What a De-Cluttered House Looks Like

[WI-Tom]

After filling a 20-yard dumpster with 20+ years of detritus, packing up most of the books we're keeping, and getting rid of things we should have gotten rid of 20 years ago, this is what our house looks like.

Library/living room:

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Dining room/living room (we do lots of living, apparently):

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Typical old-house bedroom, with room for a bed (full, not queen) and not much else):

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[WI-Tom]

Kitchen (note the built-in icebox!):

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Even our closets are de-cluttered way beyond what they've ever been (and most of those hangers are headed for GoodWill):

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This is the way we should have been living for the past 20 years. Much much more pleasant for me (others have different opinions, shall we say, about the amount of clutter that can be deemed "tolerable"--but this is how I'd have it, given my choice).

The lesson here is simple: Get rid of it. Get rid of it all. Put it on the curb with a "Free" sign, or take it to GoodWill. Or get a dumpster and throw it in.

This place is so nice to be in right now, I'm kind of sorry we're selling it and moving. I hope we can move forward with more awareness of just how UNhappy an excessive accumulation of stuff makes us.

Throw it all out! Good luck,

Tom

[dutchpp]

I recently met a lady who has a successful business, she coaches people how to do this ^^^

[wizbang 13]

Love the 1940's house Tom

[LeeG]

When my girls moved out I reduced a three bedroom house to one bedroom apt to one narrow storage space and now to one 24’x16’ cabin. Freecycle is great for unloading.

[WI-Tom]

Love the 1940's house Tom

Me, too. The original footprint dates back to 1884, actually. It was expanded and converted to an up/down duplex at some point before refrigerators were common, because both kitchens have identical layouts, with built-in iceboxes, and no counter space once you put a modern fridge in a corner. We don't really know when that all happened.

You can see the original footprint in the downstairs, where there used to be an exterior window above the bathtub, opening into the master bedroom. We eventually pulled that window out, though it was theoretically handy ("Honey, can you hand me a towel?"), maybe:

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The downstairs is vacant--has often been vacant, honestly, because:

1. We hate being landlords.
2. It sure makes a nice kayak building space.

There's a little more charm to the downstairs, with arched doorways and a fireplace:

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It also has these nifty old swinging windows:

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(Dolfinite, it turns out, makes a handy window-stop--as do cats).

The master bedroom is quirky, by modern standards. Storage drawers built into one wall, a nice big closet with shelves and hanging space, but not much wall space (thanks to the old radiator heaters, which work great!) and maybe not even room for a queen bed:

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I'm not even sure where you'd fit a bed in without blocking a doorway. I'm sure there's a way, since half a dozen tenants managed it over the years.

Big old leaky inefficient windows to bring in plenty of light, and guarantee that CO2 or mold will never be a problem. Yep, it's a neat house.

Tom

[SMARTINSEN]

"Simplify, simplify, simplify."

Henry David Thoreau

[WI-Tom]

When my girls moved out I reduced a three bedroom house to one bedroom apt to one narrow storage space and now to one 24’x16’ cabin. Freecycle is great for unloading.

Freecycle, bah! We live on a through-town highway route, and have a magic curb. Anything set out there disappears within the hour. Including, once, a 12' Bolger Cartopper dinghy with spritsail rig.

Tom

[LeeG]

even better.

[WI-Tom]

even better.

Yep. And it was a boomlesss spritsail rig, too. Suckers!

Tom

[Bobcat]

My guid wyfe is a maniac about getting rid of stuff we don't need or use. Her brother is the opposite. Our fear is that he croaks first and we have to clear out his townhouse.

[Hugh MacD]

Alas....we have the opposite problem. My good lady is a packrat of the first stripe. I'm a little bit better, but am learning.

[Ted Hoppe]

Thursday too.

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https://youtube.com/shorts/Ben0ZaGPMbg?feature=share

[MoePorter]

Nice work twodot, great explanation.

[john welsford]

I'm going the other way, sort of. I've been living in a 20 ft RV for 18 months, prior to that, 7 years in my old 40 foot motorlaunch, with a workshop next to that.
So have machinery, tools and materials stored in three different places, and today am signing up for a house with a great big workshop, so I"m looking forward to "cluttering" both the house and the shop.

I've not a single stick of furniture, so have already gone to a shop and twisted the managements arm about a big discount, got it too!

I dont miss the house, other than having a couple of thousand books stowed away in boxes, and no space for a drawing board. But I do very much miss the workshop.

All the best with the move Tom.

John Welsford

[WI-Tom]

I am putting my little 1 bdr 600 sq ft house up for sale this Thursday, and have been taking the interior photos myself. After reading about interior photography, and looking at a lot of photos from higher end real estate listings, I have decided that wide angle lenses are distracting and somewhat dishonest, and the HDR technique (merging differently exposed photos in Photoshop, to get a 'High Dynamic Range' of exposure) to get uniform exposure is too weird looking. My suspicion is that when people visit the house, after looking at wide angle HDR images online, they might feel discombobulated by reality.

And so, I am taking two photos using a 35 mm lens and a tripod; one photo exposed for the interior and the other for the view out the window. In Photoshop I tweak the interior photo, add a layer, and paste in the window photo. Then I delete everything from the layer that isn't window.

Plus, I 'staged' the room to look lived in but uncluttered:





One website on interior photography says to, 'shoot from belly level.' This apparently draws the viewer into the room.

Anyway, interior photography is kind of fun.

Sure, now you come and post an explanation of how to get good interior photos! (Fortunately, my real estate people sent a pro with a fancy rig that takes still photos and merges videos for a 360 virtual tour kind of posting).

I really like your living room. 600 sq ft sounds about right to me. Our upper apartment is 800 and we could get by with less. Our apartment in Poland will be about 450 sq ft.

Tom

[WI-Tom]

I'm going the other way, sort of. I've been living in a 20 ft RV for 18 months, prior to that, 7 years in my old 40 foot motorlaunch, with a workshop next to that.
So have machinery, tools and materials stored in three different places, and today am signing up for a house with a great big workshop, so I"m looking forward to "cluttering" both the house and the shop.

I've not a single stick of furniture, so have already gone to a shop and twisted the managements arm about a big discount, got it too!

I dont miss the house, other than having a couple of thousand books stowed away in boxes, and no space for a drawing board. But I do very much miss the workshop.

All the best with the move Tom.

John Welsford

Thanks, John. You too--very exciting that you're getting ready to move into a house. Cathy and I have discussed living in a camper van for a while after we decide we're done with Europe. We blame you for the idea...

Tom

[Boatbum]

Good luck. I hope your house sells fast and for a good price. I put mine up last October and sold it for $65,000 above asking price. Though neat, it had 30 years of accumulated stuff that needed to be thinned out, sold, donated and thrown out. My shoulders still ache from all that.

[John B]

Thanks for the look inside, nice places.
I don't get rid of anything.

Hey John! Great news, what region are you settling in?( you talked about Coromandel some time ago)

[bluedog225]

You guys are giving me contact stress with all this home selling.

twodot-Your one bed place looks like a keeper. Where are you headed?

[bluedog225]

Ah. Downsizing.

[Spin_Drift]

It’s really inspirational to see how well you have done the decluttering of your homes. They look beautiful and inviting. I have decluttering ahead of me. Any helpful hints or advice?

[elf]

Chacun a son gout. I can't imagine wanting to live in such bare spaces. The clue they give to the character of the occupants is not attractive at all to me. No music, no art, no rugs, no books, no pots, no pans, no lamps or plants.

Truely a barren life if one can actually want to live with so little evidence of one's likes and life.

To me there is something profoundly disrespecful of the things if one simply hires a dumpster and throws it all in.

If you have accumulated so much stuff that has no meaning, why did you accumulate it?

[Canoeyawl]

Staging areas' are great, an empty garage or storage unit. My GF doesn't like that I refer to the kitchen sink as a 'staging area' for onion peels while cooking. Why not just throw them away immediately, she says.

Roh roh....

[Ted Hoppe]

Twodot Congratulations! - The before photo was a bit scary and you did a bunch to fix it up.

[bluedog225]

The before photo looks about right for me.

[Ted Hoppe]

Paint and wood stain hide all manner of sins.

I really scrubbed and painted over many of the sins of our house and damage a teenage can do to a bedroom. 22 years in one house we had a lot of rocks too.

Our house has been listed for 5 days with a weekend showing. Today we have a private realtor showing. finger crossed. The market is definitely changing with houses over 1m and higher interest rates are now seeing longer on market times. We may have to have another open house with us gone this upcoming weekend.

I might just go do boat projects on Saturday and sailing sunday.

[bluedog225]

Great freedom in knowing my house will be torn down on sale. I’m going to arrange 30 days salvage rights prior to demo.

