The ‘Clutter Series’ discusses important aspects of the clutter in our homes and minds, including the close relationship between clutter and our general wellbeing.
What causes clutter? – Part 1: The inflow of new possessions is too high
The cause of ‘fake’ clutter
In some cases, a lack of organisational systems can create the incorrect impression that our place is full of clutter.
In this case, the seemingly ‘cluttered’ area is actually not covered by clutter-items. Instead, the things lying around in a messy way are truly valued possessions, things that serve us and are used frequently.
The only problem with these spread around items is that they don’t have found a home yet, we haven’t assigned a place where they are kept between the times we use them.
The solution to this ‘clutter’ problem is to set up clear rules and to determine where we store our possessions when we don’t need/use them.
The causes of ‘real’ clutter
Usually, though, the accumulation of our ‘true’ clutter – things that don’t serve us (any longer) – is caused by an imbalance in the circulation of stuff:
The inflow of new possessions coming into our home is too high,
and the outflow of no longer used/wanted belongings is too low.
Why do we bring so much stuff into our homes?
Sometimes, we are not directly responsible for the things that enter our home:
We inherit belongings from a relative,
we take in stuff after the death of a close family member,
we are given gifts from family and friends,
our new partner moves in and brings along a complete set of household belongings,
etc.
In most cases, however, we are the ones who initiate, arrange, allow the inflow of new stuff:
We go shopping.
Acquiring new things has never been easier than today and many of us spend a lot of time (and money) in shopping malls and with online shopping.
Not always, but sometimes (or often?) our shopping trips end with us carrying heavy bags of new stuff home that we actually don’t need or like.
Impulsive and excessive shopping has many causes.
We all have our own special and very personal reasons why we buy what we buy and why we sometimes acquire too many or the wrong things.
Often, we are not even aware of the motivations behind our shopping decisions.
These are some of the reasons why we acquire more than we need / are able to use:
Escape from difficult emotions
We don’t want to experience ‘negative’ emotions such as feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety, boredom, and use shopping as a distraction or avoidance strategy.
Fear of missing out
We constantly compare ourselves with others and fear that their life(-style) is better or more exciting than ours and that we risk to fall behind if we don’t follow the latest trends and buy the current ‘must-haves’.
Reminders of past experiences
We buy souvenirs and other mementos as reminders and proofs of places we visited, achievements and experiences we made, events we attended.
Fear of lacking resources
We buy things we don’t want to use now but fear we might need/miss at some point in the future.
Running after life improvements
We believe advertisements telling us that we will feel happier, have more fun, look better if we acquire and use certain things.
There are so many other reasons –Which are yours?
When do our new possessions become clutter?
If we define ‘clutter’ as belongings that don’t serve us, we have to admit that some of our newly acquired possessions become clutter as soon as they enter our home – we never use them.
However, most of our clutter doesn’t actually start its life as clutter.
We first use/love the things we bring in, we appreciate their existence and honour their value.
But in time – over months or years – they loose their attractiveness and usefulness, we no longer need, use or like them.
If we don’t make the decision to discard them, they become clutter.
The ‘Clutter Series’ discusses important aspects of the clutter in our homes and minds, including the close relationship between clutter and our general wellbeing.
We all have our own personal special clutter hotspots – those areas in our homes and those categories of belongings that accumulate the biggest amounts of stuff that actually no longer serves us.
We all define ‘clutter’ differently, which means that ‘your clutter is different to mine’ (read more).
We also struggle for different reasons to let go of useless possessions, and our decluttering strategies and solutions differ.
However, most of us share the experience that it is particularly tough to make decluttering decisions with regard to these two types of belongings:
We particularly struggle to let go of sentimental and aspirational belongings.
Our sentimental attachment to certain possessionsis usually linked to our past – to previous phases in our lives and to our past identities: Sentimental belongings refer to past experiences, remind us of people who were/are important to us, or keep memories of special events and accomplishments.
Our aspirational belongings have more to do with our future, or our former dreams of the future: They represent our current and past ambitions and aspirations, our ideas of our ideal ‘fantasy’ selves and lives.
Today, I wish to share some thoughts about aspirational belongings – sentimental items will be discussed in another article.
What are ‘aspirational’ belongings?
Aspirational items are the things that we bring into our homes because we want to
create and project a certain image and lifestyle,
develop or improve a special capability or activity,
help ourselves believe that we are a certain type of person with a certain set of characteristics and abilities.
Any category of belongings can contain aspirational stuff and therefore can also contain aspirational clutter:
books and papers, kitchen stuff, groceries, clothes and shoes, sports equipment, tools, arts and crafts supplies, etc.
Examples of aspirational stuff that turned into aspirational clutter:
We organise the transport of our grandmother’s dinner table with the 8 chairs to our home because we intend to entertain family and friends more often. However, we don’t make any changes in our social life. The dinner table is now a ‘waste paper collection centre’.
