Do certain thoughts or emotions come into play when you start the decluttering process? “I have to save this for my kids”….”I can’t get rid of these clothes – I might lose(gain) weight”…..”I can’t throw away photographs” Let our experiences help you with your decluttering process.
3 rules to break while decluttering your space:
“I have to save this for my kids”
Like many of our clients, you may have boxes and boxes of items you are saving for your children. This may include: toys, books, stuffed animals, and of course, every school paper, art project, and award your child brought into your home. Guess what, “Your kids don’t want it”! We recently helped a client empty her mother’s house after her passing. The attic was FULL of all of the clients childhood toys and paraphernalia and yes, you guessed it, the client didn’t want any of it, let alone have the room to store it in her house. She also kept saying that her mother would be devastated if she knew what her daughter was now going through.
I can speak to this from first-hand experience. My college-age kids get bored after 5 minutes of looking at the few school papers I have saved for them. I recently read an article about this very topic called “Stuff It: Millenials nix their parents’ treasures“. So what’s a parent supposed to do with all that stuff? We recommend saving 1 file bin’s worth of papers and 1 60 quart size bin of “stuff” (i.e. favorite toys, awards, collectibles, etc.) per child. For more information, watch our video on how to make your child’s memory box.
“I can’t get rid of these clothes – I might lose(gain) weight”
We have many clients that call us because their closets are overflowing. They can’t find anything. Every morning they start their day stressed because of their closet. A major reason for this is because there are too many clothes stuffed into the closet, many of which do not even fit anymore. According to Nancy Howard, a blogger for Sparkpeople.com, “keeping clothes from yesterday is a symptom of living in the past” and “when your smaller size clothing doesn’t fit, you may feel like a failure, even when you’re making real progress”. When decluttering we recommend that if you haven’t worn something in the last year, it should be purged. You can also give us a call to help you make those tough decisions.
“I can’t throw away photographs”
Probably everyone you know, including yourself, has shoe boxes, bags, and envelopes full of printed photographs. Where did all of these pictures come from? Remember when you would take a roll of film to be developed and you were given two copies of every photo? Other possibilities include: taking more than 1 picture of the desired person, event, or thing and those dreaded school photos where you were given small, medium, large, and wallet sizes of each of your children for each grade. So what’s a person to do with all of those photos? Well, just as you would delete a bad picture or a duplicate picture from your phone, you should “delete” (i.e. dispose of) all of those unwanted printed photos. The same goes for photos of people that you do not know.
Kristy Holch, a consumer technology analyst gives the following advice pertaining to digital photos, but the same can be applied to printed ones too: “Review your photos, deleting duplicate and poor-quality shots. Get tough on people-free scenes and repetitive party pictures. Fight the instinct that says every photo is precious, In reality, bad photos are just clutter that makes it harder to find the good ones. If editing or decluttering that first big batch is overwhelming, tackle it in 15- to 20-minute increments until it’s done.” If decluttering yourself still seems too overwhelming, we specialize in photo organizing and scanning. We would love to get your photos organized.
So, are you ready to “break some rules”? If so, you are on your way to decluttering your space.