My clutter is getting me down, help!

July 11, 2013 at 8:01 pm | Posted in Daily Life | 14 Comments
Tags: How to declutter, how to get rid of stuff

We just returned home after two months of living in a rented house and bunking with my lovely parents whilst we had the downstairs of our house renovated.  It was a mini adventure.

One of the biggest things I noticed was how liberating it was to live with the bare essentials – especially while we were in unfurnished rented accommodation.  A bit like indoor camping.  Indoor camping with wine and hot water.

The kitchen drawers contained the must have items – can opener, sharp knife, wooden spoon and a couple of forks.  A few plates, bowls and mugs, a pan and not much else.  No clutter.  No whizzy dicers and slicers and certainly not four different colanders which all achieve exactly the same thing.

Likewise, the bedroom – we lived with five pairs of pants and three pairs of socks each.  Plenty.  One hair product – amazing how many different styles mousse can facilitate – no serums, cremes, de-frizzers or fuzzers.

And the ultimate freedom – no stuff.  No piles of clothes waiting to be ironed, sent to the charity or squeezed back into – one day.  No broken toys waiting to be repaired or binned.  No unanswered bills or invites.  No unread newspapers, unpolished shoes or unloved gym backs.  Everything we had with us was needed, utilised and looked after.

Now, we’re home, and chaos has descended once more.

Yesterday my husband announced that he had taken a huge box of books to the charity shop, and a rice cooker and baby bath seat to the tip.  The tip! I felt a sharp volt of electricity shock through my body as a I processed the loss.  Then I collected myself and realised he’d actually done me a huge favour.

I was going to sell the books in batches by author or genre.  When?!

I was going to Gumtree the bath seat.  When?!

I was going to car boot the rice cooker.  Or start using it again.  When?!

It’s hard to let go of stuff, but it can start to take over your life.

You go up to bed and see the pile ‘to be sorted’ on the landing.  You visit the garage and the boxes to car boot (that didn’t sell on the previous two attempts) are there to taunt you.  You go up to the loft and all of the clothes that no longer fit tease you for being slightly rounder than you once were.

Why do we hang onto it all?!  Even if we made a few pennies from gradually flogging it over time, is it worth the little torturous jibes each time we walk past the overwhelming towers of unwanted crap?!

What would you do?  If you say bin the lot, I promise, I shall….. a bit at a time….

On a closing note, on reading the title of this post, my husband proclaimed the answer to my dilemma – ‘stop buying sh*t’.  I wonder if he has a point…. No, he doesn’t.

Image courtesy of Stock Xchng