Super aggressive and start throwing useless stuff out! It all adds up and becomes more and more. Take it easy and slowly and it will all fall into place and when you are done, you will feel wonderful, like a whole burden lifted off you!
Sometimes I have the same problem and I feel like calling those British ladies “How clean is your house” declutterers!

In my career, I’ve had to move so many times that I didn’t seem to attract clutter. Before each move, I’d have a bonfire or “potlatch” (giving away anything I didn’t want to take with me but might be useful to another. I’d recommend a major paper-sorting followed by a bonfire.

Keep all your financial records for seven years, then destroy them (don’t just throw them away, physically destroy them by shredding or burning).

A few ideas:

Get a trash bag and set a timer for 3 minutes. Grab anything you can that you know is junk and stuff it in the bag. Put it wherever you put your regular trash that goes out. Repeat once or twice a day until the junk is gone

Paperwork: Is there stuff that is potentially important? Things like bills, checks, contracts, policies, etc. Take a box and toss all of it in there.

Disks: I assume you mean computer disks? Put them all in one place, maybe another box.

Then, take 15 minutes and go through the paperwork box. Have a shredder nearby, or at least a trash bag. Throw out or shred anything that you pull out of the box and don’t need. Any bills that need to be paid, make a pile to pay during your normal bill paying time. (Mine is Sunday evening.) If there are things that need to be filed, make one “filing pile.” When the 15 minutes is up, spend 5 minutes filing. (If you need that long, I don’t know.) Give yourself a couple of minutes for a stretch break, but only a couple! Spend another 15 minutes sorting, 5 filing, and stretch again. I would only be able to take this for about three rounds, but your mileage will vary. It may take a couple of days, but the 15 minute shifts make it bearable. Even if you can only do one a day, you’ll make headway. Same thing will work for your box of disks.

Get rid of what you can and continue to be aggressive in not letting the “stuff” in your house.

I was going to post but I don’t think I have anything better to say than @tedibear39 advice. The hardest part is getting started. Once you do, it becomes very satisfying work.

Garage sale. Make some cash to buy something you want.

If you have been ill and there is such a serious backlog, consider hiring someone to reorganize the mess you have now as a one-time exercise, and then maintain order the way you used to. Otherwise you are likely to make yourself feel guilty.

Thanks guys, I think I am going to open three or four bin bags in the corner of the room, and over the weekend start chucking

I was going to suggest what @dpworkin said. I have had a professional organizer come to my house three times in my life and it was great, I would do it again. But, you need it done by Monday, so @tedibear39 has some great suggestions.

For me, I hate to work alone, if it is the same for you, maybe call a friend while you sort and throw out. Don’t go for perfect filing and organization, get some cardboard boxes or plastic bins for fast sorting, and label them so you know what is inside. Throw out as much as you can. If you spend an hour in each room you will be surprised at how much you can get through.

I move a lot. I have a lot of boxes that I haven’t opened after four and five moves. I realized that I don’t need that crap. I could toss it and wouldn’t notice it. You might want to grab some paper and track what you use everyday for a few months. Sell the rest and take a vacation in a warm place.

you probably won’t organize everything by monday, but you can box it and then sort through it/throw it out in time. i find for long term, having a filing cabinet is terrific – have files for categories like “car” “medical” “taxes” “receipts” “owner’s manuals” “correspondence.”

on TV shows, when they re-do someone’s room, they take everything out of the room and then just put back what’s necessary. it’s almost impossible to clean when you’re standing in the midst of piles of stuff. take everything out, which you need to do for the painter anyway, and then after he paints, put furniture back and then put baskets or filing cabinet for stuff and papers. i saw in a magazine they had a little two drawer filing cabinet with a table top round on top of it, and on top of that they put a floor length tablecloth, pretty and useful at the same time.

lastly, my house was also a disaster until i hired a cleaning lady to come clean every two weeks. i work full time and i’m a single mom, so the last thing i have time or energy to do is clean. before the cleaning lady, i would do one thing like mop the floor and then be tired, or then have to go. now, with the cleaning lady, the whole house is clean at once. that frees me up for other things, like organizing clothes or going through papers. at the very least it makes me feel good to have a clean house, and it’s no longer embarassing if i have company.

@jca thanks great tips. My home is clean though, I think I am just overwhelmed with “stuff” I have a lady come in once a week. It’s funny how you don’t notice how it all piles up (the papers the things) I get scared too, I’ll need it if I throw it out!

