Order from Chaos: De-Cluttering Your Life

We all need to do it now and then. Clean up our mess. Get our life in order, at least in some area of our life. Recently, I reorganized my office. I got a new office chair, a new desk, new filing cabinets. My assistant got my old desk, which meant we had to move everything, box everything, take books off shelves, clean off our desk tops, put paper from filing cabinets into boxes. For awhile, it felt like chaos and almost made me wish I hadn’t begun, but in the end, I was glad for the final result. The process made me get rid of what I no longer needed and have easier access to what I did, so I felt freer when it was all finished.

Too often, when we clean, we tend to hold onto things we don’t need. As I went through this process, I decided that anything I hadn’t looked at in the last year I had no need for. I discovered a lot of things I had no need for. And in my determination to de-clutter, I found it interesting to analyze why I still had some of the things I now decided to throw away.

For example, I threw out two lateral file drawers full of my course materials from my undergraduate and graduate years. I haven’t been in school for years and years, so why had I kept all that stuff and lugged it around with me? Perhaps it was just to show myself how much research I had done? Maybe it was to make me feel smart or to offer proof that if I could do all that research, I could do other things. But I realized I know what is in that research, and if I’ve forgotten it, it couldn’t be that important to me now. I don’t need all that stuff to prove I’m smart or that I have a degree.

I know a lot of people who hang onto stuff for sentimental purposes. I’ve seen adult children clean out their parents’ houses after their deaths and have to rent a storage unit for all their parents’ stuff they keep. They never use it or look at it, but because it was Mom’s or Dad’s or Grandma’s, they can’t part with it. Yes, sometimes those things bring back memories, but for the most part, your memories are in your heart. You don’t need the chipped dishes from the 1930s or the broken Christmas ornament Aunt Edna made to remember your loved ones.

I know I’m not the only person who fights with clutter or has a tendency to be a packrat. It’s still not too late to make a New Year’s Resolution to de-clutter your life, or too early to get started on your spring cleaning. A clean home or office or garage will help you to feel better. It’s almost like taking a feather duster to your brain to clear away the cobwebs. Following are some great tips I’ve picked up over the years for de-cluttering:

• Get a filing cabinet. File anything you are going to keep. If you’re not sure, have a “not sure” file you empty out periodically—at least every thirty days, by which time you’ll be sure. Now you will know where things are when you need them rather than searching through a stack of clutter for them.
• When you get your mail, take care of it right away—either throw it in the trash, or pay the bill, or reply to the mail before the day is over. That will keep you from misplacing anything.
• Cancel all your paper magazine/newspaper subscriptions. You can read most of these items online—I’ll bet you find you don’t go online to read most of them anyway, in which case you’re not really missing them and don’t need to re-subscribe.
• Turn your clothes hangers backwards in your closet. When you wear something, hang it back up the way you normally would. At the end of the year, anything still backwards means you don’t wear it so you can donate it to Goodwill.
• Scan your old photos that are falling out of those old clunky photograph albums. Save and label the photos on your computer and a backup disk. Toss the albums. If you can’t part with the photos, put them in a photo box that will be smaller and easier to organize. Scrapbooking might be fun, but they call it “scrap” for a reason.
• Bottom line: If you haven’t used it or wanted to use it in the last year, get rid of it.

Some of these things will be harder than others to do. Begin with the small and manageable feeling things. You don’t have to de-clutter the entire house today. Start with a cupboard, a cabinet, even just a desk drawer. Then do something every day or every week until you have the de-cluttered house of your dreams.