We decide to start running to improve our fitness and health and buy trainers and running clothes. Our running career ends two weeks later but we keep the equipment because we truly plan to start running again – maybe next summer?
We dream about starting a small business and buy any book that offers advice for start-up entrepreneurs. Three years later we are very happy in our corporate job and plan the next step of our career. However, the never-read books were so expensive, it would be a waste to give them away, wouldn’t it?
We moved to a new place with a little backyard garden and were looking forward to realise our ‘aspirational’ landscaping plans. We bought and now own all the necessary equipment – but we lack the time and energy to use it. However, we can’t give up our dream of becoming a gardener, at some point in the future. That’s why we feel we have to keep all the gardening stuff.
Why decluttering aspirational clutter is so hard
Letting go is rarely easy.
Letting go of aspirational stuff is particularly hard because it involves letting go of hopes, dreams, intentions, aspirations, and ambitions.
We have to be willing to stop lying to ourselves, we have to admit failure.
We have to admit that we made some wrong decisions.
We have to be very honest and brave to accept that some parts of our ideal fantasy selves just don’t exist.
We have to be willing to experience negative feelings – such as guilt, shame, or disappointment.
We have to invest time and thought work to find out who we really are (not who we wished we were), what’s really important to us, and how we truly want to spend our time and life.
Practising self-awareness and intentional decluttering go hand-in-hand
While we learn to get rid of excessive and useless stuff, we simultaneously learn about ourselves and what’s meaningful to us.
And as soon as we begin to understand who we truly are and what we really want to have in our life, we find it increasingly easier to make decisions about what to keep in our life and what to let go.
How can we clear up aspirational clutter?
Asking powerful questions and taking the time to find our answers to them.
Ask yourself:
Why do I keep this thing? What is the reason behind my decision? Do I like my reason?
Another powerful question related to our aspirational stuff:
What if now is the right time to let go of these old aspirations (and the related stuff) – so that I can create space for my current and future ambitions and aspirations?
Letting go of unrealised aspirations not only creates space.
It will also bring clarity and lightness. It makes it easier to move on – into the life we truly want to live.
The ‘Clutter Series’ discusses important aspects of the clutter in our homes and minds, including the close relationship between clutter and our general wellbeing.
If we struggle to make let-go decisions, if we keep things in our life that no longer serve us, we end up with clutter – in our homes, in our relationships, in our work, our finances, in/on our body, in our behaviours and habits.
The clutter in our home and life is all caused by the clutter in our mind – unhelpful and self-limiting thoughts.
However, it also works the other way around:
Having too much clutter in our home, for example, can create additional clutter in our mind, and can make our life unnecessarily difficult and frustrating.
Clutter steals our energy, it limits our personal potential, and decreases our decision-making ability – we tend to feel stuck, overwhelmed and stressed. We often struggle to take action to change our life to the better.
Living in a cluttered environment can be very harmful to our general well-being, mental health and social relationships.
These are just some of the many negative side-effects of physical clutter:
It’s difficult to feel energised and excited if clutter pulls us down.
It’s difficult to gratefully appreciate what we value and love if it’s hidden under layers of other stuff.
It’s difficult to get active and take control if we feel encircled and besieged by an ‘army’ of clutter piles.
It’s difficult to focus on projects and tasks if the clutter around us suppresses our attention and creativity.
It’s difficult to engage with family and friends if our clutter leaves no space to entertain them.
It’s difficult to sit back and just relax if our clutter stares at us and makes us feel lazy and guilty.
Change needs space.
If we want to change our life to the better, and especially if we have to manage a major life transition, getting rid of clutter becomes an absolute necessity:
We have to be willing to let go of the old to make space for the new.
However, our physical, mental and emotional clutter is very powerful in holding us back.
To move forward, into a new phase of our life, we need to make sure that we are no longer surrounded by stuff that’s related to the past and no longer of value to us.
Today I wish to use one of my own decluttering projects to demonstrate how you can successfully move through a little series of systematic steps to get a category of belongings cleared up.
This is an excerpt from my personal decluttering journal – the notes and photos I took when I decluttered my fabric painting stuff some months ago:
Margot’s Decluttering Journal
My fabric painting supplies have become a clutter-problem for me. I know that I have too much stuff, and it’s not properly sorted.
This has been annoying for a while, and I’ve decided that now is time to become active and to clear the mess.
Decluttering and Organising one category of belongings – Step by Step
Step 1 – Gaining awareness
Part 1 – Background of the problem, my thoughts and plans
A good preparation is the foundation of the success of any decluttering / organising project.
A big part of the preparation is gaining deeper awareness.
We need to understand the problem and its causes before we can decide on our final goal and develop plans how to get there.
Asking ourselves questions and giving honest answers ensures that we exactly know where we are, why we want to make changes, where we want to go and how to get there.
These are my questions and answers:
Where am I now?
My fabric painting supplies are taking a lot of storage space in our guest room and in the utility room. The stuff occupies many shelves and fills boxes, bags and drawers.
