As you might have read in the top right corner of this blog, we moved three times in four years. That was eight years ago, but the memories are still fresh….ugh! It makes me tired just thinking about it.

But there was something good to come out of it. When you move, you’re forced to go through all of your things and get rid of anything you don’t use anymore in order to reduce the number of things you’re going to have to pack, move and unpack. So you end up in new decluttered digs, and it feels good!

That said, the converse is also true. When you don’t move for a long time, it’s very easy to let the number of your belongings increase, slowly and quietly, until you start tripping on things, or you run out of room in closets, or you just start to feel kind of cramped in your home. That’s how you know it’s time to move again.

Of course, you probably like where you live and don’t want to move. No worries! What I’m talking about is pretending that you have to move. What would you take with? What would you get rid of?

Once you really get into this act of imagination, you’ll start to realize how much stuff has been building up around your home. Use the insight created by your pretend move to give up items you don’t use anymore. Then enjoy the extra space that’s created in your home.

Do this every year or so, and if or when you do actually move again, it will be a much easier experience than what we went through years ago. Just the mere memory of those days revs up my declutter meter and I start assembling boxes to donate to Goodwill.