When I began helping my friend, S, declutter, there were decades of paper archives: phone bills, utility bills, bank statements, medical papers, taxes papers, magazine clippings, newspaper clippings, catalogs, travel memorabilia, recipes, greeting cards, letters, and hundreds of photos (organized by year). Much of this was stacked in boxes in the garage or office with various other locations for smaller boxes or bags. It was a nightmare of unorganized, mostly unneeded paper.

Looking over the mess, it was apparent that this was going to be a huge undertaking. How did this happen? Why would someone let things get this bad? It all comes down to priorities, understanding and dreams. Too many times we feel we don’t have time to deal with something at a specific point in time. Once we put it off, things tend to pile up and become something we really don’t have time for. Other times we may not know what we need to keep and what is no longer important. We often cut out an article or copy down a recipe with thoughts of using it soon only to find that months or years later it is still in a pile of to-do’s. Referencing saved articles, magazines, newspapers, and recipes seldom happens.

The first step in decluttering my friends mountain of paper was to open all the boxes just to see what was in them. It turned out that in this case most of the boxes were all a jumble with no organization whatsoever. Ugh! This represented more hard work. What needed to be done was to deal with one box at a time and sort all of the paper into piles of like topics. All of those piles then needed to be sorted to decide what to keep for tax or other official purposes. Once all this was done the shredding started. Hour after hour of shredding at intervals produced over 14 big trash bags.

When it came to the photos, while sorted into years, nothing else had been done to them. Tossing all the photos that were blurred, too dark, too light, duplicates or with poor composition was the first task followed by sorting according to event. Since S is a scrapbooker, she now has her photos ready to be placed in layouts.

S has no children that would have inherited this mess but here would still be someone who had to deal with it all. Paper is now one thing that will cause fewer issues for the person who is left with the job. Having been through the death of my father and dealing with all that entails, I am glad I was able to guide S to declutter the paper.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter some wall art or empty picture frames you have never use. Another thing my son let go of last week.

I received the following message some weeks ago. I am not sure now who the author was but please feel free to identify yourself if you recognise it.

“I just read an interesting book called the KonMari method of Tidying Up. Her take is that for lasting change you have to do  the whole declutter in one  go, although her “go” can be 6 months. I don’t necessarily agree with her but it was an interesting read. I’d love to hear your opinion if you have read the book.”

I personally have never read any of Marie Kondo’s books but several of my readers have mentioned them in the past. One concept that my readers mentioned, that appealed to me, was the idea of being grateful for the  service of each and every item that is being decluttered, and then happily let it go. That is regardless of how much or little of a service they have been. I like this idea. It is positive and I dare say uplifting. Which is a far better attitude to approach decluttering with than negativity.

Lets face it being negative gets you nowhere. Right? From the very beginning I approached my decluttering process as a positive move. A move towards a new way of living and consuming. I focused on the positive change rather than the scale of the task. After all, how hard can it be to set aside one thing a day. Sometimes in the first year I had to restrain myself from decluttering more than just that one thing. A thing a day was the challenge after all and I wanted to stick to the guidelines.

There have been so many things that have passed through my hands over the years as I slowly reduced my belongings. For many of them I was truly grateful for their service. Others, not so much, but that is OK because I am still grateful for whatever joy I received from them. From these items I learned the purchasing pitfalls to avoid in the future. I also learned a lot about what kinds of things I had a hard time resisting in the past. Once these things are identified it is easy not to make similar mistakes.

Through this blog there are so many ways that I have tried to nurture a positive attitude towards embarking on the task of decluttering your home. If you still need some more inspiration I would recommend reading one of Marie Kondo’s books. And if my local library ever stocks any I will also read them. Here are a few on-line articles about this Japanese decluttering expert for you to get an idea of her methods and philosophies.

• Konmari method declutters homes and changes lives
• Konmari method closet cleaning
• tidyingup.com

So be grateful and happy decluttering.

Today’s Mini Mission

Declutter some items of jewellery you don’t like so much. My mother-in-law was doing this.

Mini Mission Monday is about finding ten minutes a day to declutter. To make it easy for you, each Monday I set seven declutter missions, one for each day of the week for you to follow. It takes the guess work out of decluttering and makes it easy and “fun” for you to achieve some quick decluttering.

Just for something different, as I have never done this before, this week’s mini missions are based on what me and my family have been decluttering. This includes children and in-laws. It is always exciting to see those you love embracing int the idea of living with less. So here goes.

Monday – Declutter of CDs or DVDs. My son was doing this last week.

Tuesday – Declutter some craft supplies. Easy to guess who was doing this, me of course.

Wednesday – Declutter some items of jewellery you don’t like so much. My mother-in-law was doing this.

Thursday – Declutter some clutter in your home that once was someone else’s clutter. The jewellery mentioned above was just such clutter.

Friday – Declutter some wall art or empty picture frames you have never use. Another thing my son let go of last week.

Saturday – Declutter something you have been unsuccessfully been trying to sell. I did this with some items that have lingered too long in the art space where I sell my handmade cards.

Sunday - Sunday is reserved for contemplating one particular item, of your choice that is proving difficult for you to declutter. Whether that be for sentimental reasons, practical reasons, because the task is laborious or simply unpleasant, or because the items removal requires the cooperation of another person. That last category may mean that the item belongs to someone else who has to give their approval, it could also mean there is a joint decision to be made or it could mean that the task of removing it requires assistance from someone else. There is no need to act on this contemplation immediately, it is more about formulating a plan to act upon or simply making a decision one way or another.

Good luck and happy decluttering

Eco Tip for the Day

It matters not how fast I go, I hurry faster when I’m slow