Whenever I feel like starting a new project, I procrastinate and postpone, just because I know that I no longer can say where everything is and because I hate having to dig through piles of materials and tools.
How did I get there? Why?
Some time ago, I was a very active fabric painter. As a non-fiction writer I published how-to-do books for fabric-painting beginners.
I took lots of photographs to help my readers understand the techniques and processes I talked about in my books. To do so, I always stored a broad set of different painting materials and tools which I could use for different projects.
Where do I wish to go? Why?
I no longer publish fabric painting books. I now use fabric painting as an enjoyable method to relax over the weekend.
I want my fabric-painting supplies to be well organised and I want to keep and store only those materials and tools I still like and intend to use regularly. And I wish to free up space which is currently occupied by painting stuff.
How will I get where I want to be?
I’ll now decide which fabric painting techniques I wish to apply in future, and which types of paints and tools I want to use, and also which colours I like most. Based on these decisions it will be easier to choose what I want to keep.
It is hard to sort out materials I spent so much money on, and to make it easier I want to make sure to give the out-sorted items to someone who is happy to use them.
I plan to invest about 2 hours into the decluttering process. And I want to assign all my painting stuff to one of three categories – ‘Rubbish’, ‘Friend’, and ‘Keep”- to make the sorting process easy.
Step 1 – Gaining Awareness
Part 2 – Taking inventory and sorting into categories
We take out what we have to get a comprehensive overview of our possessions and then we sort everything into categories.
This is an important step because often we actually don’t know exactly what we own.
Getting everything out and seeing it in bright daylight may not feel comfortable but is necessary.
And sorting things into categories helps us not only uncover the duplicates but also makes us understand where our personal weak points are. (‘Why do I own 10 pieces in this category if I use only one?’)
I walk around the house and carry everything that has to do with fabric painting to a big enough working area – the floor in the living room.
This looks a bit frightening! So much stuff!
Now I start to sort everything into categories.
The first category contains all types of paints. I take all paints and carry them to another area on the floor, where I assign them to sub-categories such as fabric painting markers, spray paints, etc.
It’s really good to see all paints in one place! Now I know what I have.
Step 2 – Making (decluttering) decisions
Based on our increased awareness (Step 1) we can now start to make decisions about what we want to keep (‘What do I need, use, love?’) and what we no longer need and want to let go of (‘What doesn’t serve me any longer?’).
Making lots and lots of decisions can be exhausting but it helps that we now know what’s important to us and what’s not.
Taking everything in our hands, we make a clear decision and assign it to one of several piles. Suitable piles could be: Donate, Trash, Sell, Keep, etc.
Before I make decisions about what I want to keep, I check all my paints and sort those out that have dried up or got otherwise damaged and are no longer usable. These get transferred to my ‘rubbish’-labelled pile.
As I will only conduct fabric painting projects to create something for myself in future, I decide to keep only those colours that I personally like.
This helps a lot, as I can immediately assign, for example, all yellow and orange paints to the pile of supplies I’ll pass on to my friend. She is a primary school teacher and has happily agreed to take anything I want to give away.
I assign every fabric-paint item to a pile: Rubbish, Friend, Keep
I realise that decluttering what I no longer want to use is much easier than I thought. In fact, I enjoy it to realise that I do have preferences and that I’m now able to restrict my paints selection to what I like.
Step 3 – Taking action
Part 1 – Organising the ‘keepers’, discarding the rest
Now it’s time to get out of the house what has to go, transferring things to the bin or the local charity. Or organsing the sale. This creates a lot of new space already. And usually feelings of relief.
Then we assign a place to everything we decided to keep (or to every category of like items) so that we can easily find and access what we have whenever we want to use it.
My first idea is to place the paints directly on the shelves which will hold all my fabric painting supplies in future.
But I know that whenever I’m working on a project, I like to have a broad selection of paint colours close to me, on the working table, so that I can easily switch from one colour to another.
Thus, I want to keep all paints of one type (e.g., all spray paints) together in one container, which I can carry wherever I wish to do a project.
This looks fantastic! Only those colours of fabric paint I really like. And all organised by type of fabric paint.
I don’t need to buy new storage items because I have enough suitable containers and boxes at home.
It’s a great feeling to see everything nicely arranged and then to place the containers on the shelves!
I don’t think I have to label them: I’m the only one who uses the stuff and I (now) know what I have and where it is. And the containers don’t have a lid, I can easily pull them out and look inside.
After having decluttered and organised my fabric paints, I need a break. It took longer than I thought and I feel exhausted.
A cup of coffee later, I continue to apply the three steps – sort, declutter, organise – to the other categories of my fabric painting supplies (stamps and stencils).
The following images show, for example, how I get all my stamps sorted:
Again, first I collect all the stamps and stamp-making supplies and sort them into sub-categories.
