Hi, welcome back to “Freedom February – Letting Go of Big Stuff Clutter.”
Before we get to 5 Big Stuff Clutter categories, let’s pause for a moment.
No, we are not procrastinating! We need to gather our thoughts and gear up for a clutter clearing adventure of a lifetime.
We cannot go on an emotional adventure without mentally preparing ourselves.
De-cluttering is hard work, especially since we have loved our clutter for a really long time.
Hmm…maybe loved is the wrong word? Perhaps tolerated or comfortable are better words?
In order to free ourselves from clutter, we have to be ruthless and strong. We cannot be tolerable or comfortable.
Before we make decisions, we need to determine why we have clutter in our lives.
Clutter does not grow on trees. – Shelley Krupa
Tolerating or being comfortable with status quo of our stuff, prohibits us from seeing items as clutter.
During our lifetime, we organize and rearrange our stuff multiple times. Be it just starting out in life, getting married, having kids, changing jobs, losing loved ones, you name it, we set ourselves up for accumulating clutter at every life event.
Life events lead us down the tolerating or being comfortable not dealing with clutter path. When we take that path, we simply lose track of how much has accumulated along the way.
We all have a box or two stored somewhere. Often times with little recollection of what is in it or why we stored it in the first place? Why do boxes like that still reside in our homes?
We did organize the stuff into a nice box at some point in time. We clutter bugs love to organize items into cute little containers making items legitimate.
Cubby containers cause cantankerous copious clutter. – Shelley Krupa
Enough already! It is time to stop tolerating or being comfortable with our clutter. Organizing before reducing items contributes to our clutter.
Hot tip: Do not decide how to store stuff until you have reduced the number of items to purposeful amounts. Always gather like items together in a pile before sorting. You must be able to see the sheer volume of what you have accumulated in each category to see it as clutter. Seeing is believing.
Ready to no longer tolerate or be comfortable with clutter? YES!! Now that we know why it has accumulated, we are ready to divide and conquer as we touch every item in our house.
The easy hitters are the Top 5 Big Stuff Clutter categories:
- Papers and anything to do with handling them, including pens and pencils
- Books, magazines, or anything you read
- Clothing; self-explanatory, aka, anything you wear or physically put on
- Broken items or unfinished projects, aka, junk
- Memorabilia – save this category until last! Keep a box handy to toss this stuff in as you go along. Sort at the very end of the process.
Use the 6 P’s to determine an item’s purpose in your life:
- Practical (is it?)
- Permanent (do I have to keep it indefinitely or use regularly?)
- Pending (do I have to do something with this or not?)
- Producing (does this help me on a regular basis?)
- Preventative (do I need this just in case?)
- Precious (would I grab this if the house was on fire…?)
Good graycious, I confess, clutter has accumulated in my life after decades of tolerating and being comfortable with it. 31 unusable writing utensils had blended into the background of my desk. I had no clue they didn’t work. (I’m not sh***ing you!) I’m absolutely convinced sorting into like categories and reduction of accumulation of multiples are paramount in the process of de-cluttering. The impact is immediate and rewarding to say the least!
I’d love to hear your tips for de-cluttering? Oh, and yes, come back soon! More confessions to come…
