Tag Archives: The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering

My Book is Here!

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Good News, My Books, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , , , , ,
My first print book is now available for purchase!

The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering just came out in print for $14.95, and it’s already selling. This is so exciting for me! What a great feeling to hold my own book in my hands. Many thanks to those of you who bought the ebook; its sales numbers made my publishers decide to bring it out in print.

You can find it at Barnes & Noble, Books a Million and anywhere else books are sold. It’s also available from Amazon, though they’re charging more than retail price.

Speaking of Amazon, a reviewer there liked it, but wishes I would have addressed how to declutter when you have little children. Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to give advice on that subject. I tried decluttering many times when my kids were small, but all of my efforts ended quickly and in failure because I was just so busy dealing with everything else: the kids, the house, meals, etc. That’s how I ended up with a basement full of stuff that eventually filled two storage units. I just couldn’t find time to go through it all until I was forced to when we sold our house. By then, my kids were teens and young adults.

So you won’t find that information in my book, because I found it too hard to declutter with several children underfoot. But if, like me, you find yourself living with way too much clutter, I can show you how to get rid of most of it while keeping only your most treasured possessions. Just read my new book 🙂

My Book in Print!

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Good News, My Books, Personal, Simpler Living, Writing Tagged ,

The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering will soon be available in print! I’m so excited 🙂 E-books are great, but now I know how it feels to hold your actual, physical book in your hands and it’s wonderful!

You can hold a copy in your hands, too, just as soon as the book comes out on January 2, 2019. You can even pre-order it from Amazon, I’m told. In any case, many thanks to all of you who bought the book in eBook form; the eBook sales convinced the publisher that a print edition was needed. 

How to Use Your List to Successfully Declutter (Finally!)

By Claire Posted in Clutter, My Books, Simpler Living Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Last time I asked you to make a list of your most treasured possessions, the ones you’d hope you could take with you if your house caught fire.

This list is not a complete list of all your treasured possessions. That would be a really, really long list, because you have so very many belongings. No, this list consists of the items that first popped into your head. They make up the core of your treasured belongings.

Now, depending on how you define belongings, you may have included your spouse or partner, your kids, and your pets. Good for you: living creatures whom we love and who can love us back are always our greatest treasures.

But for decluttering purposes, we’re just going to consider things. The things on your list are what came to mind first. There’s a reason for that. They are your most treasured physical possessions.

If you couldn’t see them when you got home, you can remedy that. Putting our most treasured possessions on display where we can see them daily is important. It lifts our mood and reminds us of who we are. Go dig them out and put them where you can see and enjoy them. If you can’t find space for them, make space by removing lesser items (lesser meaning anything that didn’t make your list).

If one of the things on your list is your photo albums, you may already have them on display. But a house fire would quickly destroy them. Consider scanning them and saving them on a computer, thumb drive and even the cloud. Don’t risk losing your treasured photographs.

If your list included jewelry, wear it all the time. If it included something a late loved one left you, put it on display or use it regularly.

You may already regularly use the items on your list. That’s great!

Now, what about the items you forgot to put on your list? This is where things get sticky. Like it or not, those items were not important enough to you to come to mind during those crucial 15 minutes. I’m not saying you should get rid of all of them, but clearly, many things did not make the cut. Those items are all candidates for being moved along, given away, sold or donated unless you use them regularly.

The list you created is very telling. What it’s telling you is what’s most important to you….and what, by its absence, is not.

The list you created gives you permission to keep what’s on it, and to let go of what didn’t make the cut. It gives you guidelines of what’s really crucial to your daily life, not only in terms of use but also in terms of joy.

Of course, you can keep what’s really important to you. And you can keep things that didn’t make the list but that you use all the time. Personally, I don’t consider our cast-iron frying pan, our phone or our lawnmower to be personal treasures, but we use them all the time so we keep them. But there have been plenty of other items I’ve owned over the years that I liked, even loved, but at some point had to admit I wasn’t using anymore, so I let them go. This is how we need to look at the bulk of our possessions when we have kept too much.

