My first step - declutter

The book that started everything

Shortly after my mother-in-law’s death I read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. It was all the rage and when I saw the title of the book I immediately thought “that’s for me”.

At the time I read it, I didn’t really connect my desire to read the book with the bigger picture stuff that I had been thinking about.

I just knew that I felt as though I was drowning in an overwhelming mess at home and that I wanted to do something about it.

The book was small and easy to read. I finished it off quickly and immediately got to work.

Marie Kondo’s premise was simple: tidy big, tidy once (over a maximum 6 month period) and never have to tidy again. I was skeptical, but I was ready to give it a go. Her system is this:

• Declutter a single category at a time: clothes, books, paperwork, komono (miscellaneous everything else) and sentimentals.
• Complete each category before moving on to the next
• Hold each belonging in each category in your hand and ask yourself “does this spark joy”? If it does not, discard it in whatever manner is most suitable
• Make a space for everything else and ensure that you always replace the belonging in that space

“Awesome”, I thought. I can do that.

I started with my own clothes and soon I had four bags for donation and two bags for the rubbish.

Slowly slowly I began working my way through the rest of the house and the categories.

Paperwork, which I was dreading, really wasn’t as bad as I was expecting (although two months after completing that category I still haven’t got around to the shredding).

Toys, on the other hand, was not only as bad as I had envisaged, it was worse.

I still have a long way to go. I have completed most of the major categories but I still have some of the miscellaneous category to complete (like DVDs, CD’s, random cables etc) and the sentimental items.

But I immediately began to see the results. I started to feel more relaxed. I had less work to do, more time to myself.

With this first step my life began to change and I began to look for even more ways I could change my life.

My first step was about stuff. Excess possessions. Decluttering.

Yours might be about technology. Less time at work. Doing one thing at a time.

We all have to take a first step to get started and it might just change your life.  

The trigger

Every journey has a trigger and then a first step.

For me the trigger wasn’t about my distractions, my relationship with my family or even about whether I was using my time on earth in the way that I would have liked.

For me, the trigger was twofold – my supremely out of control house and the sad passing of my mother-in-law.  

I’d been aware for a very long time that the state of the house was having a negative impact on my state of mind.

I was becoming sick and tired of always feeling out of control because of the state of the house. It was untidy and unclean. No matter how much I tidied, the house would be messy again within hours. You couldn’t see the kitchen table or the benches for the amount of stuff just lying about on them. There were clothes and detritus all over the place, in every room. I couldn’t see the bed or the bedroom floor under all the clothes everywhere. Who knows if they were clean or dirty. The bedroom had become downright hazardous at night time as I tried to navigate my way out of the room in the dark to the baby’s room. The family room could barely be played in because of the volume of stuff in there. The bookcases and drawers were full of miscellaneous stuff that had no other place to go and just collected. The more stuff there was lying about, the more stuff seemed to accumulate.

One of the most frustrating effects of this excess of stuff was just how often I would lose things. Nothing seemed to have its own space. Everything ended up anywhere it felt and as a result I could never find what I needed and needlessly spent valuable time looking for lost objects like keys and phone and being stressed about it.

I felt unhappy at home and would try to go about to avoid the mess, only to get that sinking feeling again as I walked up the front steps at the thought of the mess that was going to assault my senses as I opened the front door.

I was increasingly aware that we were spending way too much money and I suspected that a lot of that stuff was stuff that I didn’t need. Yet, when I left the house to avoid the stuff, I usually ended up at the shops spending more money on more stuff that we didn’t need.

Here’s the thing. I have always been aware that my environment impacts greatly on my sense of well being. The more stuff I had, the messier my house was. The messier my house, the more stressed I was. The more stressed I was, the more overwhelmed I felt. The more overwhelmed I felt, the more I needed to find an escape. The more escaping I did, the more stuff I seemed to accumulate. It was a vicious cycle.