Author Archives: Claire

About Claire

I’m a writer, declutterer, and lover of fabric, furniture and books (oh, and my laptop!) I especially like to write about decluttering and debt-free living.

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.

Taking Control of Your Clutter is Not Merely a Fantasy

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Simpler Living Tagged , ,

Clutter:

Gets in your way.

Takes up time that you’d rather spend on other things.

Distracts you when you’re trying to get something done.

Lurks in your mind even when you can’t see it.

Displaces more important things in your house and your mind.

This is true of digital clutter as well as physical clutter. When I took my digital vacation a few months ago, I was able to focus more on reading and on thinking as well as working with my hands. I wasn’t a slave to a device; it no longer controlled me. The physical comparison would be how rearranging your clutter around your house controls your actions and keeps you from doing other things because all that clutter is in your way.

I’m old enough that taking a break from devices lets me go back to the way I used to be, before the Internet. But younger people don’t know what life was like before the Internet. Their reality is a life of being controlled by devices, and I mean controlled. Take a look at this article by a man who visits England every summer and purposely takes the long way home in the form of seven days on the Queen Mary, where it’s too hard to access the Internet.

He loves the break from being online. He loves being able to think, or read, or just sit. But as he nears the U.S., and Internet access becomes available again, his smartphone sucks him back online like an octopus pulling him under the ocean. Once again, he loses control of his actions.

Like physical clutter, digital clutter must be conquered if you ever want to get your life back…..or enjoy having a life for the first time in memory. Am I the only one who thinks the headline of this article, “The Fantasy of Being Disconnected,” is tragic? The author is a person who is completely controlled by digital clutter.

Female Susceptibility to Clutter

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

For me, this time of year always brings back fond memories of going to (or back to) college. That first year, I think I brought everything but the kitchen sink with me: clothes, books, plants, sewing machine, stereo with large speakers, bedding…you name it. Then once I got settled in, I bought more items to personalize my half of one small and very overcrowded dorm room.

After a few semesters, I became part of the crew that helped students move in every August, and I learned what the rest of the crew already knew: the girls brought far more stuff than the guys. Most of the guys didn’t even need help getting their belongings into the elevator and up to their room. But the girls….a few arrived in two cars because one car could not hold all of their belongings. I was fortunate that my father owned a large van, so I brought everything I wanted with room to spare.

I’m old enough (and have raised enough children) to know that no matter what society says, women and men are wired differently. My girls always liked their bedrooms well-decorated in their taste so they’d be comfortable. Meanwhile, my boys were comfortable as long as there was a bed to flop on.

Women tend to put more importance on feathering their nests than men do, and this brings with it the danger of having too many things and being unable to find places for it all. This was true of me for most of my life. Even after what we went through during our downsizing, I still have to police myself to make sure I don’t start keeping too much again. I’ve been learning how wonderful simplicity can be, and how nice something lovely looks when it’s not crowded by lots of other things that aren’t nearly as lovely.

So instead of covering every inch of available wall space with posters and mementos as I did in my first dorm room, I now have a large beautiful quilt and two small framed items on the wall of my sewing room. Photos of potential future projects are found in my files and on my Pinterest page instead of being crowded onto a bulletin board on another wall.

I suspect the female propensity for feathering the nest explains why most “decluttering experts” are women. We understand that need we have for creating a comfortable and inviting environment, and how easily it can get out of control, and why.