Dear FlyLady,

I have been following your rules and suggestions for years now and have most routines pretty well established and my living room always company ready. What a wonderful gift from you to me. What really threw me for a loop, though, was retiring one and a half years ago and having to incorporate overnight ten years’ accumulation from my work apartment into our permanent home. I had two of just about everything. And all of it loved and wanted, because I had pick it out myself. The furniture my husband and I distributed before the actual move took place, but the rest? Pots, dishes, garden equipment, linens – everything one needs and uses. A typical SHE, it all went into our home. And then I stood there and stared at it, immobilized. What in the world was I going to do with it all? Even the idea that “you can do anything for 15 minutes” felt numbing to the point of inactivity. FlyLady, oh FlyLady, I asked myself, how should I cope with this? And the answer came immediately: ANYTHING is better than nothing.

I made a compromise with myself: I would declutter just TWO items each day. It would be regardless of size or shape or purpose: two is two. I would take two pots of the same size, compare just the two of them, and one would go out. Do that twice and then I could stop. If, I told myself, I could really stick to this Baby Step, that’s 700 items in one year! Wow! 700 items! Today I look back and can see the difference. There were times when I asked myself if this was really doing any good, but instead of givng up I repeated FlyLady-Mantras to myself. I am not yet finished – I have now started looking at all the old stashes – but I feel so much freer. That in itself is an incentive to keep on going. It should be an incentive to all the other strugglers out there to put your faith in FlyLady’s system – it gets you where you need to go.

A retired FlyBaby

FlyLady Rebecca here: Do you have a Decluttering Testimonial? Let us know, and send an email with MY CLUTTER STORY in the subject line.

Don’t Crash and Burn