home organization

6 Week Round-Up and the 5 Priority Possessions We’ve Managed to Shed

September 21, 2017September 22, 2017 Shed52

We’re back and excited to share some return to success over here at Shed52. As dedicated readers will know, we were deep in the Shed52 struggle for the past few weeks, with no takers on our Stakmore Table Set and it turns out that you actually can say “no” to a muppet on a bicycle. We managed to continue to pare down our possessions in weeks 4 and 5 by giving away freebies and donating lots of clothes from our closets. But the point of Shed52 has been to sell our stuff and feature worthy charities to whom we can donate in the process. So, needless to say, these past few weeks have put a crimp in our style.

Fortunately, things have turned around for us in Week 6 and we’re psyched to report that we were able to sell an item that’s been taking up a lot of space at our place, getting minimal use, and serving as the site of the occasional teen-sibling fist fight. (I love our family, but let’s face it: teen siblings with mountain dew and Doritos in their systems are scarier than a Sharknado in a midnight rainstorm.)

Back to letting the cat out of the bag. A bean bag, to be exact. That’s right: we were able to sell a LoveSac gamer beanbag/memory foam chair that we received as a gift from a family member who was moving several years ago, back when I believed that you could never have too many kinds of chairs in one room. I couldn’t say “no” to a velvish fluff-ball on which I imagined many hours of book-reading would be spent. (I selectively forgot at the time that kids have smartphones now and books are just obsolete ipads in their eyes.) As you can imagine, this underused item has been a bit of a dark cloud in our house for the past few years. Literally.

Screen Shot 2017-09-21 at 8.03.25 AM.png — Exhibit B: Dark Cloud

We posted this bad boy on Facebook’s Marketplace a few weeks ago, where I imagined throngs of gamers in need of a new seating situation would eagerly be outbidding one another on our totally reasonable asking price of $175. (I know what you’re thinking– but these retail new for $350, without the velvish cover! And you don’t get what you don’t ask for.)

Unfortunately, it didn’t play out that way, and for two weeks, we were forced to resort to keeping our bike in the garage and the LoveSac in the living room. In the meantime, we did manage to continue in our decluttering quest, despite the many obstacles we were facing and the limited time we’ve had to dedicate thought to this process. It’s true: I have an uncanny knack for biting off way more than I can chew and perpetually wondering how it will all get done. So basically I chose the perfect time to start a blog.

Accurate representation of me pretty much every morning.

The good news? Our new good friend named James came through unexpectedly on Monday night and asked to pick up the LoveSac for $75. We were eager to be able to donate to the survivors of the hurricanes in Puerto Rico, where virtually the entire island is without power, so we took James up on his offer and met up the next day. He shared with us that the LoveSac was a gift for his 14 month old daughter, and of course our hearts melted, and before I knew what I was doing, we were telling him to just take it for $60. I drive a hard bargain, I know.

And since that papa’s got a brand new bag, we feel like a total weight has been lifted in this joint. It’s also given us some time to reflect on this journey so far, which is perfect timing, since today is Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year. We’re looking back and feeling lots of gratitude for the privileges we enjoy every day, and also looking ahead to living more intentionally and more justly. This also coincides perfectly with our plan to give readers a recap of everything we’ve sold/donated in the past 6 weeks:

6 Week Recap

Item: IKEA Kallax Bookcase Sold: $35 Donation: Southern Poverty Law Center
Cherry Oak Bar Sold: $200 Donation: Houston Food Bank
Malm Dresser (Boss’s) Sold: $80 Donation: Jimmy Fund
Nifty Doodad Given Away Donation: Nothing. We’re the Worst
Bags of Clothes Given Away Donation: Goodwill
LoveSac Sold: $60 Donation: Unicef for Puerto Rico

We’re hoping that our practice of donating about 25%-50% of our proceeds from these sales will inspire others to give what they can to worthy causes in a time of great instability in our world.

