Category Archives: Clutter

The Christmas Gift Dilemma

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , , ,

It’s that time of year again: decision-making time regarding Christmas gifts. When I was a child, opening gifts was high excitement. I want to recreate that for my grandkids.

But there are a few problems with this idea. Their folks aren’t looking for lots of new toys to trip over. One of my kids is a minimalist; two are moving next year. So they don’t want us to give their kids lots of stuff.

I understand, and if our grandkids were older, I’d have no problem giving them gift cards. But I really enjoy watching the littles open their gifts, and seeing how excited they get. I know from experience that there are only so many years that they show that excitement. Before long they reach the teen years, when you can’t even get them out of bed on Christmas morning.

So I’m torn. To complicate things, many popular toys are in short supply this year. Apparently an awful lot of them are sitting in shipping containers in the waters just west of California. I don’t want to buy my grandkids just any old thing so they can open something. I want it to be something they will love. I don’t want to clutter up my kids’ homes, but it’s more important to me to make my grandkids happy.

I suspect I’m not the only person grappling with this dilemma.

The Plague of Fast Fashion

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

It saddens me to think that young people (maybe you’re one of them) have zero experience with high-quality fashion. Fast fashion has been around long enough now that many young people are only familiar with clothes that look funny after the first wash. They’ve known nothing but shirts that spring tiny holes in them fairly soon after wearing, or skirts or slacks that quickly pill in the lap and thigh areas.

But this used to be unheard of. Our parents and grandparents grew up with quality clothes made out of sturdy fabrics, and they were taught to take care of their clothes, because unless they were wealthy, they didn’t have too many. Now people have closets-full, and Instagram influencers make their living by persuading people that once you’ve worn something, you should move on to the next new thing, which they happen to be wearing today and that you can buy through their links.

So what happens to all those discarded clothes that either quickly went out of style, or have an odd shape or shade from being washed? Well, this article includes stunning photos of where your old clothes go.

What a waste! I’m glad to know that some of these cheap fabrics are being recycled into insulation, but it would be better if they had never wound up there in the first place. Without fast fashion, there would be no piles of unwanted clothing. They would either stay in our closets or be worn by someone who found them in a thrift shop. And they would hold up for a long time, and then they could be turned into cleaning rags.

Instead of closets overcluttered with fast fashion, we’d have closets containing fewer garments of much higher quality that we’re able to wear often. That’s why the closets in old houses are so small. People didn’t have a lot of clothes clutter; they had far fewer clothes of much higher quality. I’d like to see the world head back in that direction.

A Decluttering Fish Tale

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , ,

I think this article is supposed to be non-fiction, but I found an awful lot of fiction in it.

The author has to move in two weeks but once she hired a woman to help her, they decluttered her whole house in a day, and still had time for tea?

She kept entire boxes of things to go through after her move, even though she was moving in with her mother?

Did I mention she was moving out of a five-bedroom home where she lived with her four children whose stuff also had to be gone through?

Yep, my BS detector went rat-a-tat-tat after I read that article. As I’ve described here and in my latest book, Memoirs of a Downsized Declutterer, we spent months moving things out of our five-bedroom house, and two weeks frantically packing up the rest once we finally had a buyer. It took us two more years to go through everything we had stored in two storage units and one rental house after we left our home of nearly 20 years. So you understand why I might be a wee bit skeptical about her story.

If you find yourself in the same boat, moving on a deadline with way too much clutter to deal with, go easy on yourself. Find one or more places to store your excess possessions until you can go through them mindfully. And know that it’s not possible to do it all in one day. (But I hope you don’t take as long to do it as we did!)

A New Trend: Cautious Decluttering

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

I used to recommend getting rid of anything you don’t need or want. If it’s something you don’t want, get rid of it right away and then take your time replacing it until you find what you love.

But that was then.

Now that the supply lines are clogged up, who knows how long your wait will be. You might want to hang on to your old item, hated though it might be, until you can replace it.

Here in the U.S., we’ve been used to finding things easily, because there were always lots of sources for new goods. But now, new isn’t always easily obtainable. For instance:

  • On our furniture search, we learned that many furniture factories are running at a six-month lag, and in the case of La-Z-Boy furniture, up to a year.
  • A young couple we know of decided to buy a new camper. They just learned there’s an eight-month wait for the specific model they want.
  • An older couple we know signed the papers for their new house last February. It was supposed to be ready in August. That date has been changed to December, maybe.

Part of the joy of decluttering is getting rid of things right away and seeing the empty space that results, space you may or may not intend to refill. Now that decision is being taken away from you. If you get rid of something you need, like a sofa or a kitchen table, you may have to go without one for a while.