Survey #279—Full Response from Dawn
| Pronouns | She/her |
|---|---|
| During what period of your adult life was your home the least cluttered? Can you identify anything you did differently then (versus now) that helped keep the space tidy? | I'm going to take the opposite side of the original question. 🙂 My home is less cluttered NOW. 🙂 Moving to a condo from a home a little over six years ago, I needed to seriously declutter due to not having a basement and asking the question, "What do I NEED to bring to the condo, knowing that storage in the 1-car garage was going to be limited" (i.e., not wanting to store thing there which would suffer damage from that environment). So, what I'm doing now to declutter what remains is, 1: Watch what I bring in 2: Declutter and refresh one area at a time 3: Find concentrated times where I can make a lot of headway (Example: A few weeks ago I spent 12 hours in two days mostly in my office) 4: Encouraging myself with the fact, I WILL GET THERE, especially because EVERYTHING COUNTS. 🙂 |
| What lessons could you learn from your former way of managing your space that might help with your current way of dealing with clutter? | I think I'll be playing devil's advocate on all of these questions... I see that my major downfall from the past was emotionally not wanting to deal with it all so I consequently didn't plan any time to address it in very small swatches, leaving the major avalanche untouched until I had to address it: moving to a place with significantly less storage allowed. |
| When you travel, do you prefer to unpack your bags completely in the hotel room or to live out of them so that nothing gets misplaced? What do you consider the pros and cons of either approach? | When I travel, I HAVE to unpack completely so I feel I'm "home" vs. in transition. I mean, there is a PLACE for health and beauty items--the bathroom and clothes--either hangers or drawers. My books, etc. go on the desk. I'm rather anal retentive about the whole thing: I have a packing list which I access for each trip. Before leaving I go through every spot so I make sure I'm not forgetting anything. The con for me of not UNpacking is feeling UNsettled...I just have to. |
| Please select whichever of the following statements best describes your current wardrobe: | Other |
| Please elaborate if you wish. | I'm trying to get down to a little more than capsule. I'm in a transition of seeing which clothes I need to give away yet after losing 35+ pounds. I'm down to going through some tops and pants. I had the realization in the last week that I don't need to FILL my closet because I previously had a lot of clothes I didn't wear on a regular basis just hanging there. For now I'm stopping on major pieces. |
| Here’s your chance to ask Gayle and Ed any question you’re curious about. It need not be related to this survey’s topic(s). If we think that your question—and our answer—might be useful or instructive to The Clutter Fairy Weekly audience, we’ll share them in an upcoming episode. | Do you consider yourself to naturally be someone who has an issue with clutter or do you feel you've basically had a handle on it throughout your lives? |
| Future topics | Just another vote for reviewing the book, ATOMIC HABITS. I think it fits well with the Clutter Fairy philosophy. For example, in the past week or so I've been focusing on what James Clear calls "Resetting the Environment." I never realized how much I have to reset. It reminds me of when awhile back (years) I got a lot out of Gayle, when mentioning crafts, said you need to plan time for cleaning up. That was a lightbulb moment for me. |
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