Minimalist Monday Mission: Declutter 365 – Bookshelves

By simplify, on March 28th, 2011

Minimalist Monday Mission

This week for Minimalist Monday Mission: Declutter 365 I was working on my office bookshelves!

This week I felt the urge to move to the office bookshelves. It was a toss up between those three bookshelves or the built-in storage unit (which will be next week). I went with the bookshelves first because I have to look at them a lot

As with nearly all of my decluttering so far, there is definitely a system that I use when decluttering an area.

1) Take out all of the items. Lay them out on the floor, or other large space.

2) Wipe down or clean as needed.

3) Evaluate each item as you pick it up off the floor. My items are grouped into: 1) trash – directly into the “round filing bin”, 2) keep – put back in the area, 3) recycle – directly into the recycle bin and 4) eliminate – this is usually boxed up and taken downstairs to my official decluttering workstation.

I’ve set up an area specifically for processing items that are being eliminated from my home. Because I don’t want to bother figuring out what I am going to do with the eliminated item until it’s out of the area from whence it came, I just stick them all in a box.

After I haul the box downstairs, then I categorize them further. You definitely could save yourself a step here, and perhaps the desire to put something back (since when you touch it again, it’s harder to resist), by doing this as you were sorting items off the floor, but since I am listing several items for sale, etc., it makes more sense for me to do that in bulk, even though it does mean I have to touch the item again.

I separate things into: 1) donate to Goodwill – I have a bag, and an ongoing list. I just add the item to the bag, and note it on the list. 2) donate to school – I often donate school supplies and art things to the schools in the area instead of Goodwill. They pass them along to students who may not have supplies. 3) give away – I decide immediately who it is going to, and then give/ship right away (the exception being gifts, and those have a specific holding area). And lastly 4) sell.

The sell is further broken down into 1) sell on eBay, 2) sell on Craig’s List, or 3) sell on Becoming Minimalist Sale page. Some of the items that ultimately end up on Craig’s List or eBay are often listed first on my Becoming Minimalist Sale. One, because it’s easier, and two, to be able to give you, the reader a first shot at something.

Once all the sell items are sorted, then I will take a picture of each and post them over the weekend. (At least that’s the plan. Although this week, it is Monday evening as I am typing this because it took longer than I had expected to finish up these bookshelves, and I had an event this weekend for one of my businesses which took up time, so I’ve yet to post anything new on the sale page, but have loads to post there later!)

And on Monday…repeat the above on the next area

So, back to this week. Here’s the bookshelves before:

And after:

Notice the first picture is my husband’s bookshelf. The top two shelves are his, and ironically, he has read all but 1 or 2 of the books on the shelves. The lower shelf is the children’s books. In the second bookshelf, the top shelf is my books that I want to keep. These are the only ones I keep that I have read before. The bottom shelf is books that I have not yet read, and in the third bookshelf on the bottom shelf are the rest of the books that I have not read yet. So, my husband and I are exact opposites. He has just a handful of books that he has read, but keeps a large number (although he has gone through this within the past few years a few times) of books he has already read. I keep a small handful of books that I have already read, and have a bunch on the shelf that still need to be read (not including the 90 or so in my Kindle ). I thought that was neat!

Total of items eliminated this week?

Threw out/Recycled: 71 items
Donated/Given: 67 items
Sold: 14 items from my Becoming Minimalist Sale, Craig’s List, Amazon, or eBay (listed a few things on eBay that sold this week)

Overall Totals:

Threw out 433 items
Donated 411 items
Sold 262 items

TOTAL ITEMS: 1106 items

Interestingly enough, in 75 days in the fall, I eliminated 1,150 items, and so far this year, it’s been 87 days and I’m up above 1,100 items again! Pretty close! And I can already see that I need to do a quick decluttering sweep through the areas I’ve already done, because I can see things I missed the first time around. I may add that in later…

Here’s where we are headed for the Minimalist Monday Mission: Declutter 365 in the next few weeks: