Another NYR: Cleaning & Decluttering

My house has The Piles.  Not piles...ew...THE piles.  As in "of stuff."  Stuff, things, crap, junk, bullsh*t...all just piled places.  I set something down for a second and then never come back to it.  I stack stuff in a convenient spot, thinking that in some unspecified amount of time I will come back and put it away all at once and save myself some trouble and time.

But no:  piles.

Exhibit A

Like this!  Art supplies, half-finished canvases, box of sketches and inspirational photos.  Decommissioned fishtank stuff that made it to here...but not out to the garage to be socked away in the approproiate storage containers.  Small items that need to go into the Goodwill Box.  Two bottles of booze (one's empty - and the recycling bin is literally three feet away).

But wait...

Exhibit B: that took TEN MINUTES. 

Thaaaat's better.

But how to stop myself from doing this in the first place?  I mean, come on - I'm thirty-five years old.  I can't just put my toys away when I'm done playing with them? (No).

Once upon a time I had a BOX.  I placed the BOX in a central location and put stuffthingscrapjunkbullshit into it, and when the BOX got full, I carried it around the house and put everything away, and then returned it to its place (this started when I lived in a two-story duplex, actually, where there was a box at both ends of the stairs, so I wouldn't have to run up and down them all day long).  Until one day, I stashed the BOX in a side room because company was coming...and it was never seen again.  It became the foundation of a new PILE.  ARGH. 

I'm going to try using the BOX again.  Er...actually, this time it's a BASKET:

that big one, right there ^

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