Decluttering: It's Like a Diet for Your Home

Our hall closet...decluttered

Earlier this summer, I was inspired to take a challenge that a friend of mine posted about on facebook called "40 Bags in 40 Days".  The idea is that each day you clean out an area of your house (a room or closet or even something smaller like a kitchen cabinet) and then try to get rid of approximately one bag of stuff every day. It's not meant to be exact, you might have 2 bags one day and a half a bag on another, but in the end it's the idea of decluttering and getting rid of a ton of junk we really don't need.

And even though I'm terrible about the daily chores like laundry and dishes, I loved getting to do this challenge! There's something about getting rid of the clutter that just feels good. It's like a diet for your house...or maybe more like liposuction...and it feels great to get rid of the extra weight! And so quickly, too!

My friend Pam continues to be an inspiration to me in this whole area.  I still remember something she shared with me over 8 years ago at a ladies retreat: she told me how she had all these different fabrics that she was storing in case she would need them someday. But she realized it made more sense to get rid of them, clear up all that space, and then if she truly did need some fabric for something down the road she could just go buy the one she actually needed.  So smart.  A few months ago I was at her house and it was so nice how her garage was mostly bare with just some neatly organized shelves. I loved the lack of clutter, and the best part is that getting rid of things made more room for people.

I think most are like me in that we love that serene feeling of an uncluttered house.  
So why is it that we don't all just get rid of all the stuff so we can have that same kind of peaceful simplicity?

I think one reason is, as my dad would say, stinkin' thinkin'.  I really do think that many of us have ingrained in our minds this idea that keeping our stuff is the right thing to do...because after all, "I may need it someday." So instead of getting rid of the fondue pot we never use and the exercise bike that we hang our clothes on, we keep them. Why do we do this?  In all fairness, I think our motives are right in that we want to be thrifty and not wasteful. But holding on to excessive amounts of stuff that just sits there isn't really thrifty. And at least in my experience, it often times ends up being wasteful. Even if we have that item we need somewhere in the piles, we usually can't find it so we go out and buy another one. Besides that, stuff that just sits in storage can end up getting damaged by things like water, mice, bugs, etc. and even if it stays in good condition, how useful is an old Sony Walkman or clothes from a decade ago?  It just doesn't make sense. But if we get rid of the extra things we don't use while they're still useful, well, that makes sense. We can have a garage sale, sell it on craigslist, give it to someone who needs it or donate it to Goodwill.  

But even if keeping all our stuff isn't saving us money like we hoped, at least it isn't costing us, right?  I mean, after all, we really might need those things someday and it's not like we have to pay a fee to store our belongings in our own house, right?

Actually, it does cost us.  Not only do we miss out on being able to sell or give away these items, but clutter has a pretty high price tag in our day to day lives.  I know from my own experience.

My desk...cluttered (I still need to get to this)

Clutter creates stress.  Having an avalanche of sippy cups coming at your face when you reach into the cabinet, rummaging through drawers looking for one of the "good" knives, digging through legions of coupons to find that one you know is in there somewhere, these are all things that come with clutter. Now unless you find it therapeutic to extract clothes from a jam-packed dresser drawer or to search the house from top to bottom looking for a pair of scissors, most of us would agree that clutter causes a certain amount of stress, especially when we're in a time crunch. And when we let those little stresses get to us, our families are also the ones who suffer from our irritability. When I'm surrounded by clutter, my mind doesn't feel freed up. When I look around the house and I see toys spilling over, stacks of mail on the counter, junk everywhere, it affects my mood.  Maybe it shouldn't, but it does. There's no denying it, an uncluttered house helps my mind to feel that way, too. I'm not trying to overstate things, I just have experienced how clutter plays a very real role in my clarity of thought and peace of mind.

Clutter makes more work. The more stuff we have in our homes, the more time and energy it takes to store and upkeep.  It's kind of like owning land, the more you have, the more you have to take care of and manage.  Wouldn't it be nice to not have to hunt for the unexpired Tylenol in the medicine jungle?  Or to be able to gently pull a set of sheets from the linen closet without having to brace the rest of the shelf to do so?  Eliminating these little battles gives us more time for more important things...like spending time with our families. I'm convinced that our kids would rather have less stuff and more of us.

Clutter causes us to miss out. We miss out on being able to use and enjoy many of our belongings because they're buried under other things. For example, our bathroom counter had really piled up with all kinds of stuff (I even found tires from a Lego car set on there) but when I cleaned it all up, it was so wonderful...peaceful even. All that time, I didn't really appreciate what I had because it was covered in clutter. We also miss out on being able to bless others with our extra stuff (and just so you know, I'm preaching to myself on this...I'm sure I still have much more that I should give away).

I know there are many other things that could be said on the subject, especially since I didn't even touch on the whole aspect of keeping things for sentimental reasons...that might be a part 2...but there really is so much to gain from letting go. It lowers our stress and frees up time and energy for more important things than things. And I'm not sure you can even put a price on what it does for our sanity. 

Sometimes we're so afraid to let go. We're afraid of finding ourselves in that tragic situation of needing the very thing we just got rid of.  But the real tragedy is holding on to all this extra stuff, only to find that we missed out on the sanity and joy that we could have had by releasing it.  All the extra baggage around us just weighs us down. I've come to the conclusion that my clutter costs me more than it's worth.  And there's a lot to gain if we can just let it go...(thank you, Elsa!)

-Rachel :-)