You hear a lot about de-cluttering these days.
Minimalism has been a major trend in the past few years and continues to preoccupy many people’s attention. The Japanese cleaning expert Marie Kondo now has a hit show on Netflix. It’s specifically based around her entering people’s homes and helping them to shed the clutter. On some level, many of us feel that it would do us a lot of good to “de-clutter”. But what does this really mean?
Well, here are a few suggestions about what “de-cluttering” really means. Plus why you should hold off on contacting those moving companies and corrupting a new home with your mess. At least until you have gone through your belongings with a fine-toothed comb.
To de-clutter effectively, you’ve got to get a clear sense of the life you want to live in general.
De-cluttering implies that you are trying to move your life towards a specific, desired direction. To “de-clutter” you need to have a pretty clear sense of what you want in your environment. Generally speaking, your attempts at de-cluttering will be far more fruitful if you are able to clearly envision the direction you want your life to go in as a whole.
At the very least, de-cluttering requires that you develop a clear sense. What you want your personal space to be like? What do you want it to not be like? If you want to get the most out of your de-cluttering experience, sit down and spend a while clarifying your thoughts on life in general.
Decluttering isn’t about getting rid of everything that you don’t need for survival. It’s about getting rid of the things that ultimately fail to enrich your life or that even hold you back.
Some people definitely take the idea of minimalism to unhealthy extremes. Look at some minimalist guides or peer into some “minimalist” homes. You can expect to find barren landscapes devoid of all human ornamentation being held up as the pristine ideal.
The thing is, de-cluttering doesn’t have to be – and shouldn’t be – about stripping your life of all belongings that aren’t absolutely essential to your survival.
Instead, your de-cluttering endeavors should be focused on removing the things from your home that ultimately fail to enrich your life. Or things that hold you back.
Decluttering is as much about respecting and appreciating the things that do matter to you, as it is about getting rid of the things that don’t.
Decluttering is fundamentally about removing things from your home. Therefore, you could be forgiven for assuming that the entire point of the exercise is simply to limit “waste” in your life.
In reality, decluttering is as much about freeing up space in which to appreciate the things you do care about. Is your home dominated by clutter? Are you barely even sure – in a vague sense – what you do own? The odds are very high that you will overlook and fail to be properly grateful for some of your most prized belongings.
So, embark on a de-cluttering journey! Keep the aim in mind of deepening your appreciation for the things you do care about, rather than removing the things that you don’t care about.
