We went through this twice. It was just as tuff the second time. I feel for you. Steve in Baltimore County,

YA DONE GOOD!! cleaning out closets is a bummer cause ya gotta take everything out...then if you paint...ya gotta wait for that to dry before you can put back in...I've got TWO pantries in my kitchen that need gutted and painted...wanna come help me Ya Ya??

If you can recycle without too much difficulty, assuming you have a small space for items, or donate it to someone who might be able to use it, why not at least attempt to? I *don't* have a small space for items (I do have places for the things my city trash program recycles--paper, plastic, glass metal). I can't easily donate it to someone who might be able to use it--a trip to the Goodwill or Salvation Army (or any other such place) is an entire morning, and I have to plan my entire family's life around it. Also, as I look at the stuff the ends up at rummage sales, the Goodwill, etc., and the stuff in my house, I realize more and more that most people don't need or want it--any of it. If it were truly valuable or useful to ANYBODY, it wouldn't end up there. Also, stores like that tend to have more than they can use--more clohes, more old furniture, more out-of-date appliances and kitchen gadgets. one or two items less that end up in a landfill. Since I am not actually talking about newspapers, etc., which truly do get "recycled," I don't agree that donating stuff (as a form of recycling) keeps it out of the landfill. It just slows their arrival down. Things like chafing dishes, old clothes, etc.--those will WILL be in the landfill eventually. It's only a matter of how much good they go in the meantime. Filtering through another person before they end up in the landfill is good--but not if the cost of making that happen is too huge for me. And right now, it is huge. So I find myself just throwing things in the garbage. And it's a huge relief. It has changed my life. I'll pass something on directly to another person, who actively wants it, if I know about thema t the time. Or I'll pass on books to a charity's used book store, bcs my DH goes there anyway. I've occasionally brought something to work and set it on the "giveaway" shelf. But if I decide one day that I don't want a certain dish, or kitchen gadget, or piece of clothing anymore, I just throw it out. Then it's gone. It's not still in my apartment (which is bigger than it used to be, once I remeasured it--1,100 sq. feet ) making my life miserable, and getting in the way, and WORSE, looking crummy. Bcs I've discovered that "stuff sitting in the teeny little foyer (or worse, the dining room) waiting to go to the Goodwill" trashes my home MUCH worse than that stuff did when it was still in a closet. Until I gave myself permission to throw things away, I actually used to decide NOT to clean out a closet, bcs I didn't want to trash the place by digging all the junk OUT of the closet and into the open. I don't have a garage, a back porch, a mud room, a laundry room. If it's easy to send something on to a place where it will GENUINELY be useful, and it won't be a burden, I'm all for that. What I am NOT for is the idea that trying to donate it should become MORE clutter--chore clutter, or stuff clutter. It's stuff. It's not in charge, whether it's environmentally "righteous" or not.

We too try to do a little bit each weekend and don't confine it to any one particular season, just try to chip away at it year round. I can't do too much all at once or else I put myself flat on my back for weeks, and for the most part DH has to be supervised (at his request, after he did something that was the polar opposite of how I had explained how to do it - in writing!). I actually vacuumed/dustmopped three rooms on Tuesday, which laid me out for the rest of the day but I got it done. I'm absolutely worthless today, a combination of a residual migraine left over from yesterday, working too hard at physio yesterday, and Major Tom's come to town. A couple of weeks ago DH finally put up a shelf and hanging rod in the guest-room closet so he could move his clothes out of the MBR closet - he gets up at oh-dark-thirty so he dresses in the guest room because I'm a very light sleeper. We have bouncy floors upstairs and just his walking across the MBR floor is enough to wake me up. We also sorted his clothes and a couple of bags went off to Goodwill, and a lot of the boxed-up stuff stored in the guest-room closet was moved to the back of the much larger but very daftly-designed MBR closet (it's under the eaves so you have to bend over double to get to 2/3 of it). Irritatingly, DH has a commitment for Sunday from 11 to 6 which means we'll get Sweet Fanny Adams done that day, and that's supposed to be the only decent day of the weekend weather-wise. I need to sort my clothes - 80% of which won't fit right now but the docs assure me they will again, but at least half of THAT is stuff that will never see the light of day (raspberry suede mid-calf skirt? black velvet blouse with burnout sleeves and deep keyhole neckline? nuh-uh) so I might as well be rid of it, and maybe I'll do that Sunday while he's gone. I did sort my shoes and threw out most of them - beyond worn out, I had had one pair for 23 years! - although a couple did make it to the Goodwill bag. I'm also hoping that we can get the guest room furniture rearranged (we've been here since Sept 2007 and the furniture in there is all still pretty much where the movers dropped it! LOL) on Saturday so I can get the bed made up... the bedding is very bulky and is making quite a big pile. DH won a set of really nice pots and pans in a contest at work so when that arrives we'll need to reorganize the kitchen cabinets and ditch most of our existing stuff. Most of it's quite worn and was mediocre quality in the first place so I'll probably pass it along to friends for their camping gear. Don't talk to me about the kitchen junk drawer though. Just don't.