone before the family arrived—and I thought the space suddenly felt enormous.

Since then, I’ve carried on, first going through those two boxes and deciding what to do with the contents. Then, I moved or went through a couple more boxes, and even made a first pass though my wardrobe, finding eleven shirts to donate. There are now only a few more boxes to get out of my bedroom.

My office is the worst room of all, but I intended the next room to be the guest room, starting with clearing/packing the donations, and then emptying the wardrobe so I can install a shelving system in it. That will help me to truly organise that wardrobe, and give me space to store things I use often, but not daily (like my breadmaker), things I’d prefer to store in the house instead of on shelves in the garage (right now, it’s taking up a lot of space at the bottom of my pantry).

However, I needed to pause and tidy one of the bookshelves in my office because it was visible behind me during video calls (about which, more soon), and that meant I removed 31 books to donate. I have two more identical bookcases to tidy, and my plan is to purge more books. Much of the library is, of course, books Nigel or I bought, but a large portion of it is books that Nigel inherited from his partner before me, Gary. Many of the books don’t particularly interest me, so I may as well send them to new homes.

That detour out of the way, it was time to get back to the last bits of my bedroom (including pulling out furniture I haven’t been able to vacuum under/behind “in quite some time”. I expect to shift my full attention to the guest room this weekend, then do my office (including installing a wardrobe shelving system there, too), and finally it’ll be the turn of my walk-in wardrobe—and I have a shelving system to install in there, too.

Then, the house should be clear, the stuff I moved into the garage will have new permanent homes in the house (or someone else's home), and then I can turn all my attention to making final decisions about the stuff that’s been in the garage the whole time. The way I’d tried to do it (and failed) several times—clearing the garage first—meant that I had literally nowhere in my house that was a calming refuge, and that left me feeling discouraged, defeated, and depressed far too often. Even though I still have a lot of work to do, I can already feel the difference—my house feels much more calming and welcoming than it has—well, ever, probably.

One of my specific strategies has been to go back to the slogan I thought up way back in the early days of this journey: “What I can, when I can”. I don’t force myself to do an entire room if I don’t feel up to it for any reason, because every little bit gets me closer to the goal, something I realised when I recently reorganised my fridge, a project that I did over a few days. Besides, I know that pushing too hard can lead to burnout—I’ve learned that the hard way, then re-learned it several more times.

This approach to decluttering probably “ought” to have been obvious to me all along, but, for whatever reason, it just wasn’t. My only real regret is that I wish I’d taken some “before” photos so I could share them alongside “after” photos. At least that’s been a consistent thing.