Vince and I both have problems with clutter and neither of us know when to stop buying stuff. When we moved, we had more stuff than we could get on the huge moving van and some of it had to stay behind. Vince made the decision on what to leave and thankfully, we didn’t leave any of the worthless stuff but only left behind things like the generator that had never used and the garden tiller that we used every year to plow my garden .. that’s the kind of stuff we left.
Also, thankfully, the movers loaded the house in town first, which is where all my fabric, batting, sewing machines, etc. were located so it was snugly packed into the van way before we got to any of Vince’s stuff.
In an effort to reduce clutter or in the least, not make things worse, I came to the conclusion that I will make a list before I go shopping .. whether it’s the grocery store, the mall (Lord, I hope not!) or Target. If it isn’t on my list . . it isn’t come home with me. I encouraged Vince to do the same thing.
While shopping today in Joplin, every time Vince picked up something — a new hard drive, an MP3 player — I’d say is that on your list? Show me your list! He’d put back the stuff he didn’t need but it was only because I was there. If I hadn’t been there, he would have bought way more stuff.
Vince is a much different type shopper than I am though. He will buy something, keep it a while but never use it, take it back, buy another similar object, keep it a while, take it back . . so he’s not as bad as he could be about adding to the clutter. In his case, it’s more like rotating the clutter between home and Target, or home and Office Depot.
We’ve been working on this don’t bring it in the house unless it’s on your list for a few months now. I’d like to say we’re making positive progresss.
Remember when I was cooking earlier this week and using the 3M Post-it tape?
I asked Vince if he could get me another roll of the tape. It works really good for sticking on the containers. Here’s what he brought home!
That’s 11 more rolls, in addition to the one I already had . . for a total of 12 rolls. There are 700 inches on each roll, and each dish takes about 1″ of tape. Therefore, I can label 8,400 food containers for the freezer. Let’s just say I make 10 dishes for the freezer each week, this tape will last me 840 weeks, or 16.1538 years. Want to guess how many times this tape will get packed and moved to a new house, a new town, a new state?
Controlling clutter at my house may be way more difficult than I had anticipated.
