The challenge to de-clutter

Do you follow the old Russian proverb that says “Keep a thing for seven years and it’s bound to come in handy”? Or are you just too lazy to get rid of things that will never be of any use at all? Maybe you need some tips on “de-cluttering”!

Could you limit yourself to 100 things?

That was the aim set for himself in 2007 by Dave Bruno, an American who put forward the “100 Thing Challenge”. He reckoned that he could live a perfectly fulfilled life by only owning 100 personal items, and his challenge was to cut his possessions to that number within a year and not increase it in following years.

Personally I would find that impossible – I own far more than a hundred books to start with, and I certainly don’t propose to get rid of any of them! The prospect of living in a book-less home is not one that fills me with any sort of desire, but I appreciate that some people do manage to exist without books.

I would also be interested to know what you count as a personal item. Dave Bruno did not include household items such as furniture, crockery or cutlery, on the grounds that these belonged to the family as a whole and not to him personally, but he did include the tools in the shed that he had acquired for his own use, even though other family members might use them from time to time.

Also, if you set yourself this challenge you would have to be sensible about what counts as an “item”. For example, your set of paintbrushes that you use for your art hobby would have to count as a single item, otherwise you would very soon exceed your limit if each brush counted against your total.

I think you would have to agree your parameters before you started this exercise, should you be tempted to do so. Even so, it would be a tough assignment for most people.

But why would you want to do this anyway?

The aim is to lead a clutter-free life in which you are not surrounded by things that you simply do not need and never will. Of course, you wouldn’t want to do this if your life is enhanced by collecting things, such as antiques or (in my case) books, but you might still want to de-clutter from items that are not part of your deliberate collection and simply get in the way.

Even without setting a specific target, which is what Dave Bruno did, you can still achieve a great deal by going about the exercise in a systematic way. So what you need is a plan!

A plan for de-cluttering

One way of going about this is to tackle one room at a time and simply clear it of all its contents. This can be done on a fine day when everything can be taken outside the house and the room in question left bare of everything except the basic furniture. There is a psychological reason for doing this, which is that once an item is outside the house you need to make a conscious decision to take it back inside. This is very different from the situation of “leaving things where they are” because you can’t be bothered to face up to the possibility of ditching them!

You can then divide everything you have taken outside into three piles, labelled “keep”, “dump” and “donate” (which might also mean “sell”). The latter two piles will clearly be differentiated by whether you consider the items to be completely useless or potentially useful to somebody other than you. You might also want to split your “keep” pile between items that are going to go back where they came from and those that have been in the wrong place and should be moved to a different room.

You will probably want to adopt a rule of thumb to help you decide what to keep and what to dump or donate/sell. You might consider that, unlike the old Russians mentioned above, non-use for a year is enough to make the difference.

Having made your decisions you should take action to make sure that the discarded items do not come back into the house. They can either go straight to the dump or be put into carefully labelled boxes which are then sealed and stored outside the house until they can go to their final destinations. Only the “keeps” must be given continued house room!

Later action

Although the suggested plan is a “one off”, conducted one room at a time, it is also necessary to change your future habits, in two specific ways.

One is to make regular surveys of your belongings and decide if your “use within a year” rule has been broken. You should also move items that have got into the wrong rooms since your previous de-clutter.

The other thing, once you have adopted a good habit in this respect, is not to let things get back to how they were. You might also want to make a rule to the effect of “one thing in, one thing out” – this will make you think twice before splashing out on some new gizmo or falling victim to an impulse purchase.

Could you do it?

I am merely putting forward these thoughts as a possible scenario should you want to live a less cluttered life, and I have to confess to not having gone down this route myself – yet! As I said above, I do love my books and I therefore love the degree of clutter that they bring. I am also reluctant to discard items that have sentimental value or which bring back memories of happy times in the past and people who are no longer part of my life.

On the other hand, I do tend to hang on to things that really could go, and approaching the problem systematically could be of value. However, I have a feeling that my “keep” pile would be a lot bigger than the other two!

What about you?

© John Welford