Meg Evans

This week’s task was cleaning up the bookcase in the room that was the kids’ study. Rather than just calling it the kids’ study, I’ve decided to use a past-tense description because that helps me to imagine the beautiful sitting room I’ve been visualizing is already here in the present.

Some of the books are definitely worth keeping, such as a hardcover set of Harry Potter and the delightful Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke. But others, well, not so much. All those paperback teenage novels my daughter read 10 years ago will soon find a new home at the thrift store. And although reading the tongue-twisters in Dr. Seuss’ “Oh Say Can You Say?” was great fun when my kids were little, it should have been given away with the other picture books long ago.
 

Oh say can you say—there were books piled on books, in deep dark dusty nooks, random heaps stacked up all over like a lawn with weeds and clover, getting ever fatter till they made a clutter splatter! Cleaning up the bookcase made the fatter clutter splatter better.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

When it comes to closets, I have both good news and bad news for this week’s post. The good news is that the extra room in the basement where my daughter put her stuff when she graduated from college last spring is now at least semi-tidy. There’s no more stuff obstructing the doors to the closet, and its contents have been mostly tamed. The bad news, however, is that there is another whole closet full of clutter in the upstairs room that was originally the kids’ study.
 

When we moved into this house, the closet was for board games and school backpacks and project materials, and it was kept at least somewhat organized for the first few years. Then it devolved into a colossal mess. That light blue cloth thing toward the bottom of the heap? It’s a bedspread that came with some sheets I already took out of the basement closet and donated to the thrift store a few weeks ago, not realizing that we still had part of the set upstairs.

I have plans to turn this room into a sitting area—it faces southeast and is especially nice on sunny summer mornings. I want to replace the old brown carpet with a better-quality green, dispose of an old desk and put a nice new couch where it was, get a suitable end table to put next to the couch for teacups, buy a smaller glass desk to put on the other side of the room, paint the walls, and buy new artwork to hang on the walls. Then it will be a lovely place to sit and write blog posts and stories. But, first things first: Out with the clutter!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

While going through the clutter in the basement, I found a clock that I had never used. My mom put it in a box of stuff she gave me several years ago, and I never did anything with it. At first, I thought that I might put it somewhere after a while—and we all know how that story goes.
 

Really, what’s the point of a freestanding clock in 2015 anyway? We have clocks on our computers, our phones, our kitchen appliances… and I wear a watch, but nowadays that’s just jewelry because we are constantly surrounded by things that display the time. It’s no wonder people in today’s world are always in a hurry, with so many clocks staring at us wherever we go.

It’s a chore too, keeping all the clocks that don’t automatically set themselves displaying the right time. After the “spring forward” time change just last week, I’m even less inclined than usual to want another clock somewhere in the house that would have to be set manually. For sure, that wouldn’t fit my goal of creating a peaceful home environment where it’s easy to relax!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

A brown ceramic jar with the title “Cookie Churn,” which used to be a kitchen decoration at my previous house, ended up at the back of the pantry’s top shelf when we moved—and then (as is the way of clutter!) it sat there forevermore. My family never actually used it for cookies, and I have no recollection of where it came from.
 

Most likely, it was a hand-me-down from someone else who was getting rid of their clutter 30 years ago; so I have no sad feelings about putting the Cookie Churn in with some bags of old stuff for the thrift store and sending it on its way!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

I’ve been going through the old Halloween costumes, well-loved baby blankets, and other stuff in the basement closet that left me saying “Awwww!” My daughter was so cute dressed up as a turtle when she was in kindergarten. But rather than keep a jumbled heap of old costumes forever, I’m posting this photo to preserve the memory, and then I’m letting it go.
 

Like the turtle that won the race with the hare in the ancient fable, I’ve been working on my clutter at a slow and steady pace, and one of these days I’ll reach the finish line!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

A few days ago, I asked my daughter if she still wanted the stuffed animals in the basement. She took them out of her bedroom when she was in high school, not because she decided that she was too mature for stuffed animals—even now, she still has plenty—but to make more space for clothes after she and her friends discovered the joy of shopping. The old stuffed animals ended up in an overflowing laundry basket in the infamous basement closet.
 

