How Clearing Clutter Can Help You Find Freedom and Happiness After 60
I came across this quote about clearing clutter on – of all places – a medical website, and it struck me as the perfect way to look at the “too much stuff” conundrum I’m still struggling with.
Peter Walsh, an organizational expert and former host of The Learning Channel’s Clean Sweep show, said about the deleterious effects of having too much clutter in your home: “If you have so much stuff it drags you into the past or pulls you into the future, you can’t live in the present.”
Past and Future: A Great Way to Think About Clearing Clutter
That’s a great way to analyze your clutter, as far as I’m concerned. It allows for having a variety of possessions, for one thing. It’s not advice about how to strip your belongings down to only the essentials. Instead, it concentrates on the draggy effect of being surrounded by too many things that remind you of times gone by or tasks that you haven’t done.
This way of looking at clutter is new for me, and I like it. The wildly popular piece of advice, often quoted to me from that mega-selling Magic of Tidying Up book, about holding each of my possessions in my hand and seeing if it brings me joy, just doesn’t do it for me.
First, I don’t have enough time on this earth to touch each individual item that I own, one by one, and commune with it to determine its joy value. Does this include each pen in my drawer? Each greeting card in my stash? Each pair of earrings? Each measuring cup? Ugh.
Second, there are many possessions I own that I already know do not bring me joy – or that in fact bring me sadness – but I wouldn’t part with them for anything in the world. Things that were my mother’s. The leaning-to-the-side vase that my son made for me a zillion years ago. Pictures of my wedding the first time I was married. They’re important to me. They’re sentimental. I’m keeping them.
And I’m not a hoarder, by the way, in case you’re wondering. But I do have too much stuff that’s dragging me down. And now I have a different way of setting my mind to tackling it.
On the Hunt For “To Do” Items That Pull Me into the Past or Future
Now I’m on a quest to survey my home for all the “to do” items – and often stacks of items – that are placed around my home. I admit there are a lot of them. They are indeed a source of bad feelings. I’m ready to concentrate on just those things about which I’ve said, maybe a thousand times, “I’m going to [sort, do, read, file] that.”
It might be organizing piles of books, many of which I know I don’t really need to keep. It might be needlepoint that I meant to do for my children that now I plan to do in preparation for grandchildren. It might be photographs I intend to sort meticulously, labeling each by date and event.
Clearing Clutter Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Throwing Away
I can face these things that make me feel bad with a different intention now – to bring them into the present, or banish them from my daily living situation. For that collection of books, I’m going to tackle them with a couple of bags, with the goal of filling those bags with the books I can admit I don’t need to keep. Off to the Friends of the Library they’ll go. Then I’ll organize the rest of them. A bit of banishment, plus a bit of moving items from “I’ve got to do something with those” into an organized part of my present-day life.
The handicraft projects I’ll either give away or store with my gifts stash. (I always have a stash of things I buy for loved ones whenever I find things I know they’ll like; I hold them until the next birthday or holiday.) That way I don’t feel that I need to complete those projects now. I’ll complete each of them when the time is right for giving them as gifts. They’ll move from “I have to finish those projects” to “Gifts ready for giving.” When an event arises for one of those needlepoint projects, I’ll be motivated to complete one.
The photos I’m putting into boxes by era based on my life and my children’s lives, and I’m not going to sort them down into exact sequence or dates as I had planned to do. I don’t need to create the Library of Congress here; I just need to organize an easy-to-navigate collection of photos that I can enjoy when I want to look at them, and that my children can look through whenever the mood strikes them. They don’t need to find “First Day of School 1991” or “Christmas 1987” or “Halloween 1993.” I think “Kids’ Baby Years” or “Kids’ Middle School Years” will suffice. That I can get done.
It’s Not Really About the Stuff, It’s About the Demands You Place on Yourself
Conquering too much stuff is about letting go a little, being more reasonable about what can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time and lowering the sometimes-ridiculous standards you’ve set for yourself.
I like this new way of tackling clutter. It will bring me one step closer to the feeling of freedom and possibilities that I long for – the idea that, hey, if I wanted to pack up and move one day, that would not be an insurmountable task. And freedom and possibilities are what life is about, right?
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Have you thought about clearing the clutter in your house this year? Do you have more than a few items in your house that make you feel that you haven’t accomplished what you’re supposed to? Do you ever think about how clutter might be restricting your choices in life? Please join the conversation.
Tags Downsizing Your Life
Marie Kondo’s question “Does this bring me joy?” often helps me make a decision when I declutter. Also, I find it helpful to think of Matt Paxton’s show Legacy List: what are the few things I want to pass down to my adult children to tell the story of our family? Have I written down why these things are important to our family’s story? I also like something I read in the Swedish death cleaning book; the author keeps certain things because she wants them while she is alive, but has marked them for disposal once she passes away–that way, her children don’t have to feel bad about discarding them.