Then I take each item up and decide to which pile it belongs: Rubbish, Friend, Keep.
Finally, I arrange all stamp material in one container. Perfectly organised!
Finally, I get the stencils sorted. (No photos.)
And then – DONE!
This is my ‘after’ photo:
Everything that I want to keep has a nice new home. And all the empty shelves! Extra storage room gained for other belongings.
Step 3 – Taking Action
Part 2 – Maintaining the order
Maintaining the order is obviously very important because we don’t want the sorted area to become messy again.
Creating and adhering to new ‘tidy’ routines and rules helps.
We also should ‘be on guard’ and evaluate regularly what works, and what doesn’t work and has to be adjusted.
In my case, I believe/hope that maintenance is not a big issue.
The very reduced assortment of fabric painting supplies should be easily to handle and keep in control.
But there is one rule I definitely have to adhere to: ‘Don’t buy new stuff!’ I promise myself to use up what I have and to buy, for example, new paint only when a special paint colour has been depleted.
I am very happy about the results of my project. Yes, it took longer than thought (4 hours instead of 2) and was a bit exhausting.
But now I can look forward to starting a new fabric-painting project again!
The ‘Clutter Series’ discusses important aspects of the clutter in our homes and minds, including the close relationship between clutter and our general wellbeing.
What is clutter? – Why is your clutter different to mine?
The definition of ‘clutter’ can be tricky.
I struggled for some time to truly understand and to explain the meaning of ‘clutter’ to my clients.
As I wanted to help them make confident decisions about the clutter in their homes, I needed a definition of ‘clutter’ that was comprehensive and broadly applicable but also clear and simple.
Studying numerous organising and decluttering books and the approaches of several renowned experts in this area helped me to have closer look at ‘clutter’ from different angles.
Discussing the issue with other professional organisers and with my clients brought interesting insights but not the one and only explanation of clutter that everyone could agree on.
It seems that we all have our own ideas about the meaning of clutter!
And that’s exactly, I now believe, the answer to the clutter question:
There is no one final definitionbecause we all define clutter in a very personal and unique way.
Clutter is in the eye of the beholder.
If you decide that something you have in your home/life is clutter, it’s clutter. If you decide something isn’t clutter, it’s no clutter. No matter what someone else thinks.
Our personal situation and our individual values, beliefs and perceptions determine what clutter is – it can mean something different for each of us.
Clutter can be anything that we keep in our life although it doesn’t serve us.
Clutter is not restricted to physical stuff.
Any area of our life can get cluttered.
Clutter can show up as
Stuff in our home that we don’t need, use, love.
Thoughts in our mind that don’t serve us.
Feelings in our heart that disturb our wellbeing.
Actions in our daily life that draw us away from where we want to go.
Results in our life that keep us stuck.
The most damaging category of clutter is the clutter in our mind.
This type of clutter – all the self-limiting thoughts and unsupportive beliefs – is so powerful because the mind-clutter causes all the other types of clutter in our life
As a clutterfree life coach, I am, of course, very interested in any study or report that focuses on clutter.
However, that type of information is not so easy to find. The Choosi Clutter Report 2017 is one of the rare successes of my ongoing research.
The report has been published by Choosi (an insurance-comparison company) and summarises the results of a survey done by CoreData (a global market research consultancy).
CoreData surveyed 1,000 ‘typical Australians’ across the nation in October 2017 in order to explore the financial value of clutter in Australian homes.
I am not sure how representative the survey’s findings are, however, some of the research results are quite interesting.
These are some of the key findings of the clutter report:
Clutter occupies quite a lot of physical space of our homes, and the amount of our clutter has increased over the past years.
54% of the survey participants estimate that they can fill half of a room or more with clutter,
and more than 25% say their home is more cluttered compared to five years ago.
Clutter is impacting on our health, wellbeing and relationships.
25% of participants say that clutter creates stress or anxiety in their lives
and about 20% feel discouraged from inviting friends or family to their home because of the clutter.
Nearly 12% claim that clutter-related issues have even led to separation or divorce.
Proactively clearing clutter from our homes has positive impacts on our emotions.
The survey participants estimate that they get rid of approximately 6.8 large bin bags each year.
Key reasons for decluttering include feeling refreshed (49%) and happier (44%).
What are your answers to the survey’s clutter-questions?
When I was reading the report for the first time, I soon started to think about what my answers would have been to the survey questions – an interesting and self-awareness-increasing exercise.
Take a few minutes to consider your answers to these questions before you then have a look at the survey results below:
How much clutter do you currently have in your house? How much of a typically sized room could you most likely fill?
What is the total financial value of the clutter currently in your home (i.e. considering the cost of purchasing these things in the first place)?
How strong is the emotional/sentimental value of the clutter in your home?
What’s the most cluttered space currently in your home?
What impact does clutter have on your life?
What do you feel are the greatest reasons for clutter in your household?
What are the greatest barriers to decluttering your home?
What is your most valued household item?
