.png)
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
.png)
Tis the season for catalogs from every retailer you've ever interacted with filling your mailbox! If you're snowed in under all the junk mail, the web site CatalogChoice.Org may be a game changer. It's essentially a "Do Not Call" list for your mailbox and you can directly unsubscribe from hundreds of catalogs or receive assistance in communicating a cease-mail succinctly and quickly with businesses that are not listed.
I first found the free-to-use site in 2015 after reading Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, which taught me that ahead of, and far more impactful than, the oft-mentioned "Three R's" of mindful consumption (reduce, reuse, recycle) is REFUSE, which means: don't allow the stuff you don't want into your life by not accepting it in the first place. Stopping waste before it exists and enters the waste stream completely eliminates any need for further action and wasting your energy to conscientiously discard it later. (There is also a 5th R: rot, which is mindful discarding through composting.) I'll spell this out, in case you, like me, take a few hundred repetitions to get it. You can just say no--refuse the stuff and that is the end of your journey with the stuff you don't want in the first place. WHAT?! This honestly blew my mind (once it landed). As a dyed-in-the-wool, people-pleasing Southern woman, aged 35 (at the time) it had never occurred to me that I was allowed to say no...to ANYTHING (or at least without accompanying said request with an apology for living) and move on with my life. No kidding. I didn't pick that up in prestigious college education or in any of my various important-sounding office jobs. I was suddenly drunk with my own power.
I gathered every catalog and mailer in sight to get going in my "Just Say No to Mail" campaign. I gleefully entered customer and offer numbers into the web site as I purged one vendor after another from the list of mailbox scrubs. As the stack of current mailers dwindled, I eagerly awaited every postal delivery so I could pounce on would-be interlopers. I even solicited the permission of family members to cleanse their mailboxes (especially my mother, who was still receiving catalogs in my name at my hometown address 18 years after I went away to college). In just a matter of a couple of weeks, there was virtually NO trash in my mailbox. Amazing. My mailbox was peaceful, yes, but I think it's safe to say the solicitation-free mailbox was emblematic of a much larger battle I realized I had won. After that initial overhaul, I have revisited the site any time I wind up on a new mailing list and within 30 seconds, I'm back to mailbox zero.
.png)
So if you missed it earlier: CatalogChoice.Org (the .org is important!). I don't get any monetary remuneration from you clicking the link or anything (and the site is free to use), but I will probably take a tremendous amount of satisfaction in seeing how many outclicks I get to that link and thinking, obviously, of the Earth.
And if you, like me 7 years ago, are just breathing into the space of "you're allowed to say no, the excitement begins as the whole world of "things you can say no to" appears before your eyes.
Think of all the junky stuff you've been handed in the disguise of "fun" because it's called a giveaway- the key chains and refrigerator magnets and jar openers and door stops branded by a random business, not to mention the plastic bags they come in. (Can't wait to share with y'all my thoughts on bags!) Some of this stuff you might actually want (thank you businesses for my many chip clips!), but more than likely it either goes straight to the trash or sits unused, unwanted and trashes up your home and life. So refuse it and that will be the beautiful ending of the story.
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Seasonal items often never get a good purge and going-through since, unless you're the neighbor who leaves the lights up through April (and it's totally fine if you are), these decorations typically spend 10-11 months/year out of sight. Tastes change over the years, but we tend to be sentimental about our holiday items, even ones we no longer like or need, gilding them with nostalgia for their presence at and in our family traditions, but not valuing them enough to bring out of storage for their spotlight month. In some instances, their year-round existence in attics, basements, garages, or storage buildings have made them easy prey for pests and rodents, or left them at the whim of humidity and other climate-related damage.
We often delay a decision about such things by saying "I need to think about it." What you really mean is "I need to suffer about it." By not using the item and leaving it to fend for itself with roaches and mold, you have already made a decision, although it is an unconscious and far-less empowering one than making the conscious choice to let it go with gratitude and love for the role it has played in your life. When you keep the item in a deteriorated or unloved state, it not only drags your energy down each time you are in contact with it, but constantly decreases the overall vibration of your home from the place where it is stored and creates blockages for manifesting your best life. Unleash your best holiday life in these 5 steps, explained in detail below.
- Get All your Seasonal Items Out Every Year at the Beginning of the Season
- Discard Any Trash, Obvious Dislikes, or Items You Don't Use and Enjoy the Rest!
