3 Ways To Reclaim Your Space With "Painless Decluttering!"

You are SO not alone! The recent TV shows on the subject of Hoarding have served not only as a wakeup call to many people, but shown us how very prevalent the problem is. It's a "closet problem" - a deeply guarded secret, known only to those closest to us. It's painfully embarrassing. It makes us feel ashamed when our excessive clutter is revealed. And therefore, we close ourselves and our space off and isolate ourselves. This is not a good thing.

Sometimes life just happens. In my case, I had my things pretty well organized until we made a 500-mile move to another state back in 2007. The picture here is the disaster that happened when our "professional unpackers" randomly started to dump out boxes on the living room floor!! And as I was to find out later, they had packed in the same haphazard manner.

Right about then my health took a major downturn and I was in severe pain from degenerative arthritis. It destroyed a knee and both hips from then until last year, when I finally was able to have surgery to replace them all. My days were spent in "survival mode," and despite sporadic attempts at unpacking, I never entirely got it done. Another move happened in 2010, and I am still not even halfway unpacked from that move. With some help, I unpacked survival stuff only and brought down a few other items from the attic as I could. (The year 2010 was spent mostly dealing with eleven hospitalizations and five surgeries!)

I have a dream attic in this new/old house! It was built in 1961 and the huge attic is virtually identical to the one featured in Martha Stewart's Connecticut home! It sure looked great empty. But now... it's a cluttered disaster full of my unpacked moving boxes. Not the organized craft room heaven I've always envisioned.

Now I'm feeling better 4 months post-op hip surgery and it's time for one major unpacking and decluttering marathon. I've almost finished with the living areas and I'm down to the smaller things like organizing makeup and costume jewelry (I collect a lot of both!) The next step, after I finish one more closet, is to go up to the attic and start getting rid of five sizes of clothing! During this period of time I've also lost about 70 pounds and the stuff just needs to GO. Then the rest of the unpacking... and finally, the last step will be the creation of my new craft workshop.

This will be a lens-in-progress, one area at a time for as long as it takes. It will also serve as my public accountability to get it done! So... (deep breath!) come on in.