{"id":5008,"date":"2010-01-28T07:00:32","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=5008"},"modified":"2010-08-11T10:01:26","modified_gmt":"2010-08-11T15:01:26","slug":"finding-motivation-to-de-clutter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/finding-motivation-to-de-clutter\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding motivation to de-clutter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/flickr\/photo\/4310234816\/clearing-out-some-clutter.html\" class=\"tt-flickr tt-flickr-Medium\" title=\"Clearing out some clutter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2747\/4310234816_0f4e7198a9.jpg\" alt=\"Clearing out some clutter\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<h2>Ay de mi!<\/h2>\n<p>I read some interesting stats from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.becomingminimalist.com\/2010\/01\/19\/the-statistics-of-clutter\/\">Becoming Minimalist<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the u.s. department of energy reports that one-quarter of people with two-car garages have so much stuff in there that they can&#8217;t park a car.<\/li>\n<li>according to the national soap and detergent association, getting rid of clutter would eliminate 40 percent of housework in the average home.<\/li>\n<li>the national association of professional organizers says we spend one year of our lives looking for lost items.<\/li>\n<li>if you rent a storage facility to store your excess belongings, you&#8217;re contributing to a $154 billion industry &#8212; bigger than the hollywood film business!<\/li>\n<li>it costs an average of $10\/square foot to store items in your home.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n(Read more stats at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.becomingminimalist.com\/2010\/01\/19\/the-statistics-of-clutter\/\">Becoming Minimalist<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Since starting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.welivesimply.info\">WeLiveSimply.info<\/a> last week and reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.e-junkie.com\/ecom\/gb.php?ii=329069&#038;c=ib&#038;aff=33760&#038;cl=10747\">Leo Babauta&#8217;s book last week<\/a> (which I highly recommend), I&#8217;ve been able to declutter <em>some<\/em> of my stuff in <em>some<\/em> of the spaces around the house.<\/p>\n<p>I took 35 books or so to <a href=\"http:\/\/halfpricebooks.com\/\">Half Price Books<\/a> and have a bag of clothes just waiting in the garage to go to the local homeless shelter.<\/p>\n<p>Seems like a nice start &#8212; and both my bookshelf and closet look a bit neater now &#8212; but truth be told, there&#8217;s still a lot of space left in our 1781 sq ft house to cover.<\/p>\n<p>And for me, my tendency is to simply let the clutter collect. It&#8217;s so much easier to just toss something here or there and forget about it.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m trying to find some motivation&#8230; especially since I know how much clutter bothers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/laurie\/\">Laurie<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To get motivated, I&#8217;m trying to keep <a href=\"http:\/\/www.welivesimply.info\/resources\/the-simple-guide-to-minimalist-living\/\">these two ideas from Leo<\/a> in mind:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Things aren&#8217;t valuable if they&#8217;re not used. So by holding onto things, you are preventing them from actually being used by someone who needs them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Organizing is only necessary when you have too many things to easily find what you&#8217;re looking for.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, next on my list&#8230; my dresser drawers. Specifically that catch all drawer up top.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/flickr\/photo\/4309537027\/catch-all-drawer.html\" class=\"tt-flickr tt-flickr-Medium\" title=\"Catch all drawer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2742\/4309537027_d7c7ea5119.jpg\" alt=\"Catch all drawer\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<h2>What about you? Do those stats or ideas inspire you to de-clutter? If you&#8217;ve already de-cluttered, what motivated you? What inspired you?<\/h2>\n<p>Read more at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.welivesimply.info\">WeLiveSimply.info<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ay de mi! I read some interesting stats from Becoming Minimalist: the u.s. department of energy reports that one-quarter of people with two-car garages have so much stuff in there that they can&#8217;t park a car. according to the national soap and detergent association, getting rid of clutter would eliminate 40 percent of housework in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/finding-motivation-to-de-clutter\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Finding motivation to de-clutter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,19],"tags":[2945,2946,2947,2932,2948],"class_list":["post-5008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-hacks","category-reflections","tag-clutter","tag-declutter","tag-minimalist","tag-simple-living","tag-welivesimply-info"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1iM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}