How strongly do you currently desire to declutter your home?
How does clearing the clutter in your home make your feel?
Now have a look at the survey results – where do you fit into the picture? ?
Experimentation – “the action or process of trying out new ideas, methods, or activities” (online dictionary) – can be very helpful if we wish to learn more about ourselves.
Creating and conducting daily-life experiments is a playful way to develop greater self-awareness and to try out new ways of behaviour or testing the effects of new ways to solve problems.
Experimenting with less
‘Living-with-less’ experiments can be very helpful when we wish to declutter our stuff but struggle to make decisions about what to keep and what to let go.
Shopping bans – Experimenting with buying less
Shopping bans, for example, are a way of temporarily experimenting with drastically changed shopping behaviours.
Do you have any experience with shopping bans?
Some time ago I imposed a 3-months-shopping-ban on myself – no spending on books and clothes for 3 months.
This is what my shopping-ban exercise taught me:
I appreciate more what I have and I use it with more care and attention if – for a while – nothing new is coming in.
A lot of my buying behaviour is directed by spontaneous shopping decisions.
I can break this circle of ‘automatic’ money spending if I postpone the decision for some days.
Often, I no longer want to have the desired item and don’t buy it, without any regret.
And if I decide to buy it after some days of consideration, I appreciate it more consciously and gratefully.
The ‘Project 333’ – Experimenting with having less clothes
An even greater challenge is experimenting with a combination of ‘no shopping’ and strict ‘using less’ rules.
Courtney Carver introduced the minimalist fashion challenge ‘Project 333’ in 2010.
Since then, thousands of people around the world have experimented with dressing with 33 items or less for 3 months.
Limit your closet to only 33 articles of clothing. All clothing, accessories, jewellery, outerwear and shoes count towards your number.
Exceptions include your wedding ring, underwear, sleep wear, and workout clothing.
This is the process:
First you get all your clothes, shoes, accessories and jewellery out.
Then you sort everything into the following piles: Love, Maybe, Donate, Trash.
Bag up the items to donate and throw out the trash.
Finally choose the 33 items you want to restrict yourself to for the coming 3 months.
Box the remaining items up and store them somewhere else in your home.
What do you think about this living-with-less experiment?
Do you think it’s an eccentric or even stupid idea to restrict ourselves in this way? Do you feel it’s impossible to dress with only 33 items? Or do you consider to give it a try?
I conducted this experiment once, and I found it so useful and ‘enlightening’ that I assume I will do it again at some time in the future.
And this is what my ‘Project 333’ taught me:
During the first days of the experiment, I enjoyed having a reduced range of items to choose from. It made it much easier to get dressed in the morning.
However, after some days I realised that I had included 3 t-shirts in my selection which I actually didn’t like much. Now I had to wear them. ☹
I first missed my little weekend shopping trips a bit but then started to appreciate the extra time I gained for other things I like to do in my leisure time.
The ongoing effect of the experiment is that I learned to appreciate more what I have and I now use what I own with more care and gratitude.
I now know from experience that I need less than I thought in the past.
And I know better what I need and what I don’t need, what I like and what I don’t like. This also helps when I go shopping (which I do much less) – it now happens very rarely that I buy something I don’t need or like.
Yes, I think I’ll do this experiment again.
What about you?
I recommend you give it a try, especially if you are struggling with decluttering your wardrobe.
During the next 4 weeks, Ellen made huge steps in her declutter, organise, and change journey.
With the help of her friend, she managed to sort through all her clothes and shoes. She decluttered a lot.
When we met again, she told me that she now was best friends with the people in the charity shops in her area. Four times she had dropped off boxes and bags of well-preserved clothes.
Books were ‘the heroes’ of Ellen’s second success story.
Ellen had invested the time to take each of her more than 220 books in her hands and to make a deliberate ‘keep-or-give-away’ decision. She kept only 25 books!
Luckily, she found new homes for all the books that had to leave: Half of them went into the little library in her retirement village, and the other half she delivered to the local community library.
It had beena good decision not to rush through the decluttering process.
Working slowly through her clothes, books, and other belongings, making hundreds of little ‘yes-or-no’ decisions, had helped Ellen to regain clarity about what she really valued and liked, and what not – or no longer. And she now was perfectly organised: she knew exactly every item she owned and where she could find it.
Taking enough time for the sorting process had also helped Ellen to change her mind about a decision she probably would have regretted later.
Some weeks earlier, when she had felt in such a hurry to sort things out, she had been sure that she no longer loved cooking and entertaining people at her place. She had wanted to discard all her cooking and recipe books, most of her cutlery and crockery, and many of the kitchen appliances.
Now she had changed her mind. She had become friends with some of her new neighbours and wanted to revive her qualities as a host, regularly arranging dinner parties and Sunday breakfasts in her apartment. This was something she really was excited about!
The last decluttering task: The Paperwork
Ellen was not so much excited about her paperwork – this was the last area she still needed a helping hand with.
