Decluttering Challenge

This is, by far, the biggest thing going on for me, right now. The most difficult thing about this endeavor is that it's not even MY stuff that I'm decluttering! Which makes it easier in some ways, but much, much harder in so many other ways.

But I need to back up a bit.

My parents have a hoarding problem. Both of them. For exact opposite reasons. My mother has developed a compulsive shopping problem to the point where most of the rooms in the house are  unusable. Piles and piles of clothes, shoes, blankets, jackets, overrun every area of the house. Most of the stuff still has tags on it. The living room is drowning in magazines- 12 subscriptions come every month- and newspapers- 4 daily newspapers delivered.  My dad doesn't want to throw ANYTHING away. The garage,  shed, and storage area above the garage are packed full of things that haven't been used in years- old furniture, dried up pain cans, tarps, rusted gardening tools, old shoes, more golf balls than anyone could ever use in about 20 years. And piles and piles of plastic grocery bags stuck here and there "just in case." Just like the house, the garage has been unusable. A big two car garage that no cars are able to fit into.

At the beginning of this year, they started having accidents in the house. My mother was tripping over things. My dad slipped going up the ladder to the storage area with an armload of stuff and split his arm open. A towering pile in the garage came crashing down and he injured his shoulder. And neither of them could ever find anything in the mess. It had become unsafe.

So at the end of April, I moved back and took up residence in the house. Which is not where I want to be. But it's kind of where I need to be for the time being. As a family, my brothers and sisters-in-law have talked a lot about "what to do" about the house situation, but no real action has been taken. And when somebody did do something (go over and clean up a room, clean out the refrigerator, clear the floors of clutter) it was un-done in a matter of hours. The cleaned out fridge was stuffed with newly purchased food from a grocery trip that eventually rotted in the fridge. Shoes and clothing ended up right back on the floor.  And the one cleaned out room was soon cluttered up from things being brought it from other rooms, whether it made sense for those items to be in there, or not. Somebody needed to be there to tidy up daily.

Since April, I've been doing that daily tidying as well as some bigger decluttering efforts. The good news is that most of the rooms can now be used for their intended purpose. It is possible to prepare food and cook in the kitchen. It is now possible to eat at the dining room table. It is possible to sit on the sofa and watch television (even to put your feet or your drink on the coffee table). It's possible to park in the garage. The tripping hazards are gone from the floor.

And it's easier to see the items that are actually in the house and the garage and the storage area that need to be tossed. It's November. The cold weather is rolling in. And it's perfect time to attack the storage area above the garage. The exponential 30 day decluttering plan ends up being 465 items to be donated, tossed, or given away in 30 days. I think it's possible. I'm going for it!!