Monthly Archives: September 2019

My Favorite Decluttering Quotes

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

Ever since decluttering became a popular trend, it seems like nearly everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. As a result, there are a lot of great quotes and memes floating around the Internet relating to decluttering. Here are some of my favorites, and the last one is the best:

The more things you own, the more they own you. Anonymous

Clutter is the result of delayed decisions. Anonymous

Perfectionism is often an excuse for procrastination. Paul Graham

You can’t reach for anything new if your hands are still full of yesterday’s junk. Louise Smith

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go. Anonymous

The more you have, the more you dust! Robin Bastian

Storage experts are hoarders. Marie Kondo

If you don’t love it or use it, it’s clutter. Anonymous

Your home is living space, not storage space. Francine Jay

Happiness is a place between too little and too much. Finnish proverb

“Later” is the best friend of clutter. Peter Walsh

Collect moments, not things. Anonymous

Finally, my very favorite decluttering quote, words for a declutterer to live by, is:

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. William Morris

Clutter Makes Me Hate This Chore Even More Than I Already Do

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

Do you have a least-favorite chore?

I like to cook, don’t mind doing laundry, and will even vacuum if I have to. But wow, do I ever hate dusting.

Why do I hate dusting? Well, it’s boring, and once I do it, the furniture only looks nice for a day or two and then dust starts collecting again.

Not that I don’t appreciate a freshly dusted and polished surface, because I do. I just don’t like getting it to that point and having it last only a brief time.

So I often procrastinate about dusting, and that’s bad enough, but I daily procrastinate about dusting when the surfaces around my home have collected clutter.

Perhaps one of us recently celebrated a birthday, so there are cards on the bookshelves, each one requiring that I move it before I can dust each shelf. Bleah! ( as Snoopy would say.)

Or maybe someone has been really busy lately and has allowed extra reading material to build up all over the end table next to her favorite chair (can’t imagine who that would be!) I figure, since the table is covered with stuff, the dust can’t get under it anyways, so why bother? But once the frustration of not having a place to set a coffee cup kicks in, dusting (after decluttering) the end table goes back on the to-do list.

You see, the decluttering part is what really drags out the whole process. When I make the effort to keep surfaces clear, I sometimes get an urge to quickly swipe a dust cloth over a surface. But when the surface is cluttered, the only urge I get is to pretend I don’t notice what a mess it has become.

Whittling Down the Wardrobe

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

Some areas of clutter are easier to conquer than others. For me, keeping my wardrobe under control is a challenge, so I tend to put off doing so until my closet becomes too crowded. It has now reached that level, so it’s time to go through my clothes again.

This gets complicated. We have very definite changes of season where I live, so there are summer clothes and winter clothes to be gone through as well several seasonally transitional items.

To make matters worse, like many women I have three sizes of clothes in my possession: tight clothes, clothes that fit fine and larger clothes for when I overdo it.

I’ve learned over time that the best way to start getting rid of clothes is to first find and pull all of those that have seen better days. I have tops that I love but that are looking pretty worn, to the point that I don’t wear them when I leave the house. There’s no reason to keep them all except that I’m sentimentally attached to them, and if you’ve read my latest book, you know that is not a good reason to keep things. So out they go!

I’ve also learned to keep the highest quality clothes that I like, as well as those I love. It’s been a while since I’ve seen well-made clothes out of good material in stores, so I will hang onto anything I like that is good quality because it will keep its shape and last longer than most other clothes I own.

Sometimes I have to pretend I’m someone else when I’m assessing the condition of each item; this helps me bypass my innate sentimentality in favor of the part of me that adores well-made things.

I make a yearly effort to go through all of my clothes because I live in a small house with small closets and limited storage space. My reward will be that great feeling I’ll get when I go through my closet and drawers to find that everything is neatly arranged and nothing is squashed in. Know what I mean?

A Future Decluttering Trend? Taking Control of Digital Clutter

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

Last time I wrote about a man who is completely controlled by digital clutter. He loves having a break from it, but when that break is over, he allows his smartphone to take control of him again.

There is a cure for this: it’s called digital detox. It’s very similar to decluttering your house, except instead of getting rid of all of your digital clutter, you learn to control it, keep only what you need, and to escape it whenever you feel the need.

Given the fact that so many people are addicted to their smartphones, I think the potential market for digital decluttering is even larger than the currently popular market for decluttering your home. Once people taste freedom, whether it’s being able to move about their homes freely, or going through life without the tyranny of checking their phone constantly, they find that they want more.

Like detoxing from other bad habits, there can be some negative emotions at first, like cravings and anxiety. But those who make it through are usually pretty happy they stuck with the detoxing program.

One challenge is that modern life makes it very hard to live without going online. Our bank accounts are there, people pay their bills there, they socialize there. How do you give all that up?

Like decluttering your home, decluttering your digital clutter does not mean getting rid of everything. Instead, you make choices. You choose to keep only what’s most important while weeding out the unnecessary clutter. Keeping up with work emails and phone calls is essential; keeping up with your high school classmates’ latest political diatribes on Facebook is not. When you choose to get rid of unneeded clutter, physical or digital, you leave room for the most important things, and also extra room in your home, or your life.