I’m currently decluttering my items. The hardest things for me to let go of are books. I’ve been buying, and borrowing, e-books. They don’t feel the same as “real” books. I’ve asked my kids what, if anything, of mine they’d want to keep. There’s not much but the things they want have meaning to them. Right now, my husband and I live in a big house with plenty of storage. He has a horrible time getting rid of ANYTHING- his stuff leaks into areas I’ve declutterred from my stuff. I keep in mind how difficult it was to clear out his parent’s home. My brother and I each picked a few items we wanted from our parent’s already uncluttered home then donated or sold via an auction house, everything else. I don’t want to put my kids through the time, effort, and difficulty of having to “clean up” after me. It’s a bit at a time of “Am I using/enjoying _______or is it something I don’t use/enjoy?
I am a reader but when I got rid of 85% of my stuff in 2019, I did get rid of almost all of my books. If I want to reread a book I can go to the library.
I get annoyed with my brother and his wife holding on to loads of stuff. Their attic is full of old junk and my sister in law even keeps a trunk of clothes from the 70s she’d have to lose about 8 stones to fit into. Eventually things get moved out of the attic but only down to the garden shed, which is also filled to the brim with junk. Visiting means moving a pile of things from the sofa to be able to sit down so I’ve stopped going.
I stopped collecting things when I had a house that suffered a serious escape of water when I was away on 10 days holiday. The clean up and renovation were horrific (it had to be renovated twice, took 2 years and we lived in cheap hotels and temporary accommodation for a while). It really taught me a lesson about having too many things, but unfortunately many items were sentimental things like wedding photos that could never be replaced. I now regularly go through things like no longer worn clothing and homeware items, they go to the local Red Cross. When I moved overseas I donated the good quality furniture from our office to a charity that teaches British Sign Language, they’d moved to new premises and were able to use it furnish their teaching room and manager’s office.
One thing I have been putting off for years is going through 3 boxes of things that came from my father’s house. He died in 2005, unfortunately a year later I found out I was seriously ill and needed 2 years of treatment so they were just put into storage. I’ve decided it’s time to handle it now.
Thank you for sharing your strategies. I too have been decluttering for about the last 10 years now because I got divorced and moved from a 4 bedroom home to apartment rentals with 3 BR, then 2 BR and now 1 BR in an over 55 apartment. Plus I was a teacher for over 45 years and had all my teaching materials and books. Each move I got rid of more to any organization that would accept them. (clothes, books, figurines, kitchen items etc). When an organization didn’t accept them, I gave old towels and blankets to local animal shelters and old comforters to an organization that recycles textiles. I also found I had a lot of duplicates of papers, bills, medical info etc that I took to a local shredding company that employs students from a local vocational program.
It is an overwhelming task with lots of old memories and you have to be ready to deal with those feelings. Over this last year I have continued to declutter and now feel free in the sense of being able to move around in my small apartment and also knowing I don’t have any storage units anywhere that I previously did. It is a sense of freedom both emotionally and physically and financially if you have storage units. I held on to a few collections of things I had collected in my 30’s thinking that I would pass them on to my children who are 35 and 40. As you probably know, they don’t want them so out they went.
I took a number of years to get rid of my clutter from all areas of life but it is a freeing feeling. I also had in the back of my mind was the question “Who is going to go through all this junk after I pass?” I had to do that after my parents passed and it took forever and was exhausting!!
So decluttering is individualized. Mine worked by downsizing over a number of years, but now I feel that I have what I need and the space to move around in my apartment instead of moving sideways like a crab to get around things. The task seems overwhelming at times, but if you start and continue in small increments, you will find that it can be done.
The last task I have to declutter is going through about 5 chocked full under the bed containers of pictures over 50 years. I’ll start doing that as I watch tv at night.
Just start with things that you know you can part with and others will be able to use and you can get going from there. I found a couple of organizations that picked up from my home (Veteran’s, Big Brother Big Sister and sometimes Salvation Army) so that got me started.
Thank you for this article. I downsized from my house to an apartment and now I am moving into a basement suite with my youngest son, who is 25 years old. Sadly and probably, for the best, there is no storage and so I must declutter again. I liked what you said about holding onto things that reminds us of the past and then the things we need for the future so that we forget to enjoy the present moment! So true! Why am keeping cards from my first job!? Or why do I still have clothes from a decade ago that I don’t wear? High school memories that I can “carve down” a bit more would give me more space and I need to think about my son who is just starting to live his life! He does need a little more space to collect his stuff, don’t you think? I came into this world with nothing and I hope I leave all my things that I want to the people who are important and special to me before I leave:). Take care and thank you again!
Take pictures of what holds a special memory and give the item away.