She said that she had never been a ‘paper-person’ and that this hadn’t been a problem during all the years of her marriage when her husband had taken care of any paperwork.
Since his death 7 years ago, no piece of paper had been filed away in Ellen’s household. Yes, she dutifully opened her mail every day, and she immediately paid the bills, but that was it.
I now understood why she had 21 archive boxes with paperwork from the old house stored in the garage – filled with binders (compiled by her late husband), magazines, journals, photo albums, and masses of loose pieces of paper.
And since her move into the new apartment about 7 weeks ago, Ellen had started to gather a new pile of paperwork, sitting on her kitchen counter.
The paperwork-management system should ‘respect’ the organiser’s personality.
We talked about different approaches to paperwork management but quickly agreed that to make it work for Ellen we had to find a clear and very simple way to get – and keep – the papers organised.
In total, it took us three 4-hour sessions to clear up all the paperwork that had accumulated in Ellen’s life.
We started with the fresh paper pile in the kitchen and all the boxes from the garage which contained the loose papers collected during the past years. Then we continued with the archive boxes – until the very last one was empty.
This was our paper-clearing procedure:
Sitting next to each other at the table, we worked hand-in-hand. I took one piece of paper and passed it to Ellen. She had a look at it and then we made a decision.
Sometimes this took a while because Ellen had a little story to tell about an event or experience related to a paper.
The slow sorting process was actually a kind of ‘therapy’ for Ellen:
By remembering all these stories she deliberately appreciated them one last time and then she felt free to let the piece of paper – and the related memory – go.
Yes, we found a few still important documents but most of the stuff could go. And it did go: We compiled a huge amount of bags for the recycling bin and some smaller bags for the shredder.
A personalised filing system makes it easy to find a home for the documents we have/want to keep.
Finally, we took the pile with the to-keep papers and went through it a last time.
We assigned each piece of paper to a sub-pile on the table, and labelled those with Post-it notes, for example: car (registration, insurance, repairs), utilities (electricity/water, Telstra), legal (passport, birth and death certificates, etc.), financial (tax, paid bills, investments, life insurance), health (insurance, medical records), traveling (bookings, tickets, etc).
In the end, we knew how much storage space we needed and were able to file everything into three binders, using dividers to separate different sections.
We used one thin folder to keep all important contact details (family, friends, estate manager, neighbours, doctors, etc.) in one place.
Ellen’s new paper-flow system consisted of only 3 parts: a ‘Today tray’, a ‘Friday tray’, and the three binders.
This simple system can only work out for Ellen because she is a very disciplined person and hates to postpone any tasks.
This is the workflow plan:
Every day Ellen gets the mail in and places it in the ‘Today tray’.
On the same day, always before dinner, she works on her ‘today’ stuff:
She sorts out anything useless / not interesting and puts it in the recycle bin.
She completes any to-do tasks such as paying bills, confirming bookings or invitations.
Then she places the finished paperwork into the ‘Friday tray’.
Anything she can’t do/finish on that day, she also puts in the ‘Friday tray.
Every Friday, she sits down and gets the pile in the ‘Friday tray’ done – in most cases just filing the paperwork into the binders.
At the end of the year, she goes through the three binders and sorts out anything that is no longer relevant.
As I said, this simple system doesn’t work for every household/person but for Ellen it does.
I met her recently at a networking event and she said she has made an incredible personality change: She now is ‘a paper person!
When we met again 2 weeks later, Ellen appeared to be a younger and more confident version of herself.
She said she liked the suburb, and the area around her new place, the park and the small shopping mall close by. She had also made contact with her new neighbours and had already been out for coffee twice.
However, Ellen said she didn’t feel good about herself.
She felt ashamed that in the past she had put so much attention and care into her belongings – instead of focusing on her values and interests and the people around and important to her.
She hadn’t opened any boxes in the garage and only missed a few things, particularly some clothes.
However, she had worked on her ‘stuff’: She had kept her thoughts in the journal and had developed some ideas about new activities she wanted to try out in the future.
She was also very determined about some past interests she no longer felt excited about. She, for example, no longer wanted to entertain friends in her place as she no longer enjoyed cooking.
Ellen said she now wanted to get rid of the boxes and the pieces of furniture we had stored in the garage, all of them, as soon as possible.
She felt able to arrange this on her own because she believed there were no big decisions to be made.
The only area she didn’t feel confident to manage was the paperwork. She asked me to help her sort out all the boxes filled with papers and documents.
We had a longer conversation.
I felt happy for Ellen, of course, and it was great to experience her excitement and the energy she radiated. However, I also felt that her mind and attitude shifts were quite radical, and sudden.
I suggested she should take some time to consider all the options she had in this phase of her life and to deepen her understanding of herself and of what was now important to her.
It wouldn’t be good for her to hurry through important decisions, just to get things done, risking she might regret some of them later.
