Tag Archives: how to declutter

How to Find Your ACL (Acceptable Clutter Level)

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

One decluttering expert believes your rooms should be empty of everything except things you use on a daily basis; another thinks you should only keep the items that make you happy. Who’s right? No one.

The fact is that we’re all different. One person’s decluttered home is another person’s nightmare, feeling either too empty or still too full. So how do you determine what is an Acceptable Clutter Level (ACL) for you?

The easiest way is to take a favorite room of your house, perhaps your living room or den, and strip it down to the bare essentials: a place to sit, a light source and one entertainment item, like a television, laptop or Bluetooth speaker. Remove all artwork from the walls. Then spend time in that room and see how you feel. Spend more than an hour; spend a few evenings. Soon you’ll know what more is needed in that room, if anything, to make you comfortable.

Years ago, we rented a cottage for a family vacation. The cottage had a small living area which was filled with a kitchen table and chairs; no sofa. We nearly went crazy that week trying to live without a sofa. We’d sit on the chairs, we’d sit on the beds, we’d sit on the floor….nothing felt right. Our kids did just fine without a sofa, but we were suffering. That’s when we learned we had to have a sofa to be comfortable.

If you go to realtor.com, you’ll find that many people who have put their homes on the market these days have stripped them of most personal effects in an effort to make their homes look cleaner and larger, and to allow potential buyers to picture themselves living in them. This makes sense when you want to sell, but for some people, it will make sense for their current home. They’ll enjoy that uncluttered look on a daily basis.

Others need to have many personal items around them to be comfortable. You may be one of them. In that case, you’ll want to start with a stripped room and then begin adding items to the room that make the room feel more comfy without feeling too cluttered. Add a few things and then live with the room that way for a day or two; you’ll soon know whether you need more stuff (or less) in that room.

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!)

Finding the Motivation to Declutter

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

Decluttering cannot be a one-time event. If you’re not careful, your stuff will quietly multiply when you’re not paying attention, and before long you’ll be back where you started. So you must be diligent about not acquiring new items without throwing out a few things in exchange so you can keep your decluttering equilibrium.

Of course, you also have to be careful that you remain motivated to live the decluttered life. Personally, I find that there’s a tipping point, when the closets are getting a little too crowded, or the cupboards are, and then I start thinking about setting aside time to weed out my possessions again.

Recently I experienced a motivation to declutter that I wasn’t expecting. I bought several bags of potting soil so I could re-pot some plants. I backed out the car so I could get to every spare pot, and brought in other pots that were left in the yard. I wanted to see every pot I had so I could pick the best ones for the task.

Wow, had I amassed a lot of pots over the past few years! Once I found them all and got them into one place, I saw that I had far more than I needed. So I chose the best to use, saved a few empty hanging pots in case mine break (I’ve found them to be fragile), and I threw the rest in the recycler.

Did that ever feel good! And the sight of the garden corner of the garage all clean and organized instead of being full of stacked plastic pots so inspired me that I am now motivated to start going through the house and finding things I no longer need or use so the house can go back to being as uncluttered as it was when we moved in.

You just never know where you’ll find the motivation to declutter again!

An Indispensable Decluttering Tool

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

Some people find decluttering to be easy, but I’m not one of them. For me, decluttering is a challenging process that requires me to be in a certain frame of mind. It also requires the use of my car.

Yes, my car. You see, once I make the decision to get rid of something I’m not using anymore, I need to put it where I can’t see it, and get it out of the house as soon as possible.

It doesn’t matter what the item is. Even though I’m not using it anymore (or maybe it’s a gift I never used at all), if I keep seeing it, I’ll start thinking that I might use it someday, or that one of my kids (all adults living on their own) might want it, and then I’ll want to keep the item. This is not a good thing.

So when I declutter (as I’m about to do shortly to my basement), I take whatever I’m not using anymore and I put it in a box. I keep doing this until the box is full, and then I put the box in the trunk of my car, which is usually parked in my garage. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

And at some point, I’ll either finish decluttering or I’ll fill the trunk, and then it will be time to drive over to the local Goodwill or another thrift store that lets me drive up and drop off donations straight from my car. Before I know it, my trunk is empty and I can be on my way.

Some people might think this sounds silly, but for me, removing the items once I make the decision to give them up is very important, because I know me, and I can’t be trusted not to change my mind. (But once the items are gone, I very seldom regret giving them up!)