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April 23 - May 3, 2023
When I couldn’t find the thing I needed, I felt frustration and, honestly, self-loathing.
As I got rid of things, I was shocked at the shift in my mood when I saw an open space. A shelf with only one or two things on it. The almost empty shelf made me happy because I could really see and enjoy the things left on it. It turned out I liked that feeling of actual happiness better than the feeling I got from assuming things on the bottom of a pile were things that would probably make me happy.
loved opening a kitchen cabinet and realizing I loved being able to reach inside and grab exactly what I needed without shifting and looking behind something else
VALUING SPACE OVER MONEY
After I discovered I could earn money by bargain shopping, I brought things into my home that I didn’t personally want but that I thought someone else might. And these things (plus everything that was already in my home) now had invisible dollar signs attached to them. Every time I considered getting rid of something, my brain calculated how much money I might get if I sold it.
empty space has monetary value as well.
it’s important to think about how much you’re willing to pay to store an item.
GETTING REALISTIC ABOUT MY DEBILITATING FRUGALITY
Frugality is a condition I’ve suffered from since birth. Some days I brag about it; others I suffer its effects.
They decided something was a bargain if it would solve a problem they’d definitely have
I purchased bargains with potential usefulness.
Even though my frugal side still tries to argue with the side of me that understands my reality, I’ve decided the internal dialogues are well worth my time. An amazing bargain that ultimately makes my life more difficult isn’t an amazing bargain at all.
MAKING PROGRESS WITH THE VISIBILITY RULE
I was overwhelmed by my entire home. Every last space was overflowing with stuff. I decluttered, but I rarely felt like I made progress, even after putting in hours and hours of work.
the Visibility Rule: when I declutter, I start with the most visible spaces first. This ensures the results of my efforts will be visible, which will inspire me to keep going, and my decluttering energy will increase
Visibility Rule serves as both a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy. As a short-term strategy, it helps me focus and prioritize. I have a place to start when I’m overwhelmed by the overall mess.
As a long-term strategy, following the Visibility Rule means starting again in the most visible places with each decluttering session.
the Visibility Rule plays out like this: When you’re ready to declutter, go to the front door (or whatever door your guests enter). See what your guests see, and start there. Starting in that visible space every time will maintain your overall progress and will (really, I promise) eventually lead to your whole house being decluttered. At the same time.
prioritizing according to embarrassment level.
“When it’s clean, I love this room. It makes me happy to walk by it.” I can successfully not see a mess, even a fairly horrific one, until the doorbell rings. But, strangely, I do see clear spaces. Clear spaces make me happy every time I walk past them, and that is the biggest reason I have to follow the Visibility Rule.
When I get a jolt of random decluttering energy and expend it in an invisible space, such as my sock drawer, I use up that energy. It doesn’t replenish itself, because I don’t see the results of my efforts unless I happen to use that space. That energy is random, not perpetual.
Visible progress makes energy sustainable.
How will progress ever happen if I keep going back to work on the same area? Progress won’t happen if I don’t.
when I start again in that visible space after only a week (or a month) as opposed to months (or a year), I’m re-decluttering. Re-decluttering is shockingly easier than decluttering. I made the hard decisions last time. This time, it’s mostly a matter of putting things away. It’s mostly easy stuff.
I’ve gained experience each time I’ve worked in there, and with that experience comes a little wisdom. With wisdom, re-cluttering happens less. On a normal, not-decluttering-today day, I recognize junk mail for the future clutter it is and choose to walk straight to the trash can or recycling bin the moment I bring it into my house.
progress is gradual, but it’s visible. As long as progress is visible, I keep going
there’s no wrong way to declutter.
if you’re constantly frustrated because you can’t make sustainable progress, repeat to yourself, Visibility, visibility, visibility.
UNDERSTANDING THE LAYERS OF A CLEAN HOUSE
If your reaction to cleaning house seems to be vastly different from the reactions of your friends, it’s possible that cleaning your house involves peeling back layers that shouldn’t be there. Before I understood these layers, my home was almost always a disaster even though I felt like I was always cleaning.
LAYER ONE: DAILY STUFF
LAYER TWO: CLUTTER
Decluttering requires effort and decision-making and moving past emotional blockades.
LAYER THREE: CLEANING
Layer three is cleaning. It’s counter-wiping and floor-mopping and surface-dusting and carpet-sweeping. And while it will never be fun, I still find myself shocked by how much easier it is when I don’t have to catch up on daily stuff and decluttering (or, honestly, Stuff Shifting) first.
Cleaning and decluttering are not the same thing.
layer two: decluttering. The beauty of focusing intensely on layer two is that it’s the only layer that lasts. Daily stuff has to be done every day for the rest of your life, and the effects of cleaning don’t last. Dust falls, toilets get used, and toothpaste splatters on the bathroom mirror. It never ends. But once something leaves your house, it’s gone. And the more things leave, the more that layer becomes a non-issue and makes the other layers so much less overwhelming and quicker to tackle.
Procrasticlutter, by definition, is made up of things that require no decisions. You already know exactly what to do with procrasticlutter; you just haven’t done it. The most frequent examples of procrasticlutter are clean laundry piled on the couch and clean dishes in the dish drainer or the dishwasher.
a room with piles, even piles of clean stuff, doesn’t look clean. And piles of any kind are like fertilizer for other piles. Piles multiply. The existence of one pile justifies the existence of the next.
Shouldn’t I use my decluttering energy on real decluttering instead of on these tedious daily things? Yes, except this daily stuff is clutter because you haven’t been dealing with it daily. If you dive into the tough decluttering stuff and ignore the procrasticlutter, you’ll feel like your efforts were wasted even though you worked all day.
do the easy stuff first and deal with the procrasticlutter, at the end of the day you’ll see progress.
THE CASE FOR THE DONATE BOX
SPEEDY DECLUTTERING
biggest advantage of donating is the speed at which I get stuff out of my house.
Selling on eBay required a holding area where things could stay until I had the time (and the season was right) to sell them. But a space like that was beyond the limitations of my Clutter Threshold.
Having a garage sale meant a garage piled high with junk while I collected enough stuff to make the effort worth my while and found a Saturday with no soccer games or swim meets.
Even idealistic giving away was a problem for me. Giving things to the perfect person who would perfectly appreciate my thoughtfully unloaded clutter involved a detailed, complicated system of sorting.
I wasn’t only deciding which things to keep. I also had to determine which way I was going to get rid of them.
When I began decluttering like my sanity depended on it, I simply did not have time to use my complicated systems. I just donated.
Once I made the decision to donate everything, I felt incredible freedom, and I was able to move through my clutter so much more quickly. I made the decision about whether something needed to stay in my house or not, and that was the end of it.