We’re also excited to announce our next item up for grabs on the blog, along with an organization very near and dear to our hearts and a totally epic announcement about an encounter with a total hero next week. But we don’t want to give anything away…

Check back later this week to learn all about it. In the meantime, tell us about the dark cloud of your decluttering journey. Is it a giant beanbag? ~~Trash bags~~ classy plastic containers full of gently used clothes? What GIF best represents your Shed52 Struggle?

Week 5 Recap: When Life Needs to Take a Long Walk Off a Short Pier

September 10, 2017September 10, 2017 Shed52

It’s another Sunday here at Shed52 and we can’t believe all that the universe can manage to pack into one family’s life in just 7 days. We’ve been eager to return to this amazing little community here at WordPress since Wednesday, but each day has brought a new challenge and rendered us pretty useless in the blogosphere, and mostly just trying to survive. To give you a sense of what we mean, here’s a rundown. Because who doesn’t love a good Sunday morning list?

There’s this tiny little storm moving through the great state of Florida and both Jason’s mom and my parents live just north of Fort Lauderdale. They also all live in waterfront homes. Jason’s mom is on oxygen, so we were able to persuade her to get out fast and come be with us on Wednesday. Unfortunately, this cost us about $800 for a last minute flight. More unfortunate was that my folks decided to stay, and are currently hunkered down in their tiny space awaiting the worst.
This satellite photo accurately captures the scale of this storm, which they say is nearly the size of Jason’s book collection.
The federal government officially announced plans to rescind DACA, which means that Jason, an immigration attorney, has been inundated with calls and visits from deeply worried clients who are in fear for their status and their families. We understand this as a human rights issue more than a political one, and it’s heartbreaking at the end of a week to know how many folks are suffering right now.
The federal government also made vague, worrying and misleading comments about Title IX, the federal civil rights law that protects people on the basis of their sex and gender in educational institutions. This greatly affects my work as a sexual trauma counselor and advocate at a nearby university and needless to say, I’m fired up about continuing to effectively and appropriately respond to survivors of violence in my community. This is difficult to balance with my concurrent desire to just hide under a blanket with a bucket of pumpkin mac ‘n’ cheese, because it’s September and I’m a New Englander.
I continue to have no idea what I’m doing in the one PhD class I was stupid enough to register for this semester (what’s a Piaget, anyway?) and would rather bake cakes all weekend than read books, so that’s what I’ve been doing to cope.
Peach upside down cake, baked with brown sugar & bourbon caramel. I call it “Procrastinator’s Delight.”

Jason’s car ~~exploded~~ bit the dust on the highway this week and we learned it’s worth nothing and we’ll get roughly zero dollars for it. He got about 165K miles out of it, but we were disheartened to learn that you can, in fact, kill a Subaru. He just got a great deal on a preowned Prius yesterday (yay!) but we’re reeling from sticker shock of this week, and the cumulative effect of all these other matters.

World’s most expensive trash can, according to Jason.

We were worried that this would mean we would fail to continue to empty out our house of useless stuff, like the two kids’ bikes I hoped to sell for $29 a piece. We have’t been able to pursue the sales as persistently as we’d like, and so nothing’s sold as of yet!

On second thought, it would have been pretty great to see Jason use this to get around instead.

However, Jason was quick to point out that, with the loss of his car likewise means the loss of all of the utter junk that was piled up in it. I frequently refer to Jason’s car as a “trash can on wheels” because it’s accumulated nearly 10 years of kids’ bubblegum wrappers, crumbs, loose change, and of course, random scraps of paper (yes, I try to clean it out frequently, but anyone with kids will know what I mean). This isn’t to mention the formidable stench of a teenage boy’s hockey equipment, which is enough to chase you out of the car and into a sewer during peak season.

So while I’m not feeling like we’re “winning” at Shed52 these past few weeks, I have to give credence to all the obstacles we’ve been facing as a family and also give credit to the fact that we’re not giving up. This blog has definitely helped us remain accountable to ourselves in this quest to give up “stuff” and I have a renewed sense of commitment to shedding at least one item this afternoon. One stop I know I can make is to our local Goodwill with a bag of clothes to be sent to survivors of these recent Hurricanes. Right after I start this homework.