Fly Ladies actually is a great and free place to get motivated. They have a baby- steps program that helps not only de-clutter but also builds a system to prevent re- clutter.
It works too.

When my spouse and I married we combined two households. For a year we purcased an additional trash can from our local service and made it a goal to fill it each week.

We also utilized Freecycle.com and he- homed a staggering amount of items we no longer needed.

I second Fly Ladies. I know many people who swear by it.

Over the last 3 years we have had my mom, my dh’s father and grandmother all die. My mom was a pack rat who bordered on hoarder. I had to liberally use Freecycle, used book stores and the Sally Ann.

As I was raised by someone who was a catastrophe, organizationally-wise, I grew up organized. I have always had a filing cabinet. I have a rule that if I haven’t used something in a year (takes care of things you only use once or twice a year) it goes.

For organizing big messes I find the best way is to do a general sort first: all papers in one pile, bags in another, clothes in another etc. Once one thing reaches a critical mass in one of those piles…it gets its own pile.

When my mom died I had only 2 days to sort and clean up 50 years of “Don’t throw that away” When I look back I don’t know how I did it and I don’t want to do anything like that ever again.

when i get really cleaning stuff out, i don’t try to give it away, because giving it away means you have to store it and save it until you see the person you’re giving it too. i either throw it in the garbage or bring it to charity.

Tedibear…..........great answer and helpful.

As a quick suggestion for CDs and paperwork…..use the trunk of your car to store these things, until the painters leave. then you can have time to evaluate what stays and what goes. i did this one time and it worked. john

—@Dog just trying to manoeuvre through fly ladys site, bit complicated. I know I have to shine my sink tho’ loll.—

I think you need to just suck it up, and start with a big box. Walk that box around and just start throwing things out.

Sometimes it’s hard, but you just have to be honest with yourself, if you are never going to use “it” again, just toss it. And more often than people like to admit to themselves, you AREN’T going to use it.

Now I remember Fly Ladies book – i think in addition to cleaning out the sink she said to get dressed up when you clean?

Box up stuff for the Goodwill, load up the car and drop it off. Having a yard sale requires a time commitment to go through your stuff, price it, advertise it, etc. You could list bigger things on Craig’slist, but it’s much easier on you to load up the little stuff and drop it off as a donation than to have to process it. I put books that I don’t want into the library’s night time book drop box. They either put them on the shelves or sell them at the Friends of the Library annual book sale.

This may sound strange, but I set an hourly value of my free time at $10 an hour and do time estimates on projects to determine if something is worth doing in my free time. If you have a lot of stuff, the amount of time it would take to sort, price, advertise and hold a yard sale for a lot of little things is about 20 hours over the course of a week or two. That means that I would have to make $200 on a yard sale in order to break even. I use that to estimate the true cost of hiring someone to do work at the house that I could do myself as well. I could paint a room, but in reality it’s often cheaper to hire out than to squander my free time. I work 50–60 hours a week at my job, and do everything at home; my time at the office is constrained, and is therefore not “free time”.

I am in a clutter mess at times myself. So far I have contained it to my upstairs and back laundry room, but I don’t want it there either.
I think you all have good suggestions, now to try and make them work for me.
Thanks!

FlyLady is where I got the bag it up and toss it out quickly idea. In fact, I belonged to her site for a while. It got to the point where I couldn’t take the references to Christianity and the poor grammar. She has some excellent ideas and it is at least worth a look around. Oh, she also preaches the “you can do anything for 15 minutes,” idea from my post. As an aside, that idea is what got me exercising about 3 years ago.

Get off of the computer and clean up your house. Whining about it will not get it done.

@thriftymaid so inspirational

You and me both,
we need to organize and step into a new phase of our life.
one little thing at a time.
i will support you…

@babaji thank you :) My sink is sparkling and I have filled a few rubbish bags. I have even sorted a couple of music disks. Tomorrow my painter arrives, I should take befores and afters?

@Just_Justine yes please do take some pictures. I need the inspiration.

Ask yourself have you used it in the last six months? If, not recycle it. Someonelse may appreciate it. If you buy something, get rid of something.

@Just_Justine If it is a “clutter trap” then you may rekwire professional assistense. Perhaps yu have like a horder thing?