How to declutter for good

It was the 18th November 2015 when I decided it was time that a self-employed woman in her thirties needed to stop living like a student who’s just survived freshers’ week.

Ladies and gentlemen – my bedroom:

Or, as my boyfriend aptly dubbed it, ‘The Floordrobe’.

Enough was enough. My office and sewing room were in similar states and the physical chaos was beginning to feel suffocating. I don’t know about you, but I can’t relax or be productive and creative in messy surroundings. For someone who runs a blog and a business from my home, this ain’t good.

I felt like I was spending most of my free time tidying or doing housework and yet at the end of every week I was chin deep in clothes and unfinished to-do lists, with a kitchen sink full of dishes.

It finally occurred to me that I had Too Much Damn Stuff and it was time for a long-overdue audit.

Turns out I owned nearly 50 pairs of shoes! On an average week, I wore maybe four of them! A couple had actual MOULD on them! Superb!

I have one pair of legs, that spend about 87% of their time inside trousers. Yet here we are, looking at my eighteen pairs of tights.

As well as hoarding, I wasn’t storing things efficiently. Putting things away involved clothes and shoes simply being stuffed and flung into drawers and cupboards.

Everything was out of sight, rooms were technically ‘tidied’, but I never achieved that calm, in-control sense of everything being where it should be.

Over the next six weeks, I went methodically through everything (E V E R Y T H I N G) I owned, sorting it all – clothes, shoes, underwear, make-up, jewellery, books – into three categories:

KEEP

The things I use or wear all the time; the things I love.

“I’d wear it if…” This was for anything I’d use or wear tomorrow if only for a repair or alteration.

OUT

The instant ‘no’ s! Too big, too small, hideous, never wear or use it, worn out.

This group was subject to a further audit – but more on that later…

MAYBE

Anything I couldn’t make an immediate decision on.

Needed to try it on, didn’t hate it but didn’t love it, forgot I owned it, bit ‘meh’ but useful for work..

One by one, a storage area/item category at a time (eg shoes; the t-shirt drawer), I carried out a simple three step process:

This obviously doesn’t include the keeps that needed mended or altered. More on what I’ll do with those and the ‘Out’ and ‘Maybe’ piles later.

I was about four weeks in to The Great Life Laundry of 2015/16 when the internet – or at least the corner of it where I hang out – suddenly exploded with chatter about decluttering, most of it inspired by Marie Kondo and her ‘KonMari’ method.

The “professional cleaning consultant with a three-month waiting list” has just followed up best-seller The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up with Spark Joy.

Her methodology seems to be based on two key concepts:

1. If you don’t truly love it or need it; if it doesn’t ‘spark joy’ – out it goes.

2. The stuff you keep should be organised so it's easy to find and easy to put away.

Reading about Marie’s work and her passion for the power of tidying, I felt prophetic, vindicated and Very On Trend Indeed. Perhaps if I had stumbled across her books sooner, my decluttering efforts wouldn’t have eaten a month and a half of my life, but I found the process cathartic, so no regrets.

While some might think it’s ridiculous to describe ‘tidying up’ as life-changing, what I did during that six-week purge was more than just a nice spring clean; it has already led to a complete change in my mindset, behaviour and energy.

Taking control of my environment in this way – really thinking about the things I live with and their place in my life – has been transformative. This pro-active, getting-things-done approach is spilling over into my work, my creative projects and my personal life, and it feels great.

So – with my keeps chosen and carefully stored so everything could be seen at a glance, I still had two categories to process.

The Maybes

Step 4 mostly involved trying on clothes to see if they still fit or if I still liked or suited them. If you put objects (eg books, ornaments, CDs) in the ‘Maybe’ pile, I believe you’ve already made your decision.

If you really are struggling to make a decision, a good tip is to use the ‘one year box’. Put all your maybes into a box, store the box somewhere out of sight – the attic for example – and set a reminder on your phone to check the box again in exactly twelve months from now.

Anything still in it then needs to be chucked, donated or stashed away in a memento box if it has sentimental value.

For clothes you can’t make a decision about, use the coathanger test. After a year, you will have been through every season and hopefully most occasions that you might be ‘saving’ clothes for – so no excuses!

The Outs

Most of the ‘Out’ pile was donated to charity, however a significant amount of the clothing ended up in a box in my sewing room, beside my box of ‘Mends and Alterations’ from the keeps.

But that’s for another post – watch this space…

Have any of you had a major purge of possessions or read any of the KonMari books? Leave a comment and let me know if you have any tips and tricks!