It's uncanny how having a baby, and then another one can shrink your house. The play corner, craft desk, high chair, recliner, play mat, hammock and a hundred thousand toys leave a once spacious room with just a few feet spare in the centre. The spare rooms no longer spare. Never minimalists, we were a High-Stuff-Household even pre-children, with heirloom belongings, a dozen hobbies between us (crafts of various kinds, kayaking, snowboarding, mountain biking, furniture renovation, studio pottery collecting et al) not to mention we both like to play in op-shops. Terry, he likes to find a thing, an old thing and find out all about it. He has an extensive find-out-about-an-old-thing library (mostly op-shopped). Me, I have my list (needs), but I'm not opposed to occasionally being seduced by something random I clap my eyes on (pretties) either.
We are pretty restrained on the whole on the buying stuff front though, truly, and my distaste for clutter ying tends to balance out Terry's hoarding yang. Yet somehow, despite regular yinging out, trying to organise the spare room into a new baby's eventual bedroom; and moving completely out and then back in after earthquake repairs has brought a lot of stuff to the surface in the manner of a shaken jar of muesli. And it ain't all raisins.
I found a definition of hoarding lately that I'm using as a touch stone to resolving our "is this life's messy clutter or unhealthy hoarding?" confusion. The definition says essentially that if stuff impedes your activities of daily living it is hoard. Can't step foot in the garage? Hoard. Can't see the bed in the front bedroom? Hoard. Can't hang Terry's shirts in his wardrobe? Hoard. Can't fit your excess soup in the deep freeze? Hoard. Can't find anywhere to put down your craft project out of reach of kids? Hoard.
Or, according to Terry, "we need a bigger house!".
My urge, nay my desperate freakin' need to seriously downsize our household contents has coincided perfectly with the Down To Earth De-clutter-a-thon, so without further ado, here is the tally for this week:-
- Three carrier bags full of hoard to the op-shop. I was heartened that none of it had originally come from an op-shop: my 'need or absolute must-have' op-shopping policy works, even if i do have occasional bouts of restraint remorse. Most were gifts of little utility or, ahem, taste. Hoarded because it didn't feel right to give away gifts I took a deep breath and just let them go. It felt good. I need to brave making suggestions for gifts when they are in the offing (not my style at all). Whilst I was there I picked up the above ombre silk scarf, $4. Naughty, hand-slap!
- Gave away 3 huge bags of black peaches from the deep freeze as we won't have time to make jam before the next ones are grown and picked.
- Gave away 2 litres of frozen expressed breast milk to a needy mama and babe via Eats on Feets.
- Sold a set of plan drawers (which held a yet to be dealt with hoard of paintings and prints) on Trademe.
- The ones that got away. Two very stained too-small t-shirts of Claud's which Terry dug out of the bin for his rag-bag(s).
- I also signed up for The Travelling Stationary Box and am going to have the mother of all stationary de-stashes this week (two drawers, a desk and random boxes so far!).
I'd love to know if anything is off-limits in the de-stash at your place? Gifts aside, I really struggle with the children's toys in that since they are not technically mine I feel it's not my place to get rid of them...what do you think?
p.s. How many bags of rags do you think is too many?!
