@Unigran4, my sympathies for the situation you are in. There are times when you just work hard and when you're home just to keep things going, no time for deep sorting and then it mounts up. Like you, I understand all the do it for 5 minutes, do one drawer, different boxes etc, and they are all good things to do and have found them useful but hard to keep up and make a dent in things. One thing I will say which helped me was the thought that I came across on a mental health event, even if you don't manage to achieve your goal, you have moved forward and another time you have a go you start further along. Certainly, your mental health comes into it and great to have made a start on tackling that
I never had a problem until I met and married my husband, he came from a family which liked to pass on junk to other members of the family, and when we married I had no end of problems persuading him that we didn't want x,y,z junk household items, took many years to get rid of some of the stuff we had been given. He was an untidy hoarder and made things so difficult for me as couldn't access my things, which got trapped behind stuff of his, he never helped, and eventually, I just couldn't cope and things got worse. I did try and declutter my stuff but couldn't dare to touch his stuff. Anyway, he left me, took some of his stuff, so I spent some years while divorce was going on clearing as much stuff of his as I could and taking it round to him, wore myself out, hurt my shoulder and then did suffer from depression. from the trauma of it all, and depression really saps your energy
I did get help for my mental health, and worked on stuff that he'd left, all the while working albeit part-time and visiting increasingly unwell parents many miles away so I'd spend a week or so at a time every couple of months so that cut into the time I had, but so glad I did it instead of spending the time on clearing out, as they have now died, Between times too much time was spent trying to sort things out at a distance, etc. Dad late last year. Finally, I thought that I could get on. What happened, however, was that I had an accident, not connected to the mess, it was not at home, but the children decided that they would take over and sort stuff for he, I'd like to suggest that if you can manage to get sorted before something like that happens, which I hope it doesn't, that would be good I'm torn between what has been thrown away and relief that I'll be able to get the house how I want, there will still be stuff to do, but the spectre of years decluttering before I could enjoy my forthcoming retirement in a few years time.
I wonder if as well as exploring your mental health, could you afford a declutterer such as you see on the TV for a while, to get you going then again when you start slowing down etc until you are where you want to be.
Everything that I've done to tackle the situation I've learnt from, and hope that it will be useful going forward to keep things sorted. I'll never be a minimalist and no one should tell anyone hat that's what they should be but learned a lot from clearing out my parents' house.
One thing I did find helpful a couple of years was doing the lent 40 bag challenge, not sure why that worked when working things into boxes or sorting a drawer didn't, maybe because it was sort of a one-off, and I was doing it instead of giving up chocolate or something
Basically, you aim to fill and discard 40 bags full of stuff, one a day during lent
It can be any size of bag, a sandwich bag, a carrier, a bin bag, whatever, you choose. By Easter, you are 40 bags lighter. I stalled in years when I was really down with the situation but didn't beat myself up about it
Things from the various approaches that I particularly didn't find helpful, just in case it's useful if not, ignore-
Marie Kondo groups, especially American ones where you were castigated for not following the method to the letter, I might find the approach useful going forward but honestly, had I turfed out every x, y,z into a pile I'd never have got over it, and anyway it is useful to have more than one of things, such as sellotape and scissors, and on some of the groups, people were bemoaning having thrown away hand sanitiser cos they had more than one back when lockdown started
Only touch it once, I learned that the decluttering I have managed was so much easier when I'd made room to sort things out. Paralysing to think that you had to make a split-second decision, so you end up keeping, often sleeping on it or even delaying thinking about it for some time brought sensible decisions.
Use the store as your storage, well that went down well when lockdown kicked in, didn't it, take into account that maybe you don't want or are not able to pop out every time you need something, maybe replace with run things down and keep less, also can you replace it easily, well yes now I can, but when I'm a pensioner will I be able to, maybe not, but, would I need to replace it then or can I just look for a replacement on the free pages, do they ever come up on there, if yes, there's a couple every week, ok; if no, think again and postpone the decision
Good luck and don't listen to those who peddle an easy fix, cos there isn't one, and let us know how it goes
