Post-lockdown declutter plans

I got something out of the garage yesterday and was quite frankly appalled with myself. I don’t know what’s happened during the last year but my clutter levels have reached new heights and it’s time to do something about it.

I looked around the garage when I opened the door and honestly I wasn’t even sure what half of the stuff was. There are a couple of bikes, that’s fine, a couple of pieces of furniture that I don’t have room for but do want to keep, but the rest of it? A deep fat fryer, a load of dirty tarpaulin, a mermaid tail for an eight year old?? I really feel like a lot of this is stuff I absolutely do not need.

I’ve never been a person to carry around clutter. In fact, having moved house nearly 30 times in my life, my hoarding has always been non-existent, simply because I don’t want to lug it all around from one house to another. But then about four years ago I bought my first house of my own. It had an attic and a garage, neither of which I’ve had before, and suddenly BOOM – I have all this crap that I never knew I needed or wanted and it’s getting out of control.

I guess you could call it putting down roots, and on the one hand I like the security that owning a house brings, how you feel safe in filling the attic with things you ‘might need one day’, secure in the knowledge that no one can ask you to move if you don’t want to. On the other hand though, clutter drags me down. I feel it like a weight around my neck, just knowing how full the garage is.

So this is my plan – I’m going to have a proper clear out over the next couple of months so that come the end of virus restrictions, the freedom I will feel will be emotional as well as physical. I’ll ship it all off to Now Storage self storage in Swindon if I have to, I just don’t want to know that it’s all sat just above me in the loft, or around the corner in the garage.

It feels odd really that lockdown has done this to me. So many other people I know have used the time productively to empty cupboards and organise their homes, but I guess I’ve been struck down by the lockdown lethargy, unable to concentrate for long enough on actually doing anything useful and instead just baking endless batches of banana bread and watching back to back episodes of Married At First Sight Australia.

The end is in sight though, and I don’t intend to rest on my laurels. I’m going to do it, I’m going to get up in that attic, I’m going to tackle the garage, and I’m going to get my clutter under control.

I’ll just make one more banana loaf and then I’m on it, I promise.

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