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I’ve always had trouble decluttering. It’s been a long-held but ever-elusive dream of mine to Marie Kondo the crap out of my crap (to use the correct terminology). It just always seems to not only slip through my fingers, but point and laugh at me from far away, safe in the knowledge I’ll never catch it.
Where does this all stem from? Well, I have a tendency to think that I’ll need that ill fitting dress I didn’t buy in a style that doesn’t at all suit me. Or a single sock, or a trinket that’s half broken from a place I can’t remember. Because what if I need it someday?
Of course, this starts in childhood (as most things do). Growing up in a lower socioeconomic bracket, we just didn’t have that much. White privilege where?! I have a dysfunctional, contradictory relationship with wealth, as my mother came from a wealthy background and my father the opposite. The tenements of Scotland, to be exact.
Not that all wealthy families don’t have their problems, but we unfortunately followed the poorer path of the two, and trust me: your problems are worse when you don’t have money.
So, you hang onto every little thing. Things that don’t make sense and ostensibly don’t matter. Because to you, they do. You don’t know when you’ll get another one of them. You may never.
You keep all the good, the bad and the ugly because you don’t know how to filter it out. Packaging stays, in fact items stay packaged as they’re “too nice to use”. These nice things slowly decay, become dust-ridden and obsolete. I remember my best friend back in high school saying I had so many nice things hidden under the other junk… and then, what’s the point in having them if you don’t use them and honour them?
There’s something to be said for this honouring of the energy of things. And also, not underestimating the power things have over us. Sometimes all these nice little things just become a big amorphous blob of stuff… and that’s when it gets icky and sticky.
I’ve been reading two books recently which have been helping me on my decluttering journey: The Joy of Less by Francine Jay (Miss Minimalist), and Create Space by Dilly Clutter (of Declutter Dollies). I started with the latter, which delves immediately into the benefits of opening up space in your home and mind — one and the same, as we know.
Something that always strikes me is the difficulty I have with putting these tips into practice (although I’m trying). Dilly talks about the need to use what we have before buying more — and I’m definitely guilty of just purchasing on my phone because I “haven’t had time to check”… when it would have taken two seconds and prevented duplicates gathering dust in my house! She also writes about how clutter affects our sleep (definitely experienced that) — and then goes into specific tips for clearing out and organising each room, checklist and all.
The Joy of Less was a book I had borrowed but hadn’t yet read (maybe because I had too many books to read…?), and then saw a recommendation on a blog. This is more of a read-through, at least in the beginning, but I find it very peaceful and meditative to move through. Once you start reading, you wonder why you’re clinging to all this stuff in the first place. It makes it easy to just see that stuff is simply that: stuff taking up precious mental and physical space.
So, I’ll continue my journey and try to bring you along for the ride, dear reader. You’ll be pleased to know Gav helped me drop off two bags at the charity bins today! Every little win is still a win.
Have you tried decluttering? What’s your trick?! Let me know below 🙂