Flylady says, when it comes to decluttering, if you don’t use it or love it, get rid of it. I’ve been thinking about this over the last few days as I go through some boxes of “miscellaneous” stuff upstairs. And it has occurred to me that, with the exception of a few things my sister has given us for Christmas (bless her heart, she’s been gradually decorating our living room via Christmas gifts), I don’t have anything in my house that I “love.” (Obviously, I’m talking “stuff” here – of course I love my family!)
I have never chosen a piece of furniture, ever. (In fact, we’ve never even bought furniture, apart from some of that melamine discount furniture stuff in the form of a couple of bookcases and functional-but-ugly computer desks. There is a praise in this, definitely! We’ve been given a lot of furniture. But much of it isn’t what I would have chosen, and a few things I just flat-out don’t like.)
I’ve picked a paint color once – for my daughter’s bedroom that was painted for little more than a year before we had to paint over it so this house could (theoretically) sell. I’ve never chosen a picture for the wall. The curtains here aren’t even ours! I don’t even have any clothing that I bought because I just loved it. (I don’t think I could even drive the last time I bought a garment because I “fell in love with” it.)
No wonder I have a hard time getting excited about taking care of my house, or even getting dressed in the mornings! I’m not really sure how to fix this, but I’m thinking it is something that I need to fix. Not that I need to replace everything we own or something, but I need to have something around me that makes my day.
I got into a big decluttering kick and realized pretty much the same thing. We had a lot of hand-me-down stuff (especially furniture) and a lot of things we bought thinking only of bare minimum function and cheapness.
As much as I like being frugal, I love beautiful things — not necessarily expensive things, but definitely beautiful things. So, I’ve made a deal with myself; I can spend more for nice things so long as they are what I really want and I don’t buy lots of ‘compromise’ stuff that I only sort of like but settle on anyhow. Maybe for some people it would promote all sorts of spending, but actually I think my husband and I have saved money because we buy less stuff, it lasts longer, and we don’t have to keep replacing a lot of stuff
If you’re looking for a place to start, I recommend redecorating your bathroom.
That’s exactly it, Meg: what items we have bought ourselves, we’ve bought with pure functionality in mind, and you’re right, it ultimately means it all eventually has to be replaced. Better (when possible) to buy what we like in the first place!
I believe that it is really important to love/like the things around you. You are correct, if you don’t like them then why bother getting up, cleaning up, functioning at a peek performance? What’s the point? There has to be a reason, we as humans, often find that our reason for doing something involves our pride, our ego. If we love something, work, house, body, book, career, hobby; we will put time and effort into it.