Don’t you feel lighter when you have less stuff around? I know I do. If I have too many things clogging my space, my mind feels cluttered. Then I have a hard time focusing, which means I can’t write.
So I’ve decided to start on my purge early this year. I’m purging clothes, lighting fixtures, furniture, and books among other things. The problem is I’m not the selling type. I’m the mail it to people I know or drop it off at the thrift store type.
The biggest problem for me is setting aside the time to actually do it. I always feel like I have to make extra special concessions to get this stuff out of my place. It’s definitely a process. I have to get my head right, make a plan, and drag the stuff down to my car. I’ve had a bag of junk, er stuff sitting in my trunk for the last month and I have no idea why.
A new revelation – no more stuff.
I have this horrible habit of collecting things and then stuffing them into random spaces I almost never visit, like cabinets, drawers, or parts of my closet. It’s the whole out of sight, out of mind thing. Hoarding tendencies I suppose. I no longer have the luxury of keeping the stuff I don’t use because things are looking rather cluttered.
Here’s what I’ve heard you should do if you’re interested in purging:
- If you have more than one item, keep the best one and get rid of the others.
- If you no longer fit into a piece of clothing, it’s time to let it go. This is the hardest one for me because I have a lot of clothes that I love and I’m just not ready to let them go yet. Maybe you are?
- Go paperless by scanning everything. Have you all seen Try Neat? I don’t have one, but I do have the VuPoint Scanning Wand. I’ve used it to scan my magazine clips collection and it is amazing. My intention with this gadget has been to scan all of my bills and important papers, but it’s been a year since I entertained the idea and I have yet to start.
- If you’re still using CD’s, it’s time to get an MP3 player. Seriously.
- Organize your junk drawers. I do this like once a year.
- If you have kids, go through their toys. Are any of them broken? If so, toss. Have they outgrown them? Perhaps give them away. There are so many toys in my home that it feels like a toy store. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good or bad thing. I am also trying to figure out a way to organize the toys. Check out this blog post by Rachel Meeks about how to declutter toys.
- Only buy furniture that works with your space. I wish I had burned this into my brain when we first moved in. We brought way too many pieces from our old apartment, but I spent good money on them and didn’t want to let them go. I now realize how ridiculous that was. In the last three years, I’ve slowly gotten rid of a lot of our huge pieces of furniture, but I still have some that I can’t bare to part with. They sit in the back of my closet, but now that the clutter is building up, I think it’s time to get rid of those pieces too. It’s so sad because they are so beautiful.
- And the best idea I’ve heard about purging, stop buying new stuff.
Here’s a great article by Peter Walsh about how to declutter: “5 Steps to Kick-start your Clutter Cleaning.”
Good luck all!
