Birthing the New

There’s something new being born in my life.  I know this because I’ve felt the desire to go through my house and office looking for things that need a new home – the items that represent the past that need to go.

• You know when something new is trying to come into your life when:
• You feel ready to release the energetic weight of stuff sitting on your shoulders.
• You know, on some level, that your life today has outgrown your life of yesterday.
• You feel overwhelmed by the sight of things you no longer love or need.
• You intentionally avoid or ignore the areas in your home or office that feel cluttered, disorganized, or messy.
• You can’t seem to find the time or energy to invest in new ideas or directions.

I’ve known for a year that I needed to handle some things – the books that no longer fit in our library, the stuff left in our garage from the move five years ago, and a room in our basement filled with unused construction material.  With my busy travel schedule, I’ve had the perfect excuse to put these projects on hold.  But eventually the energetic burden takes it toll.  I know I can’t move forward without going back and letting go.

So, what makes it easier to make physical and energetic space?  Here’s what I learned this time…

• Understanding that physical stuff holds old energy that prevents evolution.  If you don’t release the things you no longer love or use, you can’t fully grow into your next stage.
• Remembering how free and exciting it feels to see an empty room, clean closets, or spacious, organized shelves.
• Recognizing that clearing out the old is a fundamental step in our personal growth therefore time for cleaning and clearing needs to be scheduled so these projects receive the attention they deserve.
• Energetic, loving, and motivated friends who are willing to help makes the process fun, easy, and infinitely more enjoyable.
• Having the perfect place to donate the things you no longer use, need, or love inspires you to let go of more than you think you can.
• Giving your treasured items to treasured people.

Finally, one of the benefits of getting older is the recognition that time is precious. While in the past it might have been easy to go through a stack of books and think, “someday I may want to read these,” you realize that someday is a limited time frame.  It’s how you spend “right now” that really matters.

A few minutes ago I returned from delivering a truckload of items to our local thrift store – a nonprofit organization that shares revenue with food pantries and homeless shelters.  I love giving to these people – they’re excited, grateful and anxious to help in any way they can.

I know I’m preparing to give birth and the de-cluttering process is a necessary step in that direction.  Care to join me?

Life Makeover for the Year 2012(sm) is written and produced by Cheryl Richardson.© Copyright 1999-2012 Cheryl Richardson,P.O. Box 13,Newburyport, MA01950,  www.cherylrichardson.com. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

How and what should I donate?

This is such a common problem – you want to declutter but you don’t want to just put items in the bin, especially if they are still good or if they have cost you lots of money. Unclutterer.com hit the nail on the head so read on for some interesting ideas:

Deciding exactly how to purge your clutter can be a difficult process. Do you trash it, recycle it at a recycling center, recycle it by repurposing it into something more useful, sell it, or donate the item to charity or to someone you know who wants it? And, like you suggested in your question, recycling, repurposing, donating, and selling items can be an excuse to hold onto clutter if you’re never actually following through and recycling, repurposing, donating, or selling the items.

I try to use the following guidelines when purging items:

• Trash the trash. If something is trash, it should be trashed. You can compost the environmentally friendly items, but if a product needs to go to the dump, by all means take it to the dump. And, if something is a hazardous material, be sure to take it to your county’s hazardous waste facility. Trash is clutter and you shouldn’t hold onto it a minute longer than necessary.
• Recycle what can be recycled, but do it now. People who live in city’s with curbside recycling pick up have it the easiest — put your recycling on the curb and be done with your aluminum, glass, paper, and plastic products. If you don’t have curbside pickup in your area (or have larger items, like steel beams) you’ll need to drive to the closest recycling center to make deposits. I recommend incorporating this errand into your weekly schedule so the recycling never builds up beyond seven days. For other recyclable items that aren’t accepted at most recycling centers — eye glasses, electronics, clothing for rags — only recycle these items IF you’ll recycle them in the next seven days. If a week passes and the items are still lingering, trash them. Schedule the recycling action items on your calendar (research to find where you can recycle the item, boxing and shipping of the item or dropping it off), as well as the deadline for trashing the item if you fail to recycle it.
• Only sell, repurpose, or give an item to a friend if you do it now.You can sell, repurpose, or give an item to a friend, but only do this if you’re actually going to follow through on the action. Similar to recycling, schedule the action items on your calendar and a deadline (I give myself two weeks) for when it will be out of your house. If it has been two weeks and you still haven’t rid your home of the objects, trash them.
• Only give good items to charity. As Peter Walsh so aptly stated in his book It’s All Too Much:
  

  Goodwill receives a billion pounds of clothing every year. Ultimately, they use less than half of the clothes they get. Clothing is cheap, and the cost of sorting, cleaning, storing, and transporting the clothes is higher than their value. If you wouldn’t give an article to a family member, it’s probably not good enough for charity. Sure, it’s great to get the tax deduction and it makes you feel like you didn’t waste money buying the clothes, but if you’re truly charitable, be sensitive to the needs of the organization. Charities aren’t dumping grounds for your trash.

