I slumped and sighed. “I have sorted, decluttered, organized and still have a lot to do before we have a yard sale.”
“Some folks hire an agency to come in once a year to organize their house,” my friend observed.
“Pay? For someone to organize?” I was shocked. Everyone gets the urge to purge, right? Well everyone but my husband. I began the decluttering with his excess in the garage to make space for a garage sale.
“We are going to clean the garage,” I insisted. “I am taking over that store room. You have a shop.”
“You’re what?!”
I began assigning specific shelves for insect sprays, grass seed and the dozen mouse traps I found tucked behind cloths, paint brushes and car parts. We don’t have mice right now. We obviously have had them in the past and bought new traps every time.
“Do you think we have enough paint brushes and rollers?” I asked as I filled a large bucket with brushes, rollers and pans. Okay, I admit, I threw away some when he wasn’t looking – adding to the debris that filled up our rolling dumpster that week.
He should have seen this mood coming. Earlier a non-profit where I serve asked if I would deal with the donations that have not fit their needs and have accumulated for several years.
“You don’t want any of this?” I pointed out several items.
“No. Those just do not work.”
“Okay.” I began stuffing their excess into big black trash bags to take home and sort.
My husband’s mouth dropped when he came home to a living room floor covered with black bags and their miscellaneous contents.
“I know. I know. It is a mess, but I thought it would be easier to sort it here into piles of ‘trash’, donate and ‘re-home’.” After he endured me bringing home seven carloads of clutter to our living room, even he was ready to clean the house.
Remembering all that, I realized I had done voluntarily what my friend said some get paid to do. It makes sense. Call it being nosy, or my personal idea of fun, I like to sort through another person’s hoard. After my grandmother’s funeral, the rest of the family selected what they wanted and left her house. I stayed and wandered around, emptying shelves, cupboards and even the corners in the basement. With no goal in mind, I put important looking papers into one pile and old garbage bills and gas receipts into the trash and thrift store items in boxes. In the corner of the basement I silently cheered when I found pastel thermos glasses we used as children and tucked them into my pile to take home.
Still, I assumed that organizing is an innate trait. We all have to get our act together sometime or another, right?
“Well I know a couple who paid for an online tutorial on how to organize and de-clutter their homes,” my friend said.
“Really?!” I shook my head disbelief. Every women’s magazine carries at least one article a year on this task. No brainer. Trash, donate, keep, sell. If you haven’t used it in a year, you may need to move it along.
Sounds easy until I remember how long it took me decide to have a yard sale this summer as motivation to remove everything I no longer want, need or care to keep. When it is over, I hope this urge to purge ends. I have a lot more interesting projects that I would rather be doing now that I have the space work.