Want to declutter your life in 2018? You have to let go of your excuses.
When I first started decluttering, I was full of excuses for why I had been holding onto certain items. The excuses flowed so freely, one might have wondered if I really even wanted to get rid of the clutter. It was as if every item I pulled off the dusty shelf was there for a reason. And while I’d just found it after years of not knowing it was there, my hoarder-logic told me EXACTLY why it was still in my life – and why it must remain.
Sound familiar?
A Rediscovery Process
The problem with going through boxes or dusty basement shelves is that there’s a rediscovery process. It’s why I don’t fully agree with the KonMari “spark joy” Method of minimizing, because sometimes when you rediscover something, you may mistake the nostalgic feeling for joy. But let’s be real, half the time we don’t know what we’re going to find when we start decluttering! It can be a rather exciting process going through your stuff! Unfortunately, it can also be completely unproductive if you’re not mentally prepared for the challenge.
By that, I mean you have to be ready to truly let go, and it’s easier said than done. Letting go doesn’t just refer to physical items, it refers to mental attachments as well.
Last weekend, I chatted with a couple about their desire to declutter a walkout basement. They said they couldn’t make a dent, no matter how many items were removed from their home. When I asked why they felt that way, the response was:
“You have to understand, we grew up with parents who lived through the depression… We were taught to keep everything!”
This is an excuse. It’s totally valid, but it’s still an excuse. If you want to declutter and live more minimally when it comes to your stuff, you have to stop living in the past. Your excuses won’t propel you forward, they are roadblocks. No one is making you declutter, it’s a choice you made because you wanted to change. So change.
Decluttering excuses come in many forms:
I still have this _______ because…
- “I might need it one day”
- “I’m planning to fix it”
- “It was a gift”
- “It was my grandmothers”
- “I used to love it”
- “It’s still perfectly good”
- “It’s a waste to get rid of it”
- “I paid a lot of it”
You get the idea. I’ve said each one of these excuses more times than I can count. All they did for me was prolong the change I so desperately was seeking. So if you also want change in your life – to live more meaningfully and more minimally… Then make no more excuses. No more justifications about why you have something. If you don’t need it, don’t love it, and don’t use it, then it’s time to let it go.
So what’s your excuse?
22 comments
Starting my declutter, reduce, organize path to a simplistic life…grandparents items I know will be the potential toughest to deal with.
I also struggled with items from Grandparents (and Great Grandparents!). I recommend saving those for last so you don’t exhaust yourself with those harder decisions. Good Luck! 🙂
Same here, items that were gifted by my grandparents, I don’t like them, I don’t use them, but I can’t get rid of them because I don’t know how. Some of them were expensive, with my name on it, I can’t just put them in the trash or give them :/ If anyone has a solution, please share !
Agathe,
I was gifted many figurines during my childhood years from my family, they are still at my parent’s house because I don’t want them. If my parents ever decide they don’t want them either I will be in a similar boat. They were expensive and meant to be “heirlooms”, however I have never wanted them and it is very doubtful my kids will want them either. I’m not sure what I would do as throwing them out or donating would seem wasteful. I have come to realize though that if I held onto everything that I or my family deemed wasteful to get rid of, I would still be stuck in the messed up rut I was in before minimizing. My kids and myself are much happier with our lives now that our house isn’t so crammed with stuff that I had guilt attached to. Don’t know if that helps at all, but I hope it does!
Tamara, if you are willing to take the time to turn them into money, you’ll probably find lots being sold on eBay! Collectors are still collecting. In case you haven’t done eBay before, my tip is to not just check what’s listed, but check whether your items are recently SOLD listings. Then you can see what they’re actually selling for, not what people want to sell them for. Also, you may be able to find an eBayer to sell things for you. The typical commission is 60% for you, 40% for them, which is well worth it considering they do all the work. Most won’t take items worth much less than $100, I think, but it may depend on your area.
What you wrote about having to rediscover your things first just to be able to declutter them later is so on point.
