What's changed for us since decluttering
They say lives change when you declutter. I was skeptical, but 3 weeks in, I'm pretty impressed.
As I’ve been unabashed to tell anyone who would listen, we’ve been spending the past month decluttering our house and looking forward to finally converting our “house” into a “home.” We’ve lived in this house for almost 5 years now, having purchased it at the beginning of the pandemic.
In the past 2 and a half years, we’ve welcomed 2 adorable rascals to the house on top of our 2 cats. In the meantime, we’ve stuck with IKEA furniture mostly brought over from our previous apartment (or even our separate apartments in NYC or Bay Area before we got married), drowning amongst the duplicated kitchen goods and appliances we had separately, and then collectively, accumulated over the past 2 decades.
In essence, our house was a place to live that holds us and our lives, but was not necessarily, to risk feeling a tad too touchy feely, a place to feel joy. Our house, for all intents and purposes, does a wonderful job at “holding” us and our expanded family. It’s warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and yes, things break from time to time, but nothing throwing some spare change at the problem can’t fix.
But with things stored haphazardly everywhere, and babies adding mountains and mountains of new things into the mix, I was living every day on the edge, irritated at the clutter, but feeling powerless to organize or clean (after all, the moment I clean up the toys, the tiny little hands are immediately at work again). And besides, I’m exhausted by the end of the day, and was never in the mood to begin my overtime shift trying to clean the house.
And then we took a month long trip to Taiwan, where we lived out of a couple of suitcases, and the experience motivated us to strike while the iron was still hot. It has been 3 weeks since we began our decluttering and organizing journey, and while I haven’t lost weight (apparently this is a side effect?), there have been a lot of interesting changes to our lives and mindsets already.
“What if I need it later?”
“What if I need it later and I’d gotten rid of it?” That was always the “fear” that kept me keeping everything and anything, effectively turning my house into a warehouse of forgotten goods that I may some day possibly maybe need. Forget the fact that by the time I did somehow need it, it’ll be expired, atrophied, or otherwise unusable or undesirable (I found a lot of these little things squirreled away in the past 3 weeks). If I even managed to find it.
So far, we’ve put out hundreds of pounds of trash, recycling, and donations from the house. And after all that, I miss one thing, which was a hand-me-down baby feeding gear I received from one of my friends when I was pregnant. I had I passed it on to one of my pregnant friends, and have since then repurchased a portion of it.
I was feeling down that I’d let go of something that I still needed, but then realized that having gone through hundreds of pounds of things (if not over a thousand) and to only miss one small item… That’s pretty impressive. And not necessarily in a good way… (Since everything I’d gotten rid of, I’d deemed necessary at one point or another.)
Surprisingly, cleaning has become enjoyable!
I’ve always hated household chores, but since decluttering my major areas, it’s been so easy to quickly vacuum or to pick a few objects off the floors first thing in the morning to run the Roomba. Before, it was such a chore to even pull out the vacuum (which was drowning under the week’s worth of recycling) that I never wanted to do it. Now, if I feel something under my foot or see something, I just walk over to the wall where the small vacuum is hanging and clean it right up.
I think one of the reasons why I hated chores was because I didn’t know how to do it, and I felt like the barrier to entry was extremely high. But when there’s very little to actually clean or organize day-to-day, it becomes much easier to “just start somewhere.” And I decided that I may be worse than a novice now, but if I tried anything for 10 years, I must get somewhat better at it, right? So hopefully, by the time my kids are in 3rd grade, I’ll be a semi-master at keeping my house in order.
Which brings me to another thing I’m not good at… cooking.
We started meal-planning
Two weeks ago, we began meal-planning for the upcoming week. Before we came back from the long trip to Taiwan, we ordered take out at least 3-4 days a week for dinners. I “don’t cook,” and we were definitely busy with 2 under 2. But having spent almost 24/7 with each other for a month, one of the activities my husband and I both strongly felt we wanted to invest in was a nightly sit-down dinner with all 4 of us.
