When you realize you're a hoarder, and what to do about it.

One of my goals is to keep this credenza clean from clutter EVERY DAY.  After a few days it got so much easier!  Making things pretty definitely helps.

My name is Kimberly, and I am a hoarder.  No, I'll never be on the show Hoarders, my house is still liveable. But I'm terrible at getting rid of stuff.  When I moved into our tiny apartment two weeks before Axel was born, I had SIX large boxes of Olivia's baby clothes.  I didn't want to part with any of it.  But thinking that other baby girls weren't going to get any new clothes of their own was just silly!  Me, my mom and my mother-in-law will all be buying that girl clothes, so I didn't need to keep every little piece.  I've gone through her clothes twice and a year later, I have two boxes of her clothes 0-3 months up to 3T. 

Still there are Axel's clothes, baby blankets, CD's, DVDs, CRAFT SUPPLIES!, and weird miscelaneous crap that I'm worried I'll suddenly need very badly if I throw it out. 

Soon after moving into our house, and realizing that having SO MUCH MORE SPACE wasn't as much as I thought, I finally faced the fact that I needed to get serious about throwing away my stuff.  When you start dreaming about someone robbing your garage just so you don't have to deal with it, you know there is a problem. 

The solution (still in progress!)
-A place for everything and everything in it's place.  When I'm cleaning I do what ever I can to make a place for any items I come across, AT THAT MOMENT.  It's worth taking ten minutes to hang a hook or nail so there's a place to hang my camera knowing that next time I go to put my camera away, I wont have to think about where it should go (and I will have an easier time finding it!) 

-Take a picture!  Take a picture of special items I really have no need for.  And then give them to someone who needs it. 

-Be honest with myself.  I had about five half finished blankets.  I had to be honest with myself that I would never find the time to finish them.  I didn't want to throw them away either.  So I put it out on facebook.  My aunt offered to take them, finish them and donate them.  DONE.  Because I didn't need anymore blankets hanging around my house :)

-Trust in the internet.  I had to throw away EIGHT college notebooks.  I was keeping them for reference in my teaching.  I think I used them once in my five years of teaching.  If I need information that isn't in my brain, that's what google and wikipedia are for.  I know enough to know what is good content, but I don't need to memorize the information or hoard it in plastic bins. 

-If I haven't used it, touched it or thought about it in five years (or heck, five months!) I'm probably not going to miss it.  So give it away!

-Try not to be so sentimental.  People don't want to bog you down.  I have gifts from my childhood that don't fit my style now, I don't have space for and no one will know if I give them away.  I have to stop thinking "BUT!  It's from so-and-so!"  Again, take a picture and move on. 

I still have a LONG way to go, but my goal is to have it under control before I have another baby.  The more stuff I get rid of, the easier my house has been to keep clean, and a clean house just gives me peace and makes me happy.

How do you get rid of things???  Also, anyone know the correct protocol for disposing of seminary scriptures?