Check back tomorrow for a very special post from Jason! He’ll be sharing what Shed52 has meant to him, and reflecting on the true weight of stuff in our lives. We’ve also been procrastinating dealing with the issue directly in front of us with other writing projects, such as this piece I just published over at Medium about what Harry Potter can teach us about white supremacy. If you’re like us and in need of a little break this weekend, feel free to check it out, comment and share!

Screen Shot 2017-09-10 at 10.24.54 AM.png — “What White People Can Learn from harry Potter About White Supremacy” on *Medium,* September 10, 2017

How are you all doing with the recent happenings in the U.S. and around the world? Are you or your loved ones in the path of Hurricane Irma? How have you been coping? What’s sorts of things do you use to stay hopeful and on track with your goals when the going gets tough? We’d love to hear from you below!

Lemonade, Shed52 Style

September 6, 2017 Shed52

We’re here with a quick update, as promised, to fill readers in on the stressful seven days we just spent trying to sell the item we had selected for Week 4 on Shed52. We knew we were bound to hit some snags, and anticipated that we might have to pivot to make good on our commitment to this process.

As the old saying goes, “When life hands you a vintage card table that nobody wants, try to sell it for a short while and then just give up.” It’s kind of the home organization equivalent of Lemonading. Kind of.

I have a lot of old sayings I like to make up when things aren’t going my way, like this past week while I was wringing my hands over the Stakmore Set that nobody wanted. And you know? The longer we were trying to sell that thing, the more attached to it I became. I have virtually no use for it. I’ve never played Bridge. And it’s certainly not my style. But it’s still ours, because in a brazen sleight of hand on Sunday I decided to switch out the Shed52 Item of the Week and pretend like these poor old pieces were never up for grabs to begin with.

FullSizeRender (4).jpg — But seriously, will someone please buy this?

So how did we make good on our promise to keep getting old junk out the door for Week 4? In a series of hasty moves, driven mostly by impulse and instinct rather than intention, I found myself scanning the house on Sunday for anything that looked like we could live without it. It’s not exactly the conscious uncoupling we’ve been humble-bragging about practicing on this blog, but we were feeling a little desperate and short on time, now that we’re also trying to get Jason’s mom out of southern Florida a week early for her upcoming visit to Boston.

I ended up almost overlooking this nifty doodad, which I’ve had for probably 15 years. I call it a doodad because I have no idea what it actually is, or what it’s for. It’s moved across 3 cities and 5 apartments with me, and to this day, I have no idea what to do with it. This photo might fail to capture just how small those teeny drawers are, but each one has enough storage for about two earrings and a hay penny. I also have yet to explain my bemusing habit of leaving my jewelry everywhere (that’s for another post) and so needless to say, this doodad never had a chance at serving whatever its teleological purpose may be.

I realized that it’s offering neither form nor function for us at this point, and at about 7 pounds, it weighs more than I’m willing to schlep to any other apartments if we ever have to move. So I slapped a post-it on it (“Free!”) put it on our stoop and waited ~~like Joe Biden in the window~~ totally casually to see if there would be any takers.

And then I accidentally fell asleep. But! When I woke up, like magic, the nifty doodad was gone. I assume some eccentric neighbor with exactly 6 pairs of earrings serendipitously stumbled upon it and that it was the answer to all of their tiny-home-storage problems. It’s probably as close to feeling like Beyonce as I’ll ever get. And yes, I know how sad that sounds. In any case, we were able to at least ensure that we’re one more item down in the quest to de-clutter, and looking ahead to the rest of our shedding the rest of our stuff.

What’s on tap for Week 5? My confidence is a little shaken by this past round of Shed52, but I’m holding out hope that we can appeal to the masses with a few bicycles the kids outgrew like 6 years ago. If you know anyone in the market, get at me. They’re in great condition and I dare you to say “no” to a muppet on a bike.

This could be you, reader, if the price is right.

