Meg Evans

Some books are classic works that get better with age, like a bottle of good wine. Others, sadly, just get obsolete and end up as clutter. I discovered one of the latter variety while tidying my bookshelf recently—an etiquette book I’ve had since 1984, with a copyright date of 1978. With all the cultural changes since then, and the fact that this book long predates the Internet and many other modern technologies, it’s not the most useful resource to keep around.
 

I also threw away some tattered paperbacks and put a new Bible on my bookshelf to replace one that was worn out. Then I started to wonder if there was any ceremony for proper disposal of an old Bible, as with an old flag. I consulted the etiquette book to find out whether it had anything to say on that topic, but there was nothing. So, naturally, I went to the Internet for an answer. I found that although some people prefer to ceremoniously bury an old Bible, no particular method of disposal is required. Looking that up took only a few minutes, so I don’t think I’ll miss having an etiquette book on the shelf!

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 was replacing some worn-out file folders when I started to wonder why I still had folders with checking account statements dating back to 1987, from a bank that no longer exists because it got acquired in the recession five years ago. All the information on the statements has been saved in Quicken since my husband bought an early version of that software program in 1990 for our first computer, which means the paper has been entirely useless for the past quarter-century!
 

All these years, I kept folder after folder of monthly statements that I never looked at again after reconciling them, for no better reason than because that was how I got in the habit of keeping financial information before we had computers. Sometimes it seems like the more clutter I get rid of, the more I realize is still around here lurking! Oh, well, at least I have a good robust shredder. It got such a workout that my husband made sure to oil it promptly after we shredded all those old bank statements!

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 was a teenager, I made a needlepoint pillow from a kit. My mom kept it while I was away at college, but after that she cleaned house and gave it back to me. Although I expected that I would find a nice place to put it someday, it never seemed to match anything in my house quite right. So it ended up sitting at the back of my closet for over 25 years, even after I moved from one house to another.
 

I thought of it as something I should keep because of all the time and effort I had put into making it. But this week when I considered it, I realized that no matter how I might decorate my house in the future, I still wouldn’t want to display the pillow because it’s so full of stagnant energy. It doesn’t fit the person I am now—I haven’t done any needlepoint in ages! Even if I bought something new and the pillow matched, it wouldn’t feel like a cherished possession, but would remind me of old stuff sitting around in the closet. So it’s just got to go!

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!

Surprise gifts are always fun. My husband gave me a small gift-wrapped box in 2000 that held a key ring with a brown leather fob, and he told me to guess what went with it. For a moment, I wondered if he had bought me a new car! The other gift turned out to be a matching brown leather purse, which I used and enjoyed for many years.
 

After a while, the purse became less useful because it was not designed to hold a mobile phone and lacked the small pockets that a modern handbag would have. But although I stopped using it, I kept it anyway because of the good memories. Moral of the story: Bag it! Even if something was a nice gift 15 years ago, it doesn’t have to be kept forever. Although clutter of the good memories variety may feel better than random heaps of junk piling up, the house ends up full of old useless stuff just the same!

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 bought a pretty green velvet dress for a holiday party 19 years ago, and since then I have worn it a grand total of once (to a Kentucky Derby party). Because it’s so flouncy and fluffy and formal, I never thought of wearing it just to go out to dinner, or any other ordinary occasion. It felt more like a dress-up costume. So it has mostly just been sitting at the back of my closet gathering dust.
 

I’ve decided that even though the dress is pretty, anything that gets so little use is clutter and should be donated to the thrift store, where it can be bought by someone who loves it and will wear it more often. That will give me space in my closet for new things I’ll enjoy and use more. Although I don’t yet know what those new arrivals may be, I feel that by disposing of old things I no longer cherish, I am putting a stop to stagnation and inviting fresh positive energy into my life!

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!

