Old posts
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08.26.08An empty room
This is Emily, she’s been my flatmate for two years and we’ve been attending the same art college for four, this last year I’ll be by myself. There will be no random shopping trips after lectures finish (or sometimes while they’re still going on), there will be no funny nicknames for the new people on the course who’s real names we can’t remember, and there will be no going to the Chinese supermarket and buying lots of Pocky then attempting to eat it without freaking out our lecturer. I’m not sure how I’ll cope without that really.
I’ve been incredibly busy these past few days so you will have to excuse my lack of a blog post. I’m absolutely exhausted right now, to be honest my sleeping pattern really hasn’t gotten any better but either way I am forcing myself to post this.
I have been putting the final touches to the mammoth bedroom de-cluttering which basically involved me pretty much throwing almost everything I own out because I hadn’t seen it in two years under piles of other stuff I owned. Needless to say I didn’t accidentally throw anything important out like I usually do in the whole process.
All of this needed to be done of course because I am moving out, something I’ve been fully prepared for for a while but still sort of rushes up on you at the last minute. It’s my last week in my current residence and I’ve been here for two years the place sort of feels like mine and it will be hard to leave it behind even if it wasn’t worth the rent I’ve been paying.
Everything that managed to avoid the intense de-clutter however has ended up in suitcases (I had no cardboard boxes and figured I’d save a few trees) and holdalls, quite a lot of them I’m still shocked at how much stuff I have and how on earth I managed to fit it all into this tiny tiny space I’ve been calling home for the past two years. It is odd to sit and look at it all and then look around my now pretty empty room, all of your stuff ends up in boxes or cases or storage at some point. It’s like you accumulate things, some things you can throw out but some things you know you have to take wherever you reside from now on, I have too many of the latter it would seem even after filling 25 bin bags.
Have you ever needed to de-clutter your room and been shocked by how much stuff you have? I’m sure we all realize it sometime like it dawns on us that you have things you don’t even remember buying, it’s a weird feeling.I’m going to London on Sunday with Jon and it will be a much needed break from the usual if I am honest, this summer has been the dullest one ever filled with an incredible lack of money. I’m not sure how I’m going to pay for anything while I’m in London but the break will be fun.
I’m probably going to end up seeing a lot of things I really want but can’t afford, I wanted to go to China town originally and try and find some cute pointless things I don’t need but I think given my current financial situation I should probably stay well away from any store selling cute things, however this train of thought will most likely go out of the window. Oh well.
07.22.08note to self: you have too much stuffO
ver the last two days I’ve been tidying up parts of my room, mostly in anticipation for having to pack away and move out which admitedly isn’t until next month but for once in my life I thought I’d get a head start. So far I’ve only tidied some draws and part of a corner of my room which is nothing really, yet I’ve somehow managed to fill three bin bags and have now run out actually. I’m totally surprised by how much clutter I have, I constantly forget that I’m a hoarder or at least an invisible one it seems I don’t like throwing away bits of paper, old project assignments, old bills I just sort of hang onto them. Paper and cardboard boxes which I have a pile of ontop of my wardrobe attributed to the fact that there’s never anywhere to put them, they’re my next battle I’m going to squash them flat and force them into our overflowing bin somehow.
There’s something very therapeutic about getting rid of a whole bunch of things you’ve ‘kept’ for no real reason its on a different level to tidying up, tidying up is just moving things about that you own and cleaning up a bit this on the other hand is looking through things and going ‘why the hell did I keep this’ along with ‘do I really need this’ then having to convince yourself that you no longer need a bill from two years ago. My clothes are going to be the last thing to sort out, there are a whole piles of them that I don’t wear and won’t ever wear again but its so difficult to get myself to throw them out but it is one of those things that I have to do, I have to cast off old possessions once in a while I feel it helps me grow to get rid of things from the past - especially clothes from 4 seasons ago. I just wish I had money to buy a bunch more, but that would just be defeating the point of de-cluttering. I however have to keep myself on track.
De-cluttering Tips:
- All paper must go, if its a scrap, if its an old magazine, if its an old bill or if you have no idea why you kept it or what it is for get it in the recycle bin.
- Don’t think about it, learn to cut off your brain. Become a robot with your sorting.
- Don’t talk yourself into keeping something, because you will find yourself going ‘oh but i might wear this moth eaten pair of gloves I bought two years ago again.’ Trust me, you’ll never wear them again and neither will anyone else.
- If you find it impossible to cut off and find your brain questioning what you’ve just filled a bin bag with ask yourself, do you love it, when did you last see/use it, do you even need it? Chances are you probably don’t.
- Just do one room at a time, or you’ll end up exhausted.
- Find places for the things you want to keep, or if like my room there are barely any places for clutter start a pile of the things you want to keep and when all the clutter is gone find places for things in your keep pile, it can be quite rewarding to give your room a new look.
- When you’ve cleared out enough junk, move furniture around it’ll make the room seem even more new.
- Open up your cluttered drawers or a box you’ve been shoving junk into and just dump it out onto the bed, this is what I do. This way you have to force yourself to sort through it otherwise you’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep.
- Put loud and happy music on while you’re de-cluttering, sing along if you have to it will make it seem like less of a chore
- Most of all make sure to keep it that way, or at least convince yourself you will even if you know that in a few weeks time you’ll be back to where you started.