5 Ways that Jason Contributes to Clutter (or, Bad Buddhist)

September 4, 2017September 5, 2017 Shed52

Happy Monday! We’re in slow motion over here at Shed52, enjoying a leisurely holiday weekend of hosting two of our favorite relatives from Cleveland and eating more pizza than should be legal in most states. Beautiful days like this one (70s and sunny here!) remind us why we deal with such a temperamental climate and high cost of living in Boston. Fall will be here before we know it, but we’ll be getting as much time outside and on restaurant patios as weather will allow.

I might also be procrastinating a little by spending the weekend brunching around outside, since I’ve started taking classes toward a PhD (social workers are a special kind of masochist) and French toast is much more appealing to me than French theories on human social development. At least, for now.

And speaking of procrastination, Jason’s been totally ~~avoiding~~ enjoying thinking about the ways in which he contributes to clutter in our house. Since he’s not likely to make an actual list, we… um… collaborated… to share his top 5 clutter culprits in our over-crowded space. I may have taken some liberties in sharing photo evidence of these adorable idiosyncrasies, mostly as a cry for help, and partly in an attempt to garner sympathy. Jason, I love you. Please don’t break up with me.

The 5 Things Jason Can’t Keep from Cluttering our House

1. Books

I don’t even know where to begin here (though you may recall my reference to Jason’s “Bibliomania” in a previous post) but Jason loves books. As in, we once had a conversation about what we could never live without in life and for Jason, books came before both me and his children. I’ve been told that Jason takes after his dad in his love of books, which is deeply heartening and a sweet tribute (Jason’s dad passed away several years ago) and it seems they both had a wide-spanning love of all genres, authors and subjects.

Which is great! Really! Except Jason doesn’t just read books. He owns them. He has to buy them, borrow them, order them, and then store them. We have 1000 books JUST IN OUR LIVING ROOM. That’s not an exaggeration. I counted once. (Yes, I know I need a hobby.) And we have just a measly thousand in the living room because that’s all she can hold. That means our dining room, breakfast nook, bedroom, garage and basement also have books. Jason and I almost broke up once over a storage unit he couldn’t get rid of, because books. In sum, books haunt my dreams.

FullSizeRender (2).jpg — A sampling of what I found on Jason’s nightstand this morning. You may note the irony that Jason has a very non-zen attachment to books on Buddhism.

2. Papers. Just Like, Random Papers.

I know what you’re thinking right now, because I’ve peered into the minds of normal people before and I know that normal people would be thinking “But Rach! Books are MADE from paper. Haven’t you already covered this?” I envy you, normal people.

No. I haven’t covered this. “Papers. Just like, Random Papers.” gets its own subheading because this is a type of clutter that accumulates on a whole ‘nother level. It creeps in from every corner of Jason’s world. He uses scraps of paper as bookmarks for his bajillion books he’s simultaneously reading. He uses paper to take down phone numbers instead of putting them into his iPhone like everyone else does. He writes down thoughts that he has and wants to remember instead of just remembering them. He’s kept every single sales receipt from every. single. purchase. he’s. ever. made. They’re in a giant garbage bag somewhere in this house, and that is just terrifying.

But it’s not just the accumulation of papers that contributes to the cluttered chaos of our living space. It’s how they coexist with us in the space. Jason (who I swear is my favorite person) has a way of manspreading his papers around the house such that they take up every possible inch of every possible surface we have. Tabletops, counters, couch cushions, buffets, consoles, and even the tops of our clunky old radiators usually have scraps of paper, or Jason’s manuscripts, or sheet music strewn across them. Jason insists that he needs to do this in order to know where things are. I’m pretty sure he does it because otherwise he’ll forget they exist. Needless to say, we’ve managed to accept one another for our different orientations to reality, which usually means I’m tidying, stacking and sorting papers and Jason steps in just to spread everything out again. Have I mentioned yet that I really do love him?

