Decluttering
December 10th, 2007Decluttering
Photo by Basail
Until recently, I would proudly declare, whenever the subject came up, that clutter wasn’t a problem for me. It didn’t bother me. It made no difference to me whether the clothes were put away in the closet or strewn about the floor. I scoffed at people who hired professional organizers and laugh at anyone crazy enough to pay the ridiculous prices for California Closets (admittedly, I still do think their prices are outrageous for a product that is a relatively simple DIY project.)
For a while, my husband and I were paying someone to clean our house. Once a week we would come home to a nearly spotless home. Anything that had been laying around was put away and it did make a huge difference. There was a sense of calm walking into the house and knowing that it was clean and decluttered.
For financial reasons, we decided that we no longer wanted to pay a cleaning service to tidy up after us. That left my husband and I with a long list of cleaning chores every weekend, most of which never were accomplished.
I started getting up early and taking on one task every morning. Vacuuming was the only thing that was reserved for weekends because I didn’t want to wake up our toddler.
In the transition from being unbothered by clutter to a healthy appreciation of a clean and ordered house, I learned a few things along the way:
Don’t refuse to clean something up just because the mess isn’t your “fault”
I started off this way – leaving dirty dishes in the sink because they weren’t mind. However, I found that when I started cleaning up everything in the kitchen, my husband was much more likely to put his dishes away so as to not ruin the clean kitchen. Everyone won.
Start small.
Some mornings all that would get done is a cursory cleanup of our bathroom. Though I might have loftier goals, every little bit makes a difference and leaves less to do later.
Constantly be cleaning and decluttering.
One of my goals was that the kitchen and bathroom counters would be clutter-free. Anytime I walk through the kitchen or bathroom, I put away whatever is sitting out. Now, ideally, things wouldn’t have been left out in the first place, but this goes back to the first point – don’t assign blame, just clean it up.
Be ruthless when getting rid of things you don’t use or need.
I find this one to be especially hard when it comes to clothing. I’m scared to get rid of items that are the wrong size, because you just never know when you’ll put (or lose) a pound or two. Then there are the items with large sentimental values (the Hawaiian shirt I wore to my high school graduation is a prime example, especially considering I’ve sworn never to wear that awful shirt in public again) that tend to survive every attempt at purging.
I find that it’s easiest to get rid of things in one fell swoop. If I try to get rid of a few items at a time I may have too much time to reconsider. But try to find things a new home – Goodwill, craigslist, acquaintances that might find things to be of good use.
Remember the sense of calm that comes with declutter and cleaning.
Really, I never thought that I’d be one to say this, but having things put away really does make a huge difference in your mental state.
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