- Do A Space and Container Audit
- Clean, Repack, and Re-Label
- Discard Any Items that Didn't Make the Cut
Note that unlike most decluttering methods, there are two discard steps instead of one, but stay with me! The separate steps allow you to fully enjoy your items and evaluate them carefully. I can say with 100% certainty that these steps are 100% effective (yes!) IF YOU FOLLOW THEM. The only variable is you and the work you're willing to do. Feelings will arise, but that IS the work. Ready? Let's goooooo....
- Get out ALL your seasonal items every year at the beginning of the season. Did I already lose you? If you have such a huge amount that this would just send you running for the hills, break them down into categories and get every item for a given category out. These are some I came up with for Christmas decorations, but you could adapt them to fit any holiday/season for which you have a lot of specific items. If you wait until the end of the season to do this, you will only use what you readily access and not have the full awareness of all you have when you choose what you want to use.
- Outdoor- inflatables, furniture, large decorations
- Lights and Electrical- includes all lights and lighting fixtures, extension cords, timers, devices used to install lights
- Trees and wreaths--tree stand, tree skirt, artificial trees, all wreaths including advent
- Tabletop and Entertaining--dishes and servewear that you only use during this time
- General Ornaments (can be further broken down by theme such as "all white" or "circus" or whatever you have)--includes any and all tree decorations or small items you keep with ornaments
- Home Decor and Free-Standing decorations- Seasonal pillows, blankets, towels, stockings, stocking hangers, menorah, nativity sets, candles
- Cards and Paper Anything-- holiday books (including cookbooks), your saved holiday cards from friends for the past 40 years or any other paper mementos
- Sentimental- Got any popsicle stick crafts or salt dough ornaments your kids made in nursery school? Great grandmother's gravy boat? These deserve special treatment, so we save them for last.
2. Discard any obvious trash or things you just don't want or won't use and enjoy the rest. As you open and go through all your seasonal items, look for broken and deteriorated items that are obvious trash to you. Any other items you can easily let go of via trash or donation can go, too. Not planning to use it this year (or probably ever)? Consider letting it go (but if you don't, we'll circle back on this stuff at the end). Here are some more tips for evaluating your items:
- See anything you just don't like even if it still works? Why keep paying--in physical and mental storage--for it year after year? If it is useful and in good condition, donating it at the beginning of the season can allow someone else to enjoy it right away! If it is trash or in disrepair, let it go with thanks for helping you better understand yourself!
- Plug all lights into an outlet to see if they still work! Many local Keep America Beautiful programs (in my community, it is called Keep Nacogdoches Beautiful, for example) accept some lights for recycling, but putting them in the trash is just fine. Do not put them back in the box if they don't work!
- Discard all newspaper and tissue used to wrap fragile items and refresh it annually. Plenty of fresh newspaper is available for free at local recycling locations or yours for the asking via social media. This not only staves off mold and pests, it forces you to look at every single item every year as you unwrap it.
- Shake empty containers out over the trash to discard glitter and dust and loose pieces (holly berries anyone?) before re-use. There may be pest excrement, too. (I don't know about other places, but here in Texas, roaches love to poop on seasonal decor.) Yuck! But wouldn't you rather know and be rid of it?
- If something is so badly obscured by mold or rat-chewed as to be unrecognizable, it is no longer serving you and may be a health hazard to keep it no matter what it is.
- Enjoy your stuff! Holiday decorations are there to make your heart lighter and your soul feel its worth by connecting and sharing with others. You paid for this stuff and claim to love it. If you have and want 75 Santa Claus mugs, get them out and bring on the hot chocolate!
3. Do A Space and Container Audit
- How much space do you have to store seasonal items? Be honest with yourself about how much space you truly have and want to give to items used for just a portion of the year. (Are you dedicating half of your garage to 1/12 of the year items? We'll do storage math in another post, but believe me that that one just doesn't work out!) Consider upcoming moves or even right-sizing for your existing home. When your space designated for those items is full of containers and each smaller container is also full, that's all you can have.
- What shape are your containers in? Are you using cardboard boxes to store your seasonal items? These are the favorite food of roaches and silverfish and easily destroyed by rodents. (If you followed the above steps to shake loose debris out of empty containers and came up with poop, you already know this for sure!) Quality, durable containers are pricier than cardboard boxes and flimsier plastic ones, so I therefore only want to buy them for what I really cherish and use. (If the items are not cherished, do you really want to keep them around?) If you have bins and containers that fit your space already, even if not ideal in color or quality and it does not make sense to replace, wipe them out before re-use each year and thank them for serving you until you can. When I buy new containers, I invest in quality, acid-free, clear storage bins so I can easily see what's in them. These "Our Clear Storage Boxes" are my favorites and beloved by many professional organizers. I know they are more expensive and because I don't have unlimited money to spend on them, I am more careful about the items that I decide to keep. That said, most of my seasonal items live in a mish-mosh of plastic bins that I purchased at various stores over the years and I gratefully keep them as long as they are in good repair and protect my items.