Coffee table, 5 minutes later, post-Jason

3. The Invisible Man

I fully realize that this next item may not count, per se, in terms of how one brings in things that contribute to clutter in the house, but Jason’s not writing this and so I have creative license here. I’m mentioning this one because I think I’ve burned more calories closing drawers, cabinets and doors in the past year than doing probably anything else. I don’t know what it is, but Jason (and both of the kids) have this baffling habit of opening, say, every single cabinet in the kitchen, and then just LEAVING THEM OPEN. FOREVER.

I’ve joked (okay I might have been crying) about coming home to a house that looks like it was raided by a poltergeist, but no amount of coaxing or operant conditioning will convince them to just close things after they open them. I call it the “invisible man” because no one ever seems to be able to determine exactly who does it, because it’s literally everyone except me. I realize it doesn’t add to clutter, technically, but by god, what good are doors and drawers if they’re not masking over the shame of clutter!? They have one job.

FullSizeRender (3).jpg — If this kitchen looks cramped and awful, that’s because it is. And also because every cabinet is open in it.

Real talk: Does anyone else have partners or families who do this? I’m half ready to fund a sociology student to do their dissertation on this phenomenon. I need answers.

4. Obsolescent Stuff that Jason is Convinced Will Be Relevant Again One Day

It won’t. I’m not just talking about mix tapes and CDs (Jason’s a musician, so I’ve resigned myself to living in an apartment that’s always going to have like 5 more Phil Collins albums than ever needed to be made). I’m talking about computer keyboards from 1992. I’m talking about extension cords that kind of look like they were actually invented before electricity was. I’m talking about VHS tapes, and weird pottery that will never come out of our garage, and okay, yes, I’m also talking about those Phil Collins CDs. We have a Spotify Premium account, for godsake!

And yes, Jason still owns every single computer he’s ever owned since the late 80s. He also still owns every word processor and electric typewriter he’s ever had. They don’t turn on. They don’t contain any information he’ll ever need or be able to access. But we’ll be damned if we’re going to free up some prime real estate in the garage by throwing out the world’s most expensive paperweights.

Free to a good home. Just kidding. We’re crazy.

5. Books

Your eyes have not deceived you! I’m giving books a whole second section because a) SERIOUSLY SO MANY BOOKS, and b) because really, Jason is a pretty simple, wonderful guy who puts up with a lot from me and all he needs in life is books, coffee and some quiet time to think each day. Shed52 has, if nothing else, helped me realize that I am actually the one who contributes the most to the “stuff” in our house, with purchases, freebies, tchotchkes and furniture. Jason knows how to live in a space in a way that makes him happy, and he actually doesn’t require many material things to do that. Unless you count each individual book as a separate material thing. Which I usually do.

I might be giving Jason a hard time about the burdens of living with a bibliophile, but the truth is that Jason never complains about anything. His natural disposition is warm, thoughtful and friendly and that’s probably why he’s never met a book he didn’t like. And that’s also probably why books are his best friend, and why they all live with us at Shed52.

Screen Shot 2017-09-04 at 1.51.03 PM.png — Jason’s besties. Pay no mind to the tribute being paid to the compact disc.

So there you have it. Jason may contribute to the cluttered ways in which our space gets lived in, but I nobly accept that I’m the one who acquires the most stuff. By taking a closer look at our own habits, we’ve already begun to treat our space differently, which is an unexpected but positive byproduct of this silly blogging adventure.

And if you’ve gotten to the end of this post and are wondering whether I’m also procrastinating about sharing whether we managed to sell/get rid of our Week 4 item the answer is yes (yes, as in, I’m procrastinating. not yes, as in, we sold it). We’re not telling yet, so you’ll have to check back in later at Shed52 to see whether we bounced back from our struggle to sell, or if we dropped the ball!

What kinds of funny habits have you noticed in your family members/ partners/ fur babies that contribute to the chaos of a cluttered house? I have to know I’m not alone here. Share below, and maybe gather the whole family ’round to read this post too.

Screen Shot 2017-08-27 at 11.12.24 AM.png — You thought those cabinets were filled with non-books? Don’t be ridiculous.