As we go through life, we collect things: ideas, people and stuff. Sometimes these collections get out of control and can sap our most precious resources: our time, our money and our energy. The solution is to declutter and eliminate some of those collections, and it can be difficult when those collections have meaning or value. How do you start to declutter? In this episode of Small Scale Life, Julie and I work through a number of Minimalism Decluttering Questions and Answers from our own experience in the trenches of our storage locker, garage, basement, kitchens and junk drawers.
To listen to this podcast about Decluttering Questions and Answers, please click on the link below or download the mp3.
Decluttering Questions and Answers
Do you feel stressed out? Does it seem that there is too much noise and information out there? How do you sort through what is important and what is not? In today’s fast paced world, there are incredible demands on our most precious resources: our time, our energy and our money. As we go through life, we seem to collect more and more stuff. We have closets, basements, garages and storage lockers full of stuff! Do we need it all? How can you decide what to keep and what to give away?
Julie and I talked about Minimalism in two previous podcasts in 2018. You can find those podcasts on the Podcast page, and here are links to those episodes as well:
Before we recorded this Decluttering Question and Answer show,Julie and I asked our Small Scale Life Facebook followers what questions they had about Minimalism and Decluttering, and they responded with their own questions.
We pulled from our own experiences in the trenches with our moves and downsizing over the past couple years. Ask yourself:
Do you have junk?
Yes, we know you do! Well, its time to embrace that chaos and make some decisions. Grab 4 bins and decide where those things will go:
- Bin 1 – Keep it
- Bin 2 – Give it to someone in need
- Bin 3 – Throw it away
- Bin 4 – Don’t make a decision today, but make one soon (i.e., in a week). If you don’t use those items in Bin 4, it’s time for them to leave!
Where Should You Start?
You do not start working out by running a marathon. You have to ease into these things or you will bonk out (i.e., crash and burn, or in plain English, never clean get rid of the junk). You don’t want to get stressed out over those 15 cheese spreaders, do you? In other words, don’t start decluttering with the gifts or heirlooms from your grandparents!
Just like the Dom100Project (my own healthy lifestyle journey), you have to be consistent and you have to start low and slow. Start somewhere easy! It’s like walking around the block: enough to get your heart rate up and get you in the game.
A great place to start is your junk drawer. We know you have at least one….maybe two….or three (yes, your office desk might have a junk drawer). Start with one of those drawers and go through it. Make decisions: eliminate the extra pens, give the locks (with keys) to someone, get the envelopes of seeds in your seed vault. Make decisions and move forward. Don’t look back!
Once you complete this project, you might want to take the other two junk drawers. You could even crank it up a notch and try to declutter your kitchen utensils. Just do us a favor: go low and slow. Take one thing at a time!
Putting It All Together
Remember: enjoy the process! You are taking the first steps towards breaking the cycle and your dependency on STUFF! This is a really exciting time, and you can do it. Just deal with one item at a time, and soon you will have less stuff crowding your space in your living space and your mind.
You can do it! You’ve got this!
Feel free to ask questions or share your story as a comment to this post, on the Contact Us page, or at realsmallscalelife [at] gmail [dot] com.