SPRING-Clean Declutter - Need Help

@Shaz51. Lol. Get rid of stuff and your mum gives you more.

@Smc - a few months ago I had mice in my house. Got rid of them. But then discovered they had been through my linen cupboard and pooped everywhere. Had to wash everything. Took a long time.

I finally swept the floors yesterday. Finished making a new cushion for the dogs bed. So now I have a couch free from all my sewing clutter.

It comes in our doors as quickly as it goes out @utopia @Former-Member @Appleblossom @Shaz51 @Smc .... big family, perpetual gift-giving, arty, crafty, musical, reading, sporty, game-playing, kitchen creative, gardening travellers ..... which is all great ..... but the house is now over-filled and disorganised, which tends to happen with kidults still at home and their rooms are too small to contain their grown-up life .....

@Faith-and-Hope - kids / young adults do bring a lot of stuff into the house. Although I must admit - most is mine. Planning over time to get rid of things I no longer need.

yes @Faith-and-Hope, My second mum ( I called her that ) because she had 5 children of her own and 1 stepson and I looked after 3 of her children and went to her place lots of times , love to catchup with her more

she tells you what is what !! and now she has 13 grandchildren soo far and lots of animals

she would tell you to enjoy the moment @Faith-and-Hope

last time I went to her house a few weeks ago she held me me for soooo long and then a cuppa and then told me what I should do and her house is soo full of stuff

Slowly but surely here @Smc trying to keep up dealing with one thing a day, am able to vacuum more of the carpet in our spare room and the linen cupboard has been sorted. As I am writing my visiting family are raiding our CDs and DVDs - hooray a few more things out the door.

Some of it needs to be passed on @Shaz51, but most of it just needs to be properly organised, and kept that way respectfully ..... but it’s an overwhelming job and everybody has been “too busy” to help. Working on changing that, but meantime I need help with the cleaning cos there are bugs invading and it can get right out of control.

I believe it is wise to have some limits, otherwise materialism and rubbish prevail. I would limit my stuff to what will fit into the furniture, eg books into bookshelves, but then tek specific furniture is developed and so shifting my requirements.

I rarely shop at all any more, beyond food, not even op shops. Maybe once per year.

Some of it needs to be passed on, same here @Faith-and-Hope

I know a lot of people were raised to tidy things as they went and return books to shelves etc. It is a typical way to live, but my children were raised that they did not have to do that and everything was mother's responsibility. It is kinda dumb and insulting and a form of abuse of the unpaid work of women. Looking back at it over 30 years it has been extremely wasteful as I have seen the inefficiencies it allows, but that is the way it is with a lot of families these days ... I admit I was overly child focussed when I was a young mum ...but with the kids today ... they can also love helping tidying up and gain many intrinsic values when they do that.

@Appleblossom, I would have liked to raise my kids to be tidy, but we had so many unpredictables and disruptions as they were growing up... it just didn't happen that way. They're all trying to make a decent go of learning to organise as they've gotten older, and I kind of hope that I can set an "It's never too late" example. I doubt any of us will ever be minimalists. A bit like @Faith-and-Hope's family, too many creative interests. But I hope we can get organised enough that the good and useful stuff doesn't get swamped, and the genuinely-junk doesn't end up hiding among the useful/treasures.
We've got a lot of beautiful things hiding away. I want to get those out where we can see them and enjoy them instead of finding them in the bottom of a dusty box.
So I've finished up for tonight, with a pile of rodent messed stuff to wash, a large bagful of soft plastics in the boot to go into the supermarket's recycling bin, a bunch of recyclable hard plastics in our home recycling bin, paper waste soaking in water to feed to the worm farm, and some total-rubbish in the bin.

The ironic bit about all this is that I'm cleaning up to make space to move in a new washing machine. And it will be kept very busy washing all the stuff I've been clearing out...