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August 26 - September 5, 2018
Would instead of should is the key. Would depends on instinct. It’s a first reaction. Should depends on reasoning. Reasoning can go on all day.
Asking would instead of should means I have to accept that my instinct, my very first thought, is okay.
Don’t stop. Don’t think. Just answer the question. Where would I look for it?
Once you’ve answered “Where would I look for it?” with your first instinct, take it to that place now. Right now. I’ll go into excruciating detail explaining why in the next chapter, but for now I’ll tell you this is the one thing that will help you make progress no matter when you get distracted from this particular decluttering project.
The thought of paying again for something I once decluttered feels ridiculously wasteful. Painfully wasteful. But what’s more wasteful? Spending three dollars to buy more glow-in-the-dark bracelets? Or paying a mortgage on a house where we can’t live comfortably because it’s so full of stuff and then paying three dollars for glow-in-the-dark bracelets when I already have some, but don’t even know I have them because they’re buried under a pile of stuff?
My attention span and my available time and my caring-whatsoever-about-this-mess are not guaranteed to exist in Later Land, so I can’t go there.
your goal is to reduce the amount of stuff in your home and the amount of overwhelm you feel so that, one day, you can handle being as green as you want to be.
Once you answer Decluttering Question #2 (If I needed this, would it ever occur to me that I already had it?) with a no, you’re done. You are finished with that item forever. It’s in the Donate Box, and you never have to touch it or think about it or make that decision again.
In Later Land, I’m more decisive, more organized, and I can totally predict the future. A box full of almost-made-but-not-made decisions means every time I see the box, I have a nagging feeling the box holds something I should have kept. Nagging feelings are great reasons to stick the box on a shelf in the garage and wait for a better time to go through it again.
Donate Box that can’t be donated is a Procrastination Station.
But if I take each individual item where it goes as soon as I answer “Where would I look for it first?” then at any point when I get distracted—not if I get distracted—whether I’ve decluttered one thing or twenty things, I’ve made progress.
in my world, they’re not Keep Boxes. They’re Procrastination Boxes, and my garage is full of them.
A Keep Box is a place to keep things I think I need. I think I need these things, but I don’t have a clue where they should go. Keep Boxes let me tell myself I’ll figure that out later. (And later is a bad word, remember?)
The beauty of the two (and only two) decluttering questions is if you answer either one, there’s no need for a Keep Box. No need whatsoever. You’re done. It’s over.
When I tackled one small space at a time, prioritizing by visibility and just decluttering instead of organizing, I began to see lasting change.
I choose the space I’m tackling for the day (or for the fifteen-minute period), and I work on that space at the expense of all other spaces. That space is my focus.
The clutter-busting strategy that seems obvious to everyone whose home isn’t always a wreck but was far from obvious to me? If I need to put something away but there’s no room, I have to take something else out to make room.
Reality: I’m going to spend the rest of my life decluttering. It’s worth the trouble even if I’m terrible at it.
If I feel like my head is going to explode while deciding whether something is worth keeping, I don’t keep it. I call it the Head Explosion Rule. No possibly-useful-but-not-actually-useful item is worth my head exploding.
It’s just not. I choose the possibility of regret over dealing with the aftermath of an exploded head.
I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve felt decluttering regret. Sometimes the regret is small; sometimes it’s big. But every single time, I have survived. I can live without stuff.
people whose homes are always clutter-free prefer living with regret over living with clutter.
thought I would eventually be done. I would reach a finish line where I had purged everything I didn’t need from my home. Those assumptions delusions made me think I had to declutter correctly. Perfectly. As a Project Person, I didn’t want to redo my work.
now know I’ll never finish decluttering. With each season of life and every season of the year, new things come into my house, and old things turn into clutter.
holding so many things dear devalues the things that are truly special memories. If a treasured memory is buried in a pile of clutter, I’m not honoring it.
The three tiny outfits I chose make me happy. The boxes and boxes of clothes that I kept for way too long and tripped over in my garage overwhelmed me. Feeling happy is better than feeling overwhelmed.
Parting with sentimental clutter is legitimately painful. But if this
stuff is keeping my family from living comfortably in our home, it needs to go.
This is my home, and I need to live in my home. If I can’t sit down for a meal at my dinner table, I’m not living. If boxes are piled up in areas where I’m embarrassed to have boxes piled up, I’m not living.
Living is sitting down. Living is moving
Living miserably, surrounded by clutter while believing you could get a lot of money if you just knew how, is not an option.
I’m overwhelmed because I can’t predict the future regarding the most important thing in my life, so what should I do?
Over time, I’ve turned into a ruthless declutterer. I’m ruthless because I’ve experienced less, and I love having less stuff in my house. I love not bumping into things. I love offering my game room to someone who needs a place to sleep. I love being able to reach into my cabinet and grab the container I need without lids and bowls falling on my head. I value open, livable space more than I value my stuff.
I have another child after I’ve sold my baby stuff, I can buy someone else’s baby things for significantly less than the value of the space that was clear and livable for two years.
They didn’t know where to put things because they’d never seen what our house was supposed to look like unless we were having a party. They had no idea what a clean-on-a-Wednesday living room should look like in our home.
The container imposes limits so I don’t have to.
Basically, the daily stuff is the daily stuff whether you hire cleaning help or not.
It’s not about the size of your home; it’s about understanding that your home is a container.
Once upon a time, I thought I would finish. My house would be under control and stay that way forever. My happily-ever-after was a misty scene of family happiness and smiles with a perfectly clean house in the background. Over the past seven years of my own deslobification process, my home has changed drastically. More important, though, I have changed.
refuse to put off having a comfortable home until my kids are gone and I “have time.”
consciously choose to solve the unique problems in my unique home in this unique phase of life, whatever that means.
experience has taught me, has utterly convinced me, has let me learn the hard way that a Laundry Day is worth stopping what I am doing for five to fifteen minutes, six times every Monday. I know from experience that it can be done. When Monday is over, I know from experience
won’t have to think about the fullness of my children’s sock drawers for the rest of this final week of writing.
will always struggle. My brain doesn’t work the way organized people’s brains work.
“You said you’ll always struggle with this. I find that helpful! It means I don’t need to strive to ‘conquer’ this beast, and perfection just isn’t going to happen. But struggling? That’s something I can identify with! And seeing how far you’ve come, even though you’re still struggling, and seeing how far I’ve come (I’ve already done more in the last two weeks than the last two years!) helps so much. I know it sounds like a paradox, but hearing the struggle never ends actually gives me hope.”
We slobs love big projects. We’re generally creative people who love to get consumed with something that will finish with a wow factor. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a wow factor in washing the dishes. But remember: the little things are more important than the big things. Not just as important, but more important.
Waiting doesn’t work. It may sound noble, like you’re exercising patience . . . but let’s call it what it really is. Procrastinating.
