Why Decluttering Pays

So, as you've been following the drama of my decluttering, I'm sure you were wondering, "Does all this stress to declutter pay off?"

I am pleased to inform you that it, indeed, does.

But first, let's recap.

I did start 'early' this year, trying hard to pack up stuff about a month ago, realizing the church rummage sale was coming up fast. But then suddenly it was yesterday and The Grand Lunar was informing me that today was the last day to take stuff in.

And so today I worked hard. Very hard. To finish packing up boxes, sorting through bags, and of course hauling, hauling, hauling things up from the basement.

(And yes, I did work too hard. I know you all warned me. But hey, a procrastinator driven by deadlines expects to have to work too hard one day, to make up for all her lollygagging previously. I'll take it easy tomorrow, I promise. Just try to stop me.)

Here's the final tally, in pictures:

One MobyFull:

Since that's the back of a 15 passenger van (with the rearmost seat removed), that's about 6'x3'x3' packed, so we'll call it 54 cubic feet of clutter.

And One MoogieVanFull, or, alternately, a Leaning Tower of Clutter:

which is approximately, oh, lets call it 5'x3'x2' or so. Give or take. So that's 30 more cubic feet of clutter.

Or over 80 feet of cubic clutter, removed from the house.

When I got to the church to drop it off, with the first load, I was awestruck at the sight:

Is that not ... flabbergasting?

Oh, that's not me in the pic, I'm sure you new that. That's one of the church rummage sale workers who was willing to be photographed.

Anyway, Moogie was going to take load #2 on her way home, but I decided I'd take my camera to try to capture the immensity of the gathering clutter.

And on my way in, I saw it.

The grand prize for all my efforts.

Yes, it's a beautiful (except for the orange) bank of lockers!!

Perhaps you did not know, but I have been searching online for lockers, but unwilling to pay the gihugic price for new ones. Because they are sold to fairly specific niche markets, there's no 'entry level, modest priced' lockers out there.

When I saw these I immediately started begging all the sale workers to let me buy them. Officially the sale does not open until Friday morning, and early sales only go to those working hard to RUN the sale. Which is not me.

BUT it turns out everyone groaned in dismay to see the lockers. Because who in their right mind would buy lockers? They were sure they would just have to haul them to the dump after the sale. So they were pleased to have some crazy customer begging to buy them. And they were gracious enough NOT to jack up the price based on my obvious desperation to buy them.

I'm going to paint them lovely color. And put them in the dining room. Which, in my defense, is the room the back door enters into, and therefore is always full of discarded coats and shoes.

Just imagine those lovely lockers, in perhaps a pale spring green to match the back door, right here:

The coat and shoe area usually looks MUCH more cluttered than in this old picture, by the way. Imagine 3x as many coats and shoes, many of them barfing out of the area and sprawling on the floor. The light green lockers will replace this coatrack and shoe cubbies.

And that'll only take up, oh, 36 to 40 cubic feet.