Organizing and Reducing Clutter

Today I attended a meeting online about tiny home organization. I got some great ideas about how to get my life simplified by organizing and reducing my stuff. Others also found it helpful to reduce clothing first. I did this already, but need to reduce even further. Somehow some of the clothes I gave to someone else in the house crept back into my room. They look the same, they're just several sizes too big for me. Plus I have noticed there are clothes I almost never wear, so I think I am going to use the hanger method. This means I will turn all the hangers around facing one way, then when I wear clothes, they will go back onto the hangers facing the other way. At the end of February I will have an idea of the clothes I don't wear. I will still keep some of the dress clothes I only wear for certain occasions, but I suspect there are shoes, hats, and other shirts I can get rid of. Plus I obviously have too many shorts so I'll be going through that drawer.

Another thought that was shared which I really liked was that there are lots of reasons we hang onto stuff. Sometimes it is because of an emotional attachment we give to that item, other times it is because of something we do not want to let go of which that stuff is somehow tied to. I do tend to associate memories and emotions with things. It made me realize that there are some things which I have no use for but have not gotten rid of. I have been working on being present and focusing on the moment, but some of the stuff I've held onto has memories attached to it. Maybe some of it has emotions which I have avoided facing by holding onto the stuff. So letting the things go, may help me deal with things I've avoided. We will see, but I thought it was a thought worth looking into. As people talked, I recommitted to my goal to do a practice run on tiny living by using my 10 x 13 room as a dry run for my tiny home of the future.

Carlie and I talked about how my hammock could be used as a hammock chair during the day. Great idea! Might try creating something similar in my room in the mean time. Definitely will have to plan the build correctly for my hammock to have supports to hang from. We also discussed the feasibility of building a tiny home with storage below it and a guest bed under a trap door in the floor. Looks like I'll need to find someone with know how to talk to about this build before it's done.

I will be sure to post the event page before the next time there is a Tiny House Chat instead of just writing my thoughts up afterwards, as it is definitely an event I'd recommend you "attend" by listening in and/or watching the chat room.