Her answer was “What stuffed animals?” They had been sitting in the basement for so long, she totally forgot about them! So, they’re definitely clutter; and off to the thrift store they go. I am sure I’ll discover plenty of other forgotten things like that as the cleanup continues!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

When I started cleaning up my basement a few weeks ago and got rid of two worn-out desk chairs, amidst the junk there was also another chair. This one wasn’t in bad enough shape to throw away, but it never had been very useful either. It was just a cheap little task chair, okay for my kids to sit in when they were small, but not comfortable for an adult to use regularly. I donated it at the thrift store; here’s a photo in the parking lot after taking it out of my car.
 

While writing this post, I found myself wondering if there might be some kind of subconscious symbolism in hoarding old chairs. Something like musical chairs, perhaps—a fear that the music will stop and there won’t be enough to go around? Then again, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a chair is just a chair. And this particular task chair is no longer cluttering my basement, so I’ve made a bit of progress.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

After a dusty smoke detector set off our home alarm, we realized that we had never replaced the smoke detectors. They’re supposed to be replaced every 10 years because after that they become unreliable. So my husband ordered some new smoke detectors (it’s very good that he is handy!) and went around the house with a stepladder replacing them all. This photo shows the old ones on the kitchen table.
 

Replacing smoke detectors counts as home maintenance rather than clutter cleanup, but I decided to make this Sunday’s post a public service announcement. Gentle readers, if the smoke detectors in your house are as ancient as mine were, get some new ones! Otherwise they might go off when there’s no smoke or, much worse, not go off when there’s a real fire.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Several years ago, my mom gave me two pieces of framed artwork featuring sketches of flowering plants in the style of old-fashioned botany books. There wasn’t any place in my house that seemed quite right for them at the time. Because they were pretty, I kept them for potential future use in converting my kids’ study into a sitting room. I thought they would make for a restful, contemplative ambience.
 

I still don’t have a sitting room, though. The computer I’m using to type this post is on my daughter’s old desk, which definitely needs replacing. And I want a comfy place where I can sit and put my feet up when I read books or write blog drafts by hand. Maybe a recliner chair? And then I need to pick out a paint color for the walls, and new carpet would be good too…

So, with all that left to do, I decided that I’d just take the pictures to the thrift store and let someone else buy and enjoy them. Even though it’s possible they might match the way I decorate the room, it’s more likely they wouldn’t match. And honestly, after I’ve had so much clutter sitting around in my house for years, I just want something new and fresh anyway!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!

Yup, I have to admit it, I’ve got one of those clutter horrors of modern life—an extra room in the basement that ended up as a junk room. When my family first moved into our house, we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do with that space. Then we decided that it would make a good exercise room, with a treadmill and an elliptical machine. But we never got around to buying them, and slowly the junk buildup started…
 

It all seemed so harmless at first—some old Halloween costumes in the closet, and a small desk that I moved from the children’s study area because my son had outgrown it while my daughter could still use it. As the years went by, junk got put on the desk, around the desk, and in other parts of the room. The closet ended up full of old linens and old clothes. Then my kids graduated from college and put all the stuff they brought home in that room. At that point the closet became unusable, with boxes and suitcases and lots of other things blocking the doors.

Instead of dealing with it at that time, I put off the chore, thinking I’d wait until my daughter moved out. But she is still here, along with all her stuff, and doesn’t yet have a definite move-out date. So this week I decided to start working on that room a little at a time. Because the small desk was the catalyst for all the mess, getting rid of it first seemed appropriate. I also disposed of two worn-out desk chairs and moved some stuff that wasn’t junk away from the closet doors.

Then I opened the closet and got a strong whiff of mildew. The culprit turned out to be a pair of my son’s wrestling shoes from high school. Ew! Thankfully, my husband volunteered to bag up those moldering shoes and take them out to the trash can. To show my appreciation, I got some tasty steaks for dinner and made sure he was well fed!

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!