I don’t know about you, but we are constantly accumulating more clutter that needs to be dealt with. And as organization is a recurring goal at start of the new year, let’s talk decluttering. (‘Cause it’s silly to organize clutter! Better to get rid of the excess first and only organize the stuff you truly use/love.)
Read About It
A couple of book options, if you want to read about decluttering, are Organizing from the Inside Out and The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
I love Organizing from the Inside Out and can’t recommend it highly enough! If you can’t afford a new copy, you can probably find it in the library or get your hands on an inexpensive used copy. (The older edition is the one I have; it’s sufficient.) It talks about both practical and mental roadblocks to organization, and it gives some very concrete tools to complete the whole organizational process.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is one I reviewed a while back. I thought it had some really interesting things to say, but I wouldn’t recommend you run out and buy it, because I’m not sure it’s particularly useful as a whole. The method the author suggests is getting everything in your house — yes, everything — out and organizing all of it at one time, in a single day. I just don’t think that translates well to American culture and lifestyle, and if most of us tried that we would not only still have a disaster area for a house at the end of the day, we’d be totally burned out and not have any energy left to finish the job!
Which brings me to my next point: there are lots of decluttering tips, tricks, and principles out there. But we all think and work differently, so use whatever works for you and choose to be okay with ignoring the rest. If taking everything in a space out at once and taking care of it all at one shot is what works well for you, do it! If that overwhelms you and you need to do one shelf, drawer, etc. at a time — do that!
Asking Questions
One thing we can all agree on is that there need to be some criteria for determining what to keep. (That’s a subtle distinction pointed out in The Life-Changing Magic… that I thought was quite insightful. For most people, it’s probably more effective to think in terms of what to keep rather than what to get rid of. Because psychologically, we don’t want to get rid of anything useful. But we might not feel compelled to keep the thing.)
You might want to look around and see what lists other people have used, but you’ll probably want to tweak something a little to make it your own. It will likely include questions similar to this:
- Do I (or does some other member of my family) use this regularly? (“Regularly” may vary based on the item, too. “Regularly” using ice skates probably isn’t the same thing as “regularly” using a coffeepot.)
- Do I (or the relevant other family member) love this?
- Does it need work to be functional again? And if so…
- Am I actually going to do the work (or hire it out) or am I just deceiving myself?
- Could this be readily replaced if I ever did actually need it?
If you want to join me in getting rid of some of the excess “stuff” this year, you might want to consider one of these challenges, each of which breaks things down into more manageable steps.
31 Days to Declutter
Keeper of the Home’s 8 Weeks to a Less Cluttered Home
2015 Declutter Calendar (15-minute daily missions all year long)
If you know of a different declutter challenge, please share it in the comments! The time frame that’s a good fit for one person might not be the best for her neighbor, and vice versa.
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