4. Clean, Pack (Re-Pack), and Label (Re-Label) I won't say end-of-the-season packing day is my favorite day of the year, but it does send a little thrill of delight to get out my sharpies and lovingly organize and put away my seasonal decor (that if I'm honest, I'm kinda over) in freshly wiped bins, new paper, and twist ties that my next year self will be so grateful to receive and open and decorate with. Here are my methods!
- Wipe Down and Completely Empty All Bins Did you leave some stuff in there you're still not using? Out it comes! Wipe the interior and exterior of all bins to remove dust, mold....etc. before refilling with your cherished items.
- Box by category/ item type. You may have learned very clearly in step 1 that you could not quickly find a specific thing in a specific bin to save your life. Keeping like items together is not only helpful for keeping track of what you actually have, it makes decorating a whole lot easier when you only have to haul "the lights bin" (or two or three) to the front yard and not 17 different ones you have to dig through first. Use the categories I suggested above in step 1 or whatever ones make sense for what you want to keep. (Maybe you need an entire dishes bin?) As I go through my home taking things down, I gather it into piles--ornaments here, stockings and tree skirt there, before I box anything at all. Then I carefully wrap in tissue paper, bubble wrap, etc each thing, packing my most favorites FIRST. Any items that didn't get used this year? Back of the line, Buster! When a designated container ("ornaments bin") is full, those are all the items I can keep. Move leftover items to a discard pile for post-season processing.
- Label Time! When each box is closed, I use a sharpie to write every unique category in the bin on the lid (e.g. shatter-resistant ornaments, ornament hooks, stocking hangers, stockings, tree skirt) or if I am re-using a bin I labeled in a previous year, I check that all the contents still match the old labels and add or cross-off, as needed. If you do not want to write directly on the lid, try a label maker or tape an index card where it can clearly be read without opening the bin. There are a million fancy and simple ways to label bins. You do you! But don't skip this step. It is SO helpful!
5. Discard any items that didn't make the cut. You know what this step is about. It's time to say goodbye to the items that didn't fit in the space/containers you designated for holiday storage. If you honestly assessed your favorites as you packed them, you can take comfort in knowing that your most precious items are the only things taking up your precious and limited storage space. While the remaining items may be of value to someone, they are not valuable ENOUGH to you to occupy this cherished space. Some you may not have even used this year. Let them go to the trash or donation center with gratitude for what they have taught you in your life. If you are donating items, set a one week limit on actually taking them to donation. Obey your calendar and if they do not leave your home by then, put them in the trash.
Reminders (these apply to all decluttering acts, not just seasonal):
- You are not throwing away memories. Those live inside you as long as you want to keep them.
- You are not throwing away a person, even if the item was a gift. A gift's purpose is immediately fulfilled the moment it is received and the love it was given with is never lost. A true gift should not burden you or your relationship with the person who gave it.
- Throwing something in the trash is not disrespectful. It is honorable to the item and empowering to you to make a clear choice about your relationship to that item instead of leaving it to languish and fester in a rat-chewed box. If someone were breaking up with you, would you prefer to be told with finality the truth with love and gratitude for your time together or moth-balled and strung along indefinitely?
- Donating or rehoming an item is wonderful and good in some circumstances, but not when it is used as a method to avoid processing your feelings and not because the item still has a useful life with someone else.
Just to be crystal clear here: I am NOT referring to pets or any living creature when I refer to disposal and re-homing.
6. Six?! Optional, but so satisfying bonus step: Give your house a light cleaning. Run the vacuum in the main areas you just packed up and wipe down tables and the mantel or anywhere else decor lived. I can almost guarantee you'll find some stray ornament hooks or another Santa hat you want to add to your carefully labeled boxes. Replace with year-round decor or nothing at all and luxuriate in the spaciousness. Enjoy your fresh house!
If you are experiencing any kind of clutter in your life, from your calendar to your relationships or your closet, I would be so honored to help you sort it out as your clutter coach. The one you've been waiting for is already here, but she's under something heavy! Visit the contact page of my site to book a session or send me a message to set up a discovery call.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Social Media
Search