Ever since I started a regular exercise schedule in 2002 and lost some weight, I’ve had a suit hanging in my closet that is one size too big. I bought other new clothes, but because my job does not require me to wear formal business attire, I just thought I’d replace the old suit when I got around to it. After all, it was still wearable even if it didn’t fit perfectly.
 

Of course, after I thought about it, I realized that keeping the old suit for so many years made no sense at all! If I wanted to attend a formal event and didn’t have anything else to wear, I would go out and buy a new suit anyway, rather than dredge through the depths of my closet and show up at the event wearing something that was both the wrong size and out of style. But after all this time, I had gotten so used to seeing it in my closet that I didn’t pay any attention to how totally useless it was!

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!

It’s holiday fruit basket time! And though the fruit may be yummy, the basket is likely to become clutter when January rolls around. I received a gift of apples, oranges, and other fruit in a nice sturdy metal bowl about ten years ago. After eating the fruit, I wasn’t sure what to do with the bowl; but I kept it because I thought it might be useful for something. I never actually did anything with it, though, and it ended up sitting on a shelf in my laundry room all these years.
 

Because I always keep fruit in a glass bowl on the kitchen table (shown in this post), it didn’t seem likely I would have any use for the metal bowl in the future, either. I considered buying more fruit at the supermarket and re-gifting the bowl at Christmas, but decided the best choice was donating it at the thrift store across the street from the supermarket instead. That way, I made sure it got out of the house—otherwise, I might easily have forgotten about the bowl and let it sit around for another ten years!

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!

This post is about yellowed old lampshades, not about a faithful dog; but I picked the title because there was some canine involvement in this week’s Clutter Comedy. My daughter’s puppy went tearing around the house without paying any attention (as puppies do) and knocked over a lamp that was part of a set of three. The inner ring of the shade, which had gotten brittle over the years, promptly shattered. So we bought three new lampshades and were surprised by how much brighter the room looked without the yellowed old shades—we hadn’t realized how totally worn out they were!
 

I’m not sure if replacing lampshades counts as getting rid of clutter, as it doesn’t reduce the amount of stuff in the house. Maybe it belongs in the regular maintenance category instead. But anyway, there is a good lesson here: We often don’t notice when things get worn out because it happens so gradually, our brains get fooled into believing it was always like that. So, whether we’re talking about clutter or about maintenance, it’s important to look around from time to time and ask: Is everything in this room still as useful as when it was new? And if not, should it be repaired, replaced, or discarded?

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!

My father gave me a micro cassette recorder 30 years ago, when I was a student, for recording lectures. Micro is, of course, a relative term. At the time, it was a great technological marvel because it was small enough to fit into a purse or a book bag, unlike the old tape recorder I’d had since fourth grade, which was the size of a boom box. After my student days were over, the micro cassette recorder somehow ended up at the bottom of my sewing bag, where it sat all these years…
 

It still works, but I can’t imagine ever having any use for it now that videos can be recorded on smartphones. And besides, if I wanted to attend a lecture or other public event nowadays, an official video probably would be posted on the event presenter’s website within a day or two. Time has long since passed that cassette recorder by, alas, and there’s nothing left for it but to meet the sad fate of all clutter!

Edited on November 25: I looked up micro cassette recorders online, and apparently people do still use them for taking dictation. So it’s not completely useless, and I’ll give it to the thrift store sometime this week.

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!

In today’s world, there are lots of activities to keep us busy—concerts, sporting events, road races, and more. But what’s to be done with all the T-shirts? For most of us, they’re not everyday wear and just take up closet space, sprawling from one stack into another. We might find uses for them occasionally, such as yard work or painting. They might come in handy for keeping a puppy warm on a snowy November day…
 

But in truth, they’re mostly just clutter and need to be dealt with as such. Running that half-marathon 20 years ago might have been fun, but that doesn’t mean the T-shirt has to be kept forever. The memories can be preserved just as well by taking digital photos of the shirts before turning them into rags or just throwing them directly into the trash—and honestly, after decades have gone by they probably aren’t much more than rags 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!