You know the worst kind of clutter? The piles in my house that are actually other people’s stuff. Not that I don’t have my own clutter. I do. I totally do. But for some reason, my own clutter doesn’t get on my nerves nearly as much as other people’s clutter gets on my nerves. First of all, I can usually recognize the reason/excuse for …
decluttering
Room to Move – Room to Live
Want to know why this photo makes me happy? These things do not belong in there. And yet . . . they fit. Life happened and we needed new floors. Getting new floors meant moving my china cabinet. Moving my china cabinet meant getting my china out of it. Last summer, I was leaving the country at the time when the first …
A Decluttering Story – When I Have to Do This Before I Can Do That
The “I have to do this before I can do that” decluttering frustration is real. This frustration used to make me question the point of even trying to declutter. Trying to clean up my house felt so complicated. My five step decluttering process helps me break through decluttering paralysis. Today, I’m sharing what the decluttering process …
Cleaning up the Craft Room – A Reader’s Story
I loved this recent story shared by Andrea over on my Facebook page: I have a craft room where clean up has been neglected for a couple years, and where throwing "it" in became necessary. Surely I needed an elaborate plan and back up helpers to ever see carpet in there again. What Normal Friend could I call so I could figure out how to …
Why (and How) I Don’t Use Emotions to Declutter
I’ll start by explaining why I don’t use emotions as part of my decluttering process. I can’t use emotions to declutter because I’m emotional. I’d keep everything. Every baby sock, every book, every bottle of expired pain reliever. No matter if the baby sock was already too small when my bigfoot kid came out of the womb. That’s exactly …
Out of House, Out of Mind
It's decluttering season, so I'm decluttering. Which has me thinking about decluttering. As someone who has arrived at a bizarre place in life where I make a living thinking about decluttering, I think about it a LOT. A whole lot. Recently, I've been thinking about some brain benefits of decluttering. I'm not talking about major …
The Worst Decluttering Strategy Ever
Today, I’m sharing what is (in my personal-turned-professional opinion) the absolute worst decluttering strategy ever. For me. Don’t separate those two things. The thing about it being the absolute worst, and the part about it being the worst for me. I finally started making real, lasting, bigtime decluttering progress when I stopped …
Why I Don’t Host Decluttering Challenges
"Decluttering Challenges" are all the rage at this time of year. I get it. Bloggers know that this is the time when organizing-related website traffic surges. People are ready to declutter. The post-Christmas mess combines with time off work and excitement about changes in a new year, and decluttering fever hits. A decluttering challenge …
How to Stop Cluttering (or Shopping) When You’re Overwhelmed by All the Stuff
This is going to seem like a stretch for a moment, but I promise to give you a surefire way to stop shopping, even if it’s a habit, when you’re ready to declutter because all the stuff in your home overwhelms you. To get there, though, I need to talk about soy sauce. As a young child, I loved soy sauce. I wanted to eat soy sauce on …