  Read the entire article and all the other reader’s interesting comments here: http://unclutterer.com/2012/09/07/ask-unclutterer-is-my-desire-to-recycle-an-excuse-to-keep-stuff/

I'll get you my pretty...

Did anyone see the “selling your clutter online” story on A Current Affair tonight? It’s so bizarre: just today hubby and I were clearing out the garage (yes, even professional organisers have declutter sessions!) and I came across my bike covered in about an inch of dust. I haven’t ridden it in about three years since moving from Canberra (too many hills around my house and too much bother to put the bike rack on the car).

So why do I still have it?

I could sell it on eBay or Gumtree and make money for Kerri’s China Moon Bear Rescue Challenge! But no, for some reason getting rid of my bike is not an option so I have made a New Year’s resolution – I am going to ride it! Starting this weekend hubby and I are going to ride to our local shops at Bulimba for coffee each Sat. Yay! And no excuses.

OK maybe not this Saturday, I have a Feng Shui client… So starting next Saturday!

Oops no wait I have a roller blading lesson next Saturday (I have to learn how to stop).

How about the Saturday after that then (darn, no heading down to Sydney that weekend).

OK sooo…anyone want to buy a bike?

Just like a Babushka doll...

I am so chuffed to have been asked to contribute to a story that ran today on BrisbaneTimes.com.au about downsizing for retirees. Written by Mary Costello, the article outlines how retirees can best tackle the life changing process of downsizing:

Advice for Mature Downsizers

My brother rang recently to ask whether I wanted my secondary school essays that he’d found boxed in the roof space of the family home. I told him to leave them just where they were.

It might have been a lifetime ago, but I know that when I was in Upper 6th I wrote a fabulous essay on George Orwell and the English language – and would read again. Surely a few kilos of paper plus some old shoes, handbags and now retro fashion items couldn’t be taking up too much room.

I suppose it would have been a different story if my brother, or my parents before him, had decided to move house. You just can’t take other people’s personal heirlooms with you.

Kerri Rodley of Queensland-based Domestic Downsizing advises says mature householders who are planning to downsize to get their kids to clear out their own rubbish/treasures.

Move My Home spoke to Kerri the day after she’d helped a still-active client in her eighties downsize from a 4-bedroom home to a 2-bedroom retirement unit.

“She was moving from huge to tiny, and she wanted to take all her family heirlooms and the things she loved, liked her giant dining table,” Kerri said.

“Unfortunately it won’t fit. I had to say, “How can you live and move around in the new space? You’re getting older and you must be able to get around quite easily without things getting in your way. You must be realistic about your new lifestyle.”

It hit home and we sat down and did a plan about how she would walk around the house. It made her rethink her whole strategy, otherwise we’d have taken everything to the new place and not have had anywhere to put it.

“Next week we’ll go to the unit and put sticky-tape on the floor where the furniture will be, rather than bring the furniture and having to move it all around again. I find that works quite well.”

In Kerri’s experience people often fail to consider the practicality of having a large flat-screen TV in a small space.

“That was a big thing for this lady, who watches a lot of TV,” she said. “You must sit well back from it. You need a giant space between the chair and the TV, downsizers don’t often have that space.”

And it’s not just the furniture that must be considered when it comes to sorting belongings.

“Things that are hidden must also be thought about,” Kerri said. “My client loves to cook, and had a fantastic big kitchen in her old home. But the kitchen in the unit is tiny, and all her cooking things, even her cook books, wouldn’t fit in the new space.”

Displaying cherished antiques, artwork and family photos can also pose problems in a smaller home, Kerri said.

“The walls in this lady’s old house were all plastered, but in her new unit there’s a lot of exposed brick and you can’t easily place things on the walls. I’ve said we’ll make a feature wall from her favourite photos and paintings.”

“Then she can keep some others in a box and change them in six months time. It’ll be like a moving art wall. It’s a concept that worked well for her.

“This client was quite a realist. She has some fantastic antique cabinets andChinafrom her mother. I suggested that she pass them on to her children now. Then she can tell the stories about the different items and explain the meanings behind them”

“She thought that was a good idea. This a whole new phase of life, but you can’t just cut off the past – you must incorporate it and blend past and future.”

Kerri Rodley’s Top Tips for Mature Downsizers:

• Go through everything in your home and ask yourself – is this part of my new life? Do I really love it? Will it be useful in the new home? Do I really need it any more?

• Be ruthless – you won’t have time in your new active lifestyle to be decluttering, cleaning, and dealing with the past – you will be enjoying the present and planning for the future.

• Don’t try to do the decluttering, sorting and moving all at once – this will be very stressful, and the whole idea of downsizing is to reduce stress. Take it one room at a time, and have the decluttering and sorting done way before you start collecting moving boxes!

Read the rest of the story here: http://domesticdownsizing.com/media.htm