Ellen thought about this and then agreed – yes, she would be patient and give herself some more time before making final decisions about her belongings.
We went down to the garage and picked up the numerous boxes with her books, and some boxes with clothes and shoes and brought them up to her apartment.
Ellen wanted to sort through the books and keep only as many as would fit into the shelves in the living room. And she wanted to ask her friend to help her get a clearer picture of her personal fashion style so that she could get rid of some of her clothes, with confidence.
We arranged to continue working on the many remaining boxes in the garage 4 weeks later. We also decided to sort out her paperwork at that time.
When we met again 4 weeks later, …(This is the second in a series of 3 posts – to be continued.Click here to read No 3)
Downsizing – moving from a bigger to a smaller place – is a huge life transition.
That’s why you need time – and courage – to prepare the move carefully.
CLIENT STORY
When Ellen called me, she was desperate.
In fact, I got quite confused and even worried during the first 3 to 5 minutes of our phone conversation – Ellen was crying so heavily that she couldn’t talk.
She then managed to calm down, and she introduced herself and described her problem:
It was her removal day: that morning she had moved out of her 3-bedroom-house into her new home, a 1-bedroom-apartment in a retirement village.
The removalists had just left her, in the middle of a ‘terrible chaos’ as she said. As she continued to explain her situation I started to understand her distress, and I agreed to meet her at her new place 2 hours later.
Ellen waited at the entrance gate of the retirement village when I arrived at the address she had given to me. She was still very upset, she said she feared she had made a huge mistake, and that she didn’t know what to do, and that she felt help- and hopeless. She started crying again.
When we entered her new apartment, I took a deep breath.
It was so full! It was understandable that Ellen felt like being in the wrong place!
The apartment was so fully packed with furniture and removal boxes that it was difficult to walk inside and around.
There were no empty surfaces and all around stuff was stacked up to the ceiling. Even the bathroom was not usable, cluttered with containers and lose items. The bedroom and the kitchen – the same.
We couldn’t sit anywhere and finally walked outside and sat down on a bench in front of the building. I have to admit that I felt very angry with the removalists who had left Ellen – alone – in such a mess. However, it was not their fault, of course.
The cause of the problem was that Ellen hadn’t been able to let go of any of her personal belongings, she had hoped that they ‘somehow’ would fit into the build-in wardrobes, and into the storage area that belonged to the apartment.
Yes, she had sorted out a lot before the move, particularly several pieces of furniture, such as the large dinner table, some chairs and arm chairs, the huge desk, some bigger paintings, and the outdoor furniture.
However, she had kept everything else, everything that had been stored inside the discarded furniture and built-in cupboards. And had now ended up with all these belongings in a place that had to offer just one quarter of the space that she had had before.
The underlying reason for this seemingly ‘irrational’ behaviour was that Ellen had been so afraid and anxious about the big changes coming up with the move – the new place, the new neighbours, the new life – that she had kept all her belongings as a kind of ‘safety net’. She had thought she would feel o.k. if she had all the things around her that had been with her in the old life.
Also, she didn’t have any plan or idea of what her new life would look like, thus she felt unable to decide what she might no longer need.
It was late in the afternoon, and we couldn’t do much on that day, but we created an ‘emergency plan’ to help Ellen through the near future and to finally get her problem sorted out.
I didn’t have a client appointment the next day which was followed by a weekend, thus we had 3 days to create a temporary solution – an apartment that was sufficiently cleared up and safe to live in.
These were our short term actions:
Ellen called a friend who offered her a bed for the next 2 to 3 nights.
We talked with the retirement village manager and Ellen was able to rent 2 additional parking spaces in the garage for the next 2 to 3 months.
We made a list of all belongings that Ellen needed to manage her daily life during the next weeks: all the furniture and things required in the kitchen to prepare her meals, all the personal belongings she needed in the bathroom and in the bedroom, the furniture she wanted to place in the living room.
We carried all furniture and other lose/bigger items that were not on the list downstairs, and stored them in Ellen’s 3 parking spots in the garage.
We cleared the kitchen table to get a free surface for our unpacking and sorting activities.
We opened every removal box and took out only what was related to our list of needed items.
We started an inventory and kept notes about all boxes with currently not needed content before we stored those boxes in the garage.
We organised all the things which were to be kept in the apartment in the available build-in wardrobes, cupboards and shelves.
On the first morning of our 3 working days, I was a bit worried about how Ellen would cope. But she actually managed very well.
I assume it helped her to know that all the belongings leaving the apartment didn’t disappear forever, that they just moved downstairs into the garage.
Ellen also said that it felt good to get active and to do something, she felt no longer so desperate and more in control.
At the end of the 3 days, Ellen could finally move into her now clear and spacious apartment. She had all she needed for her daily life easily accessible and close to her, and anything else safely stored in boxes in the garage.
I had arrangements with other clients for the next 2 weeks, and Ellen decided to use the time to get to know her new living area and her neighbours.
