Progress, neverthless

Four weeks ago, I finished the guest room wardobe project. That project should’ve taken me less than a week, but instead it took four weeks to complete, due to an unfortunate bad reaction to a prescription. Finishing that project meant the inevitable: Moving on to the next project—and I did.

Back in July, I talked about my plan for (finally…) finishing the inside of my house. I hadn’t even yet begun when I changed it, after I decided to start with the guest room, because it was closest to being finished. The next step in my revised plan was to focus on decluttering the living area (excluding the kitchen, which is its own project).

In the weeks since I finished the wardrobe project, my focus has been decluttering, and the photo above is related to that. Over the past few years I’d put magazines—read or not—on the shelf of a trolley I use as side table. To be fair, the pile wasn’t necessarily all that unsightly, but it was to me, and I thought it’d be a (relatively) easy win—and it actually basically was easy, much to my surprise.

The first thing I did was pull out duplicates (there were a couple…), and one-off copies of magazines (ones I bought to “try out”). I put them all in a pile and, ultimately in the recycling bin, which is emptied every other week. I realised right away that the magazines collectively weigh a LOT, and there’s a weight limit for how much can be in the bin, so that meant it would take me several weeks to get rid of all the rejects.

My next goal was to gather together all the magazines I wanted to keep, because they were all over the house, and arrange them in chronological order. Then I’d put them in the two cubes I set aside for them: Whatever fits stays, and what doesn’t would be recycled. This goes back to something I began at our house on Auckland’s North Shore (the one before our last house together).

I had a set of shelves in our guest room wardrobe (before I installed a shelving system in that one…), and I had a simple rule: “One in, one out.” Every time I put a new magazine on the shelf, the oldest would go into the recycling bin. I should probably add that, yes, I do actually look at older magazines from time to time (the magazines I was keeping are a title that I’ve been buying for more than 20 years).

Here in Hamilton, I put the magazines in two bottom cubes of the nine cube shelves in my living area, shelves that are mainly a mix of cookbooks, some decor, photos, that sort of thing. I realised that I liked the colourful spines of the magazines all lined up (as in the photo up top), and I had nothing else to go in those two cubes, so here I am (a side note: I have three cubes of cookbooks, too, and I want to purge some of them, too, but if I ever need another cube, I can just purge more magazines).

I sorted the magazines for those two cubes between August 31 and September 5, and this past Friday, September 11, a large pile of magazines were emptied from the recycling bin. The last lot is already in the bin, waiting for the next collection in two weeks. So, roughly two weeks after I began it, that project is basically done, though I expect I’ll keep refining the stash. I should add that I didn’t work on the project every day, and there was only one one day of sorting that was even remotely intense—though perhaps that was because I was trying to read the issue’s date in small type, often in white against a pastel colour. My increasingly elderly eyes were not happy.

Also, in the time since the wardrobe project ended, I went through five storage boxes that used to be in the guest room wardrobe. They’re a size that could hold a couple reams or so of office paper, but I’d put some of my random clothing items in them—two houses ago. I washed everything, tried it all on, and put some stuff aside to donate, and a few items I put with the clothes I actually wear. The boxes themselves are back on the top shelf of the guest room wardrobe—and they’re all empty. I think I’ll eventually use them in my office. Maybe.

So, another aspect of my house-wide decluttering and reorganising project is finished. I’m not even close to being finished with the inside of the house, but everything I finish brings me closer to that point. This magazine project is clearly very small, but I can see the difference doing it made, and while small, it’s progress, nevertheless. Onward.