[WI-Tom]

Well, while I was out sailing last week, there was apparently a flurry of offers and counter-offers and counter-counter-offers for my wife to deal with, all while running a summer camp at the same time. Ending with an accepted offer which suggests we may have caught the tail end of a hot market, as we're getting about twice what we paid for the house.

Adjusted for inflation, and deducting what we spent on a new roof and some other work along the way, we will basically break even. And, better than that, because we had a place to live for the past 21 years. One big uncertainty gone, assuming the closing goes as planned. This is actually a far better outcome than I had expected--about $25,000 or $30,000 more than I had thought might be possible.

Tom

[WI-Tom]

My GF doesn't like that I refer to the kitchen sink as a 'staging area' for onion peels while cooking. Why not just throw them away immediately, she says.

She is right.

Tom

[WI-Tom]

Chacun a son gout. I can't imagine wanting to live in such bare spaces. The clue they give to the character of the occupants is not attractive at all to me. No music, no art, no rugs, no books, no pots, no pans, no lamps or plants.

Truely a barren life if one can actually want to live with so little evidence of one's likes and life.

Hmm... It's possible to think exactly the opposite, though. That less attachment to material things and possessions indicates something very attractive indeed about the character of the occupants.

Those who visit the upper decks here know I do a fair bit of sailing and wilderness cruising, and love it. But in my home, not one photo or picture to show it. Why do I need to show it? I already have those memories, and don't have to display them outwardly for them to remain securely in my possession.

To me there is something profoundly disrespecful of the things if one simply hires a dumpster and throws it all in.

If you have accumulated so much stuff that has no meaning, why did you accumulate it?

Many things--most things in our consumer culture--don't deserve respect. Those that are still useful, donate to Goodwill. Those that are NOT useful--and 20 years of living a U.S. lifestyle will generate plenty of that for most of us--belong in the dumpster, once acquired.

Yes, the initial acquisition was usually a mistake. But the things still need to be dealt with.

And it is difficult to avoid all acquisition. E. B. White on the topic:

It is not possible to keep abreast of the normal tides of acquisition. A home is like a reservoir equipped with a check valve: the valve permits influx but prevents outflow. Acquisition goes on night and day — smoothly, subtly, imperceptibly. I have no sharp taste for acquiring things, but it is not necessary to desire things in order to acquire them. Goods and chattels seek a man out; they find him even though his guard is up. Books and oddities arrive in the mail. Gifts arrive on anniversaries and fete days. Veterans send ballpoint pens. Banks send memo books. If you happen to be a writer, readers send whatever may be cluttering up their own lives; I had a man once send me a chip of wood that showed the marks of a beaver’s teeth. Someone dies, and a little trickle of indestructible keepsakes appears, to swell the floor. This steady influx is not counterbalanced by any comparable outgo. Under ordinary circumstances, the only stuff that leaves a home is paper trash and garbage; everything else stays on and digs in.

Tom

[elf]

White was incorrect. The home is not the problem.

The problem is in the acquirer - the person who buys something (for themselves or for others) that is of no or little emotional value to the recipient.

There are so many ways to give to oneself and others that giving _things_ is a cop out.

And if the problem is being unable to appropriately discard, society needs to make trash disposal and recycling collection easier, but the possessor needs to discipline him/herself to do the disposing in a timely manner.

[WI-Tom]

White was incorrect. The home is not the problem.

...

And if the problem is being unable to appropriately discard, society needs to make trash disposal and recycling collection easier, but the possessor needs to discipline him/herself to do the disposing in a timely manner.

You missed White's point, which was not about houses being the problem.

Rather, the problem is what he describes as "the normal tides of acquisition": living in a materialistic consumer culture where, even for those who are not inclined to acquire useless stuff, it is very difficult to avoid their accumulation, no matter how disciplined people may be. And also difficult to dispose of, not only for practical reasons, but because once the stuff becomes yours, a bit of guilt tends to attach itself to the idea of getting rid of it.

Tom

[Dave Wright]

Hmm... It's possible to think exactly the opposite, though. That less attachment to material things and possessions indicates something very attractive indeed about the character of the occupants.

Tom

Completely agree!!!

I often become really aware of this when we're guests in certain homes - trifles, trinkets, baubles, knick knacks everywhere. Even in the bathroom, no space to put a toothbrush down on the counter.

[Ted Hoppe]

Glad you are got good action and found some solid buyers.

From Zillow - there are over 21,000 homes for sale in WI. Wow - What a different market than on the west coast.

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Most can not qualify for a starter home around me.