Hi Sarit,

I'd like to tell you a story. You'll laugh, but even though it's a far larger scale than what you have, it may speak to your situation. It's long, too -- sorry about that.

My husband and I have two houses. Why we have two houses is another long story in itself, but it works for us. We tend to spend more time in mine than in his. Why? Well........that's the story.

He was married before. When his ex-wife left (many, many years ago now), she took little more than her clothes and left 25 years of assorted stuff behind.

He has two adult children. They have moved around quite a bit. Each time they moved, particularly in the years when they were just out of college, they brought stuff home to "store". Then on subsequent moves, they'd come back, rummage through the stored stuff, take what they wanted, add new stuff, and leave the area in slightly worse disarray than it was when they found it.

He retired several years ago. In his work, he had dominion over an electronics laboratory, a storeroom, and an office. A good quarter of the pieces and parts, which were his to dispose of, came home when he retired. They landed in boxes, all over the lower level of the house, and there they sat.

Three years ago, his mother died. We had to clear out her apartment. She was a lovely woman and a wonderful organizer. The amount of stuff she fit into a small apartment was amazing. My husband was too emotional to deal with sorting it all out, so we packed it all up, furniture, boxes and all, and brought it home. The kids' rooms got crammed with the overflow. The mattress sat on its side in the hallway. More boxes piled up in the lower level. The living room was full of excess furniture. The master bedroom had three dressers.

The result wasn't quite like one of those hoarder shows, but it was still overwhelming and depressing. Something had to be done.

We picked the easiest space to reclaim. The living room had a bunch of furniture in it, but not too much clutter. We broke the task down (decide which pieces of furniture can go out of the living room, call the charitable organization with the truck and schedule a pickup, move the furniture to the garage so nobody has to see the inside of the house -- voila, reclaimed living room).

Ahh, but there was a desk in the living room. It had become a dumping ground for papers, computer parts, books, file folders, etc. First it got sorted. We got empty boxes and set them by the desk. Similar things got grouped together. That's how we separated school stuff from work stuff from family stuff from trash. The trash, of course, went out immediately. Then each day, the assignment became to clear one box. We kept the shredder handy for sensitive documents and the recycle bin for other stuff.

Each piece we handled, we made a fast decision. Is this really necessary to keep (do we have room for it? could it be photographed or scanned and the original tossed?)? We developed a whole new concept of what was important. We have one filing cabinet, and papers that won't fit have to go. If we think something is really important, we move something of lesser importance out of the filing cabinet to make room.

Then we cleaned the top of the desk and made a rule that anything that landed there had to be gone by the end of the day (that was a compromise -- I wanted to say that nothing could land there at all! ).

We're doing the same thing with the rest of the stuff. It's slow going, but we don't look at the big picture. One box at a time. One day at a time. We are committed to progress, and not a day goes by that we don't do something. We've unloaded tons of electronic parts at a nearby community college. We've found a recycler for techno-trash. We're working with three different charities to send stuff to places where it will get used rather than sit around.

There are challenges, to be sure. The emotional issues that come up in all of this are strong. It's hard work, and we've had to make a decision that this is top priority in our life and that other activities are going to be let go for now. We have disagreements about what stays and what goes. But we're getting there.

The hard part was getting started. But once we decided to just do something, anything, the job took on a life of its own. It's impossible to work out a master plan for all of it. We just identified one space, picked up the first thing, and made a decision. Having sorting boxes helped us, but if your task is small enough, you might be able to skip the initial sorting.

The idea is to not get bogged down. We can't read every paper, stop to reminisce over every photo, agonize over every object. I often sound like a broken record -- my constant lines are "Are you ever going to use this again?" "Do we really need this?" "Couldn't we just take a picture and let this go?". My job is to not let my husband get to the point where he's standing in the middle of the room with glazed eyes, looking around and not knowing where to start.

The point of this long story is not to make light of your issue. Whether it's a 5-bedroom house or a desktop, the feelings and the challenges are the same. But I can tell you, staying stuck is way worse than picking up that first piece of paper and doing something.

Jo

: My life would flow with greater ease
: if I could wrap my mind around the
: little decisions that need to be
: made every day.

: For example, I have a hard time
: making quick and on-the-go
: decisions about where to put what.
: A good example is my cluttered
: work desk at home. Rather than
: throw out a few papers, file some
: others and leave the rest as they
: are (i.e, doing some
: decluttering), I
: simply do nothing.
: The hardest part of decluttering for
: me, is finding the right home for
: each piece of paper.

: The pile grows, and though I know I
: can take care of some of it
: right now and
: get partial relief from the mess,
: I feel so overwhelmed that I take
: no action at all.

: I would feel a little more radiant if
: I could let go of my dream of the
: perfectly tidy desk - which never
: materializes - and start taking
: small steps a few times a week to
: throw out/put away those papers
: that do have a home (on my
: shelves, in my drawers, etc.)

: Generally speaking, I am very good
: about maintenance......my home is
: quite tidy.
: But the pile on my work desk is a
: different story......I feel I need
: to be able to decide about ALL of
: it before I can start taking
: action.

: Any comments?