When we came home from Taiwan, I began trying to prepare dinner so all of us could eat together at 5PM, where we had previously been eating separately. Until then, our nightly routine consisted of the kids eating first, then the night routines, then put them to bed, and then we’d finally eat (take out). We always ate so late (sometimes past 8PM), and I felt like this separation of meal times was also contributing to my toddler being such a picky eater.
Going from never doing any food prep to cooking a full dinner for 4 (thanks, baby led weaning) has been a huge change, and I’m slowly learning how to smooth out my operations, especially while the baby clings to my legs and whines in the kitchen.
It’s a lot of work, but I definitely think we feel better and sleep better at night not eating so late. The food surprisingly tastes fine, and the toddler is trying way more foods than he used to as he sees us eat.
Shopping has become more mindful
For someone who’s decluttering, we definitely still get a lot of Amazon and Target deliveries. But I feel like the contents have changed. As I go through my house finding old things and throwing away old appliances, I have been replacing some with newer ones (I just purchased 2 humidifiers because my infant is having nose bleeds because our house is too dry). I have also been buying cleaning products, ingredients and stocks for food (I still can’t “whip up” a dinner, so we are relying heavily on batch-made and frozen foods), and purchasing miscellaneous objects and consumables as we reset the home.
I haven’t bought a new toy for my kids in over a month. If you know me, this is definitely worthy of a mention (I’m currently considering a wooden toy kitchen). I’ve decluttered baby toys that the infant no longer plays with, and will continue pruning as his development progresses and we no longer need certain toys.
I’ve also decided to rely on deliveries for food and groceries as much as possible. For some same-day delivery services, like Target, we have to pay a tip to the driver, but even then, when I consider the amount of time and energy saved by not having to lug an infant (or infant and toddler) to the store in 10 degree weather, it’s worth it.
Ordering online also prevents me from mindlessly adding things I don’t need to the cart, or discovering hidden treasures, further helping me save money (and calories).
The kids seem more engaged with their toys
I’ve greatly improved on the organization of toys since we began decluttering and reorganizing, and I think it’s really helped the kids engage more with their toys, and in more creative ways. Having the clear boxes in the same place all the time helps the toddler know where his favorite toy sets are, and he can pull them out and put them away on his own.
All of the toys having a “home” helps me clean up very quickly, and I am not completely overwhelmed when the room inevitably turns into hurricane disaster zone. I have containers to throw them into, or can easily sort the toys into their respective boxes and move them out of the way.
I definitely think having an easy-to-manage “home” for all of the toys is the best way to retain your sanity, aside from regularly rotating the toys so not too many are out for consumption at all times.
I’ve made some money
Yes, its kind of complicated money because if I hadn’t bought it in the first place… yes, yes, yes. But if the objects were going to rot in my house, they would’ve cost the maintenance fees (rent!) on top of the cost. Right?
So far, I’ve made $662 worth of returns, and got $526 by selling my old cameras and equipments. I’ve also sent a high brand purse for consignment, and shipped a few huge boxes of clothes and bags for consignment and recycling to ThredUp for processing. My husband has sent a few bags to Trashie for ethical/responsible recycling/reusing of old clothes.
I have also been donating to the local baby and toddler pantry, local Buy Nothing group, and will be making a donation to the local thrift store that financially supports local nonprofits with their sales. This week, I’m going to try selling our books to a used bookstore to see how much they add up to.
I’m really glad that our baby products can get a second (or third or fourth) life thanks to friends who can take them to use themselves or share with their friends or families, and by having the local baby and toddler pantry that takes baby goods. We spent a lot of money on those things… (at least I got 2 babies’ worth out of them?)
I hadn’t really tried selling or donating locally in the past because I really dislike having to go out of my way to figure things out or communicating with people, but for the most part, utilizing online services has made sending things in very easy, and I’m learning the ropes on the Buy Nothing groups so that I don’t overwhelm myself.
I don’t know what I’ll do with the money, but maybe I’ll find a cause to donate to, or something nice for the family. Or we’ll just donate it to daycare… This is the most likely scenario…
Anyways, we’re almost done with our decluttering, and I can’t wait to get my basement back so the kids can have the biggest room in the house as their play room/gym!