Simplifying your Life: Tips for Decluttering

Creating a clear and open space has become really valuable for me in my search for a simple, balanced life. Stuff can hold us in the past or keep us stuck in dreams of the distant future, and regular de-cluttering sessions has helped me to surround myself with only the things which are useful and applicable to my life now, enabling me to more fully embrace the present.

De-cluttering is a journey, which takes a lot more time and emotional energy than one would initially suspect, but it is a really valuable way to clear your literal and metaphorical space in order to live with purpose and clarity.

Here are a few tips which I have found useful in my own journey towards living without clutter:

1. Start Small

Start with one drawer or room. Going through your house can be done on a routine basis, and is a relatively simple part of life if it's done on a small scale. While larger de-cluttering sessions are sometimes in order, if you start small, you will be able to be more intentional. De-cluttering guru Peter Walsh suggests filling 2 garbage bags a day: one for garbage and one for give away. He says that after a week, you will notice a difference and after two weeks, everyone will notice a difference. Even if one day, you just do surface stuff, that's huge! You'll get through everything in due time.

2. Follow Through
It's easy to designate items for charity, Aunt Judy, or to sell at a pawn shop...it's another thing to follow through. I sometimes have boxes that I've planned to give away sitting around for months...and this defeats the purpose of de-cluttering! Sometimes it's valuable to keep an item that you are not sure about getting rid of for a specific period of time, say six months, and then check back to see if you've used it by then. But in most cases, once you've designated an item for a locale other than your home, get it there as soon as possible.

3. Get Rid of Things which are No Longer Pertinent to your Life
We tend to keep things around much longer than they are useful to our lives, and in many cases, this clutter can keep us from living fully in the present. It can be really tough to let go of some things which we have strong emotional ties to, but if these emotions are not positive ones, really question as to why you are still holding onto these objects. Letting go of these sorts of items can be difficult, but incredibly liberating once it's completed!

4. Get Rid of Items that are Unrealistic to your Life Right Now
Another major type of clutter that people tend to keep is that which represents the person we aspire to be: the treadmill which we never use, the basket of clothes two sizes too small, the musical instrument that we never practice. If you really want to give these aspirations a second shot, give yourself a timeline by which you will run again, lose that weight, or play that instrument. It's ok that you spent a lot of money on something that you didn't end up using...this happens to all of us. But keeping that item will probably only make you feel more guilty for that purchase, rather than inspire you to end up using it one day. Be really honest with yourself, and if you can't see yourself using that item in that frame of time, let it go to embrace who you are today, rather than striving to attain something that isn't you right now.

De-cluttering is a journey that I am really passionate about, so I'm sure that I will post again on this topic, but I hope that these ideas will give you a good start to the liberating experience of gaining control of clutter.

photo courtesy of thekitchendesigner.org's photostream