I often have to live with these items for a while before I get a true sense of if I actually like them. At first I was incredibly sentimental about everything I rediscovered, now a few years in and still decluttering it’s like I have a trained, sharpened eye and mind about what I like and will keep in the end, so the process has become faster but it’s nonetheless a process of letting go that takes time.
Thank you for writing these elucidating posts on minimalism, they always express what I feeling when I go through the letting go..
“living with them” for a while longer has helped me as well! Like you said, I’m a lot better now at realizing what won’t make the final cut, but early on it helped to let items into my life again so the excitement of discovery could wear off. This is great advice tho, thanks for sharing! 🙂
Hi all,
When ever I give a gift, I always tell the person that if it isn’t a blessing it is a curse and to get rid of it – donate to a charity – give to another family member or friend. I wouldn’t want anyone stuck with a item they don’t want and think of me every time ;-).
For those expensive but unwanted heirloom items from grandparents…think about selling them and donating the money in their name to a cause that was important to them. In this way the things are not just thrown out or donated without purpose. A worthy cause has been furthered and you have honored their memory and generosity while avoiding clutter in your home.
Christy – I love this idea! Thanks for sharing!
Interesting about grandparents’ stuff being passed on. My grandparents have all passed on. Two passed away before I was born and one when I was a little girl. I don’t have anything from them or my great grandparents, just a few blurred photos. I knew and loved my mom’s mother however and I have managed to get a plate and a platter from her dish sets. Nothing fancy, but they are treasures to me…I have since found the matching china that goes with the one plate I have that was her every day set. I have found them on kijiji here in Canada (similar to Craigslist in the US) and I’m so happy to have the collection, even though they aren’t really from her! It just feels good to know I have a little piece of something she used and enjoyed! Keep something that you know for a fact that your grandparent treasured, used or enjoyed. It doesn’t have to be a whole collection of things. Keep ONE figurine or doily or tool…You may be glad you did one day. My gosh, my husband has a knot of wood that his grandfather gave him on a walk in the woods with him one day when he was a little boy. It can be kept simple, but be meaningful and
speak volumes.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I too have a couple things from my grandparents that I don’t plan to let go – they have a ‘home’ where I can enjoy them and the memory they bring. But it took me a while to narrow it down to the things that I really cherished, vs keeping something just because it belonged to them. Your comment has made me feel lucky to have the choice. Take care Doris!
Take a picture of what you love and no longer use. If it’s an heirloom, you’ll get the same nostalgic feeling from the picture as you do from the item….
Great advice Brenda!
Oh goodness… the guilt about gifts is SO REAL. I don’t actually have so much trouble passing them on and donating them, but how would you (politely) ask a family member to stop giving you unwanted/unnecessary gifts?
I don’t know if it will work in your family, but our family has a group email address we use for general announcements, and I would use that to politely make my request to everyone at once. Find a poetic way to describe your wishes (ha) and then that person won’t feel singled out because you’re saying it to everyone. If you can’t do this by email, you’ll have to find a blanket policy to share with everyone verbally, and after telling a few others, say, “Aunt Daisy, I’ve been telling everyone that I’d like to have a gift policy for myself if they are willing to try it. I really appreciate gifts, but because of my limited space (or whatever), I’d like to request that people only give me _____ on special occasions. Also, is there anything you’d like to request when it’s my turn to get YOU a gift?” You could request only cards, or edible items, or gift cards, or that they use your Amazon wish list, or some other creative option (perhaps vouchers for time spent together).
My problem is that I’m kind of a minimalist, but my husband holds onto things and won’t let me go through his stuff. Ok, he’s let me go through his things and get rid of some items 3 times, but we’ve been together 10 years. The 3 times I went through his things, there was nothing of value. He didn’t care about any of that stuff. One time I actually went through 4 boxes in our storage that were taking up space that were full of old credit card bills and prescriptions. I want to be kind, but I’m having a hard time. I know this isn’t “Ask Rachel,” but I need the strength to be able to relate to him about his.