If you choose to ignore the list and just go with your gut, you’ll end up where you always did when you tried to declutter in the past: overwhelmed and discouraged. But if you use the list as your guide for what to keep, and give up much of what didn’t make the list, you can finally enjoy the freedom of living in an uncluttered home, with lots of free space and no little paths through each room. Living that way is every bit as nice as you might imagine.

(Learn how to let go of possessions you’re emotionally attached to but no longer need in The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering, coming soon in print!)

Your Most Precious Treasures

By Claire Posted in Clutter, My Books, Simpler Living Tagged , , , ,

We’re getting close to Christmas, when almost everyone’s clutter load increases due to gifts given to them, and gifts they gave to themselves while they were out shopping for others. On Black Friday, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the people I know who go out that day for bargain prices on gifts come home with many things for themselves. I had to wonder how much of that stuff they really even needed.

Some people will use or wear their gifts (to themselves or from others) for a while, but many will just add them to their already overwhelmingly large group of belongings. It seems as though the people who tend to collect things are the ones who keep the most gifts, even if they don’t use them.

For those who do this, decluttering is too overwhelming to contemplate. Whenever they’ve tried, they’ve given up fairly soon in the process. Seeing how much stuff they have tucked away in closets, the attic, the basement, the garage and maybe even in storage units is just too much to think about. As for the poor souls who have so much clutter that it has spilled out all over their homes, forcing them to create paths through the piles of stuff, well, overwhelming may not be a strong enough word.

I know someone like this. When they had a cat, they would often lose it….in the house. That’s just plain scary! I would love to help this person declutter, but they would never accept my help. So I’m putting a tip out here for those of you whose homes have almost reached hoarder status, as well as for that person, should they ever stumble onto my blog.

If you really want to declutter your home, but you don’t know where to start, you need to make a list. But you can’t do it at home. You must do it away from home: at a coffee shop, in your car while parked at a scenic spot, or on the train as you commute to work. Pick a spot where you can write uninterrupted, and bring a pen and paper, your tablet, your phone, whatever you like to take notes with.

Once you’re alone, situated, and ready to write or type, make a list of your most treasured possessions:

  • Think of the things you would hope to have time to remove from your house in case of fire.
  • Think of things you use all the time, things that you would be lost without.
  • Think of things you treasure because someone you love gave them to you.

Spend 15 minutes at most working on this list, and then stop.

Almost certainly, you will come up with more things after you stop writing or typing. Don’t add them to the list. Keep the list as it was when you stopped.

When you get home, look around your house. Do you see all of the treasured possessions that you put on your list, or are some tucked away where you can’t see them? What about the things that popped into your head after you stopped making the list? Can you see them? Or are they also buried somewhere in your house?

Perhaps you’re seeing things in your house that you completely forgot when you made the list and even afterwards. No, you can’t add them to the list, but I’ll bet you wish you could. You see, your love of so many things is how you got into this mess in the first place. When you see your things, you can always think of reasons to keep them. Either you love them, or they were useful to you in the past, or you think you’ll need them in the future, or perhaps you’re saving them for someone you care about who might need them someday.

You’re attached to too many things, and that’s why you live with clutter. If it didn’t bother you, you wouldn’t have a desire to declutter your home. But it does bother you. You just don’t know how to make yourself let all these things go.

There are strategies for decluttering when you’re attached to so much stuff. I’ve explained many of them in my book, The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering.* I lived this reality when we downsized our lives and had to move from a huge house to a little one. There was no room for most of our belongings so we had to let…them…go.

As painful as it was, it was also incredibly freeing to give up so much stuff. At times, I still have to squelch the impulse to keep everything, but I remind myself how good it feels to live without clutter. Then I fill my car’s trunk with things we don’t need anymore and head over to the drive-up at Goodwill before I can change my mind. I usually forget what I donated fairly quickly.

Next time, I’ll tell you what to do with that list you made.

*Print version coming soon!