I’ve never thought of myself as a hoarder. Messy, yes. Over-cluttered, you got it. Collector of randomness that you can justify keeping, I’m guilty, but hoarder, no. Hoarding runs in my family-tree so it would make perfect sense that I’m not the tidiest of housekeepers.

I started to look around more, I noticed little piles stashed here and there. Papers, and old clothes that must be kept. The hallway mess that my mind had quit noticing, crap, maybe hoarder isn’t that far off.

I have told myself every excuse in the book to ignore the mess. I don’t have the time, the kids will just make a mess again, and the “what if” I need this in the future. I might need an item again in the future, but currently I would like a cleaner present.

I would look at photos of organized spaces, and minimalistic areas, and why couldn’t that be our space… We’ve lived in our current house for almost seven years, and I’m disappointed with what I haven’t accomplished.

I decided to quit making excuses, quit worrying about future needs. I started getting ruthless about de-cluttering.  I started with tossing fifty items. That little start led me to challenge myself monthly with de-cluttering at least another  fifty items. Most months I did even better than fifty.

I started off with the spaces that my mind couldn’t ignore. I started cleaning out the living-room toy bins, the boys room , and my desk. I would get out a contractor bag, set my timer, and get to it. When my time was up, I tracked my total items cleaned out, and then I took the bag right out for pick-up. Even if the bag wasn’t full, out it went. Once an item was tossed in a contractor bag, it wasn’t coming back in the house.

It wasn’t all that easy though. Oddly enough my trouble spaces were Agnes’ closet, the utility room, the foyer, and the kitchen. Agnes’ closet was filled top to bottom with outgrown clothes, blankets, and clothes to grow in to. It was an awful, unorganized mess. It was over-whelming to start the cleaning process, but starting it was all I needed to do. I sorted through box after box, tossed what truly needed tossed, separated what was to keep, and what was to sell/donate.

Around the same time that I was cleaning out the kids closets, I started noticing these bright yellow clothing & shoes donation stations all over town. Now I no longer had an excuse not to donate. I like these too, I can drop off a donation of a bag or two, day or night.

I’m in my final month of keeping track of my clutter-busting, and Christmas has set me back a bit. I’m going to try and get back on track though and continue with my goal of 2012 being the year of de-cluttering. I’ll be totaling up my numbers soon to see just how many items we cleaned out in twelve months.