She also agreed to keep a journal and to think about what was really important to her and how she wanted to live now, in this not only new place but also new phase of her life.
She also decided to take notes in her journal whenever she missed anything of the stored away stuff.
A divorce not only affects the two people directly involved.
Often, it’s a huge life-change challenge for other family members, too. A bold decluttering project can help to redefine relationships within the family.
CLIENT STORY
For many years, Stephanie had been very good at organising her busy life.
As one of three senior partners in a law firm, she was used to working not only full-time but extremely long hours every day. Until recently it hadn’t been a problem that she had had only the weekends to spend time with her family. Her husband had managed the daily family life and taken care of their two teenage girls.
However, life had changed for everyone in the family 6 months ago when her husband moved out. They had both suffered in their unhappy marriage for some years and had decided to get divorced.
Now Stephanie struggled to find her way into her new role as a single mom.
Keeping the household running and taking care of her daughters’ daily needs was very demanding.
And her relationship with the girls had changed and become difficult after the divorce. She had endless discussions with them about the separation and why it had been the right decision (or, in her daughters’ opinion, the wrong decision).
Stephanie felt lonely and overwhelmed, and her daughters felt angry and wanted their father back.
When I met Stephanie for the first time in her house, she told me that she wanted to make bigger changes in her home which – she hoped – would make life easier again.
Stephanie wanted to declutter, massively, and as quickly as possible.
When she took me on a tour through her home, I understood: The kitchen, the living room, and especially the home office and the basement were really ‘stuffed’, up to the ceiling.
Stephanie wanted to ‘get rid of everything’ and asked me to order a skip and ‘just’ get the house cleared.
But then we had a longer conversation, and she changed her mind.
She began to see that the decluttering process could become a ‘healing’ process for herself, and hopefully also for her relationship with her daughters.
She now wanted to get the girls involved and asked me to organise the decluttering activities as a ‘team project’.
We decided that I would take the role of the ‘neutral’ organising expert who would treat Stephanie and her daughters as three ‘housemates’ with equal rights.
We invited her daughters to our next meeting.
When we all were sitting around the dinner table, I presented the plan:
Themain goal was to create a home in which each of them could feel relaxed and happy.
The basic requirement for achieving this goal was that each of them felt responsible for the creation and maintenance of the new order.
The bathroom, kitchen, and living room were declared as ‘shared spaces’ and the design, furnishings, decorations and contents of these rooms would be discussed between all of them. Everyone should make suggestions but also be willing to make compromises, if necessary.
The girls’ rooms were completely their responsibility. They were free to re-arrange their rooms if they wanted and they both got a budget to be used for any desired changes or renovations.
The basement was full of stuff nobody any longer wanted to keep and would be decluttered and organised together, over a long weekend.
An action plan and a time schedule had to be agreed on.
At the end of my presentation, nobody said anything and I got a bit nervous.
The success of this project depended completely on the willingness and motivation of the two girls to be part of the team. We didn’t have a plan B. Stephanie also looked nervous.
However, suddenly the girls both started to talk, at the same time. And they were as excited as we had hoped they would be! Yes, they wanted to be part of the decluttering/organising team!
We could get started!
Of course, during the decluttering process – which finally took 3 months – it wasn’t all ‘rainbows and daisies’ all the time.
We could only work on weekend days and in the very beginning it couldn’t go fast enough for Stephanie’s daughters.
After some working sessions, however, everyone’s motivation levels went down and we needed more frequent breaks with ice cream and burgers.
Also, the girls would have wanted to work on the redesign of their rooms first but the action plan determined that the basement and the shared spaces had priority. They didn’t like that.
It was actually a lot of fun for them to clear out the basement – most of the stuff ended up in a skip we had organised. But we took the time to sort everything with care and carried a lot of still useful items to a charity shop. The girls also collected some of the things that had belonged to their father in 2 boxes and took them along to him. (Which he very much appreciated.)
However, the decluttering and reorganisation especially of the kitchen and the living room required many – sometimes very heated – discussions and arguments. Yes, and some difficult-to-digest compromises.
The biggest fun came up, of course, when everyone started to declutter and re-arrange their rooms.
Stephanie, too, enjoyed this part. Yes, she shed some tears when she cleared up the master bedroom. But she took all the time she needed to find out what was really important to her now and how she wanted to feel in this – her! – room in the future.
She felt excited when she then started to design the room completely according to her very personal ideas and needs.
We all agreed that the ‘after-divorce-decluttering project’ was a success:
We had achieved the main goal: The house was clutterfree and freshly organised, with open spaces and clearly defined activity areas.
However, even more important was that Stephanie and her daughters had successfully ‘decluttered’ their relationship, too.
Everyone had been part of the team and had contributed to its success. Stephanie and her daughters were more aware now of their respective strengths and weaknesses, and they all felt responsible for what happened in their home.
Stephanie no longer felt lonely – she felt closely connected to her daughters.
