Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff

by Dana K. White

Decluttering is stuff you don’t need leaving your house.

I define clutter as anything I can’t keep under control. If a space in my home consistently gets out of control, I have too much stuff in that space. I have clutter.

Accept the limitations of the space you have, and declutter enough that your stuff fits comfortably in that space.

I didn’t decide anything. I didn’t figure out anything. I just accepted that limits were limits. And accepting limits was strangely freeing.

So the point of decluttering isn’t to get rid of things you want to keep; it’s to identify those things and then to make space to enjoy those things.

Decluttering Question #1: If I needed this item, where would I look for it first? Take it there right now. The key word is would, which is a question of instinct. No pondering or thinking or analyzing needed. The second part of question #1 is ridiculously important. Take it, right now, to the place where you’d look first. Decluttering Question #2: If I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I already had one?

To declutter at the speed of life, you have to accept that life happens. By making a final decision about the fate of each item as you pick it up and then acting on that decision (trashing it, donating it, or taking it where it goes immediately), at any point when you get distracted, you’ve made progress. There are no Keep Piles or Keep Boxes to deal with later.

Decluttering Question #1: If I needed this item, where would I look for it first? Take it there now. Decluttering Question #2: If I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I already had one?

You’re lucky, because you get a bonus decluttering question: Would I pay to move this?

Big and small dreams are completely different, though, in regard to who is in control.

Some people manage to go their entire lives without bringing home a minivan full of things they don’t actually need, but no one avoids the pain of life not going exactly as he or she planned.

A lot of my own clutter is directly linked to denial. I have to fight against living in denial. If something is unpleasant or stressful, I’ll purposely deny it. Ignore it. If I think an e-mail is going to say something I don’t want to hear, I put off opening it. But with grief, denial is a phase.

But tricking yourself into decluttering is not the point. The point is to just touch the things. Feel the feelings. Remember these things you’re keeping out of fear you’ll forget.

Decluttering is about identifying the stuff you really want to keep, in a way that you can handle.

One of two things will happen: You’ll end up with space to give these dreams a home and yourself room to live well. Or your perspective will change as you begin valuing space over stuff—and living now instead of in the past or the future—and this Dream Clutter will look very different to you by the time you tackle it.

Do not underestimate the need to prioritize according to visibility. Every single time you work on your home, follow the Visibility Rule. This will build momentum, will increase your own energy, and will go further in creating a lifestyle of decluttering than anything else.

As you throw away trash and start with the easy stuff, view every space in your home according to your present. Plan for the future and acknowledge the past, but live now. Commit to creating a home that makes living now fun.

The habit that will prevent the mysterious reappearance of clutter and will truly allow you to declutter at the speed of life is the five-minute pickup. Set your timer for five minutes and pick up. Use the take-it-there-right-now strategy and spend five minutes a day (or almost every day) putting things away.

I desperately hope that as you finish this book, you feel both empowered and inspired to start on your decluttering journey. I know the temptation to start by renting a Dumpster. Don’t. Just grab a trash bag. If you don’t have a black one, use whatever you have. Today, throw away trash. Do the easy stuff first, and you’ll be on your way to decluttering at the speed of life.