I probably can’t help, but I sympathize! Opposites still attract, eh? 🙂 I had a grandma who was the opposite of my grandpa who was a hoarder extraordinaire! He was a farmer with lots of land, and after 50 years of farming he had a veritable junkyard of things he never threw away. Other farmers would come there looking for spare parts, so then he had justification for all of it! I can’t even describe how bad (how big!) it was. His garage(s) and his areas of the house were the same. Both of them were affected by the Depression, but in different ways. She would rarely discard items, but she also didn’t acquire them. You couldn’t get her to shop for anything but food. But he couldn’t resist the clearance tables, and would always come home with all sorts of random things she then had to deal with. She would fuss, but he never changed and she just had to live with it. They did get along for 65+ years and it wasn’t all bad!
But to give you an idea of how crippling his problem was, I’d often clean up areas when I visited (I could sometimes get away with more as a grandkid), and once I went through some large cups of giveaway pens & pencils that were sitting on the kitchen counter, and sorted out all the ones that didn’t write. (I’d been frustrated too often by grabbing one out that was no good.) About one-third were no good. I showed them to Grandpa and asked if I could throw them away. He wouldn’t let me!! I had to leave them in their own cup on the counter next to the others. We have to understand this is a sort of sickness. 🙂
With that said, sometimes you can be sneaky about things that truly have no value, and throw out one per day or a few per week…if it’s things you’re 100% sure will never be missed. I could have done that with the pens but it never occurred to me that Grandpa would be so irrational! I know better now, and after observing others who really don’t know what’s in their boxes or bags of random junk, I have no scruple in helping them (though it always depends on your exact situation and relationship). Trash is trash, wherever you find it! Some people say “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” and although you still have to be careful and know how far to go, I’ve lived with a lot of messy people who were ultimately thankful for the help. They want to be better but don’t have the skills. Also remember, though, that if you do it for them, they aren’t learning anything.
I heard another minimalist on YouTube say that her husband didn’t even begin to seem affected till he had watched her for a year or so. If you just keep working on yourself, others may eventually get inspired. Marie Kondo addresses this specifically in her book!
Ugh, no paragraphs! They got stripped out after I pressed Submit. 🙁
Hello, wanted to comment here about the phrase “what I want to keep in the end”. I went through the tragic experience of dealing with my mother and late stage melanoma. She went downhill very fast and in the end I had to give all of her things away so that my brother and I could move her house onto the market quickly. Her finances were a total mess and it was necessary. So, in the end I gave away about $30,000.00 of her belongings. This is an extreme case but from experience I can tell you the objects are worthless compared to the time you can spend together. In the end my mother handed over her last object in hospice to me, her wedding ring. We came into this world with nothing and will leave with nothing. Those items that are sentimental from past generations… If you feel no attachment find people who will appreciate the items. For example I gave a vintage stamp collection to a friends sons, distributed jewelry amongst female family and friends, and household items to family and neighbors. Some friends resold items and I glad they made some money. So if you truly want change then it’s up to you to take the initiative and let go as much as possible. In the end after all my distribution a large amount did end up at Goodwill too. Keep as many reusable items moving and trash as little as possible because lastly “in the end” we need to leave a better planet behind than the one we came into for the next generations.
So true!!!
I definitely feel overwhelmed by the items I hold onto because of a strong emotional attachment. And there are also the piles of paper that are deferred decisions or incomplete actions or hold sentimental value or actually are important, but I’m like a little kid who says, “I don’t wanna” have to deal with it all. So I feel like a failure and get depressed. And then I research how others deal with too much stuff. Please….I’ve been doing this for years now. I am making progress, but it’s too slow for my liking.
What I’m finding out is that living with a self-pity mentality does me no good. However, when I get outright mad over the mess I am creating for my household, then a fire burns to get me moving into action. Is the answer that simple: GET MAD!!!! Let the anger muster the courage to produce the change that will give me the end result I am desiring??
M.A.D. = Must Always Declutter? Instead of Decluttering,I like to refer to it as Thinning Out The Herd. It makes a better mental picture for me. Although, it can also muster up images of dead cows. So….that’s not nice. Although some of my stuff is so aged and crackling and so dusty that I guess I can refer to it as decaying bovine. Treasure or Trash?! hhhmmmmm : )