Gifts That Never Stop Taking

Our lives continued to be cluttered for years. We moved into a smaller place to save on rent, but paid for a storage unit in the meantime. We bought a house with as much storage space as we could afford, albeit still way below what the bank said we could afford. We moved into our house with one child and we filled up our basement and attic. By the time our next child came along, we still had to ask, “Where will we put him?”

While our parents pestered us to get a bigger house, we kept working to rearrange. With every holiday, our adoring relatives packed more and more toys around our children. I spent more hours moving boxes from one location to another than I spent time playing with my children and working as a writer. I felt suffocated and depressed. I dreaded Christmas because I knew that I would spend January trying to figure out where I would put all the new presents. February, March, April and May would be spent getting ready for the massive garage sale. If I had spent that many hours working a part time job, I would have made a lot more money than I did at each garage sale.

Five years ago, when Extreme Home Makeover first came out, I sent in a tape. In looking over my audition tape and then watching the show weekly, I realized something poignant. I didn’t want my house razzed to the ground, I just wanted to come home and not have to move boxes from one place to another. The show crew left behind rooms that were open and simple in their elegance. The children’s rooms were geared toward one hobby or another, not every hobby known to mankind.

The night I came to this conclusion, I didn’t get up and bulldoze my basement, but something did change inside of me. I stopped making Christmas lists for one thing. If our moms pry it out of us at the last minute then that is eleven months out of the year they are not buying for us. I recently went so far as to limit the number of gifts to one at Christmas and one at birthdays. No more large presents at Valentines Day and baskets bigger than the Easter Bunny’s. No more carloads at Christmas and UPS boxes that fill up our porch.

I also found books and magazine articles on organization and clutter control. Slowly connections began forming in my brain about how our clutter affected our finances:

1. We pined for a bigger house instead of using what we had.
2. We ate out a lot because I spent so much time digging out instead of cleaning up.
3. My time to make money was profoundly limited not by time spent with the kids but by time spent managing the kids’ stuff.
4. Worst of all, we missed time together as a family DOING enjoyable activities because we were so busy OWNING things we never got around to DOING.

Diligently, we began to dig out. Hubby at first resisted, unwilling to spend the time getting rid of things, especially gifts or things that we might need. He gave in to my pestering because he feared losing me more than he feared losing his stuff. Later, he realized that the less we owned, the more time I had to spend my weekends with him.

This weekend my husband rearranged a set of shelves under our basement stairs and cleared out our last fortress of outright storage clutter. He looked around afterward, rightfully proud of a job well done and commented on how hard we’ve worked over the last year and a half to turn the basement into a place where living can happen. I had to agree but I think that the job started when we brought that first load from both sets of parents and began to merge not only our lives but also our stuff. After ten years of marriage, we’ve finally become one. I’m extremely proud that we’ve come so far and confident that we'll keep going, getting better.

If you’re interested in living instead of mere ownership management, here are a few of the books that helped me along the way.

Organizing From The Inside Out by Julie MorgensternIt’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh
Also, try out the Fly Lady.com

You can also Google "Clutter Services + Your Area" and find nearby professionals who can help you clear out.