Sunday 13 June 2010

The Official Cheat Sheet for Decluttering

'If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.' ~ William Morris

I think this quote is rather lovely. It reminds me that beauty and function have equal roles to play in our lives and homes. It’s all very well having a neat filing system, but why can’t it be stored in a beautiful folder? It’s nice to have a tidy desk, but what about a photo or scented candle to inspire you? … and if your boyfriend (... hey honey!) winces every time he passes your study, why can’t it be converted into a lovely, peaceful retreat from the world? :)

I am pretty darn certain that the stacks of paper on my study floor are neither useful nor beautiful. So with this in mind, and having had some spare time this weekend, I set about a decluttering session ... I’ll be doing more over the coming days and weeks … want to join me? Here’s a summary of what works for me. Apologies in advance for the length of this post ... I want to use it as a reference point for my next decluttering session. Feel free to pick and choose just the suggestions that appeal to you!

Prepare

Get motivated! If you're like me and might possibly struggle just a teensy little bit with that, especially on Sunday mornings or pre-coffee, try this article from Zen Habits (an amazing blog).

Before you start, get everything you’ll need together. Personally, I’ll want a scanner, a shredder, a bin, some black bin liners, my phone (for taking pictures), and my laptop (so I can type any stray ‘to-do’s’ directly into the organisational programme I use).

By the way, we got our scanner from Freecycle - so if you want one and just can't justify spending on it right now, then that's the way to go. I like Freecycling because you can pick up what you need for free, but you can also give back (when you're decluttering, incidentally!) by giving away the things you no longer need/want. Just use your own judgement and common sense - as you would with anything else where you're meeting people via the internet.

Don’t tell the cops but … bribery is okay! :)

This means good chocolate, music, coffee, and scented candles are all allowed. Even blueberry cheesecake, if that’s what it takes to get you going! As for the glass of rosé … if it’s just the one, then maybe, but don’t over indulge unless you want to end up in tears over an overdue library book! Personally, I like to pop on some bouncy, energetic music, drink lots of water, and burn vanilla scented candles. Mmm.

Play tricks on yourself

One of my favourite tricks is perfume - a spritz of my signature scent makes me feel amazing. It really is difficult to get upset after that! They say ‘look good, feel good’ and I know that one works for me too. If I think I’m going to have a really challenging day at work, I’ll wear a smart suit, skyscraper heels (the worse the day will be, the higher the heels I’ll pick) and a great lipstick. Jeans are fine too, of course, especially if you’re going to be decluttering somewhere dusty – just pick something you feel good about yourself when wearing.

Ask yourself questions

Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to do with something. Should you keep it? I ask myself the following questions:

- Have I used this in the last year?
- Does this item enhance my life?
- What’s the worst that could happen if I just let it go now?
- Does this tie in with my vision of who I am / who I want to be?
- Would a picture of this item / a scanned copy of this piece of paper be enough?
- What’s the real reason I’m resisting letting this go?

And if I still have a big pile of items I ‘need’ to keep … this one’s a heavyweight, last ditch option … if the person I most admire/love/respect/care about saw this pile of stuff, would I feel okay about that?

Make allowances for yourself (more so when handling paperwork!)

If you’re decluttering papers (especially if you haven't done this for a while), it’s a fair bet that you’ll come across something you meant to do three weeks ago, or a worrying letter, or … well, anything that makes you feel bad … you need to take a deep breath, keep calm, and just let it go.

If everything bad you find just becomes a big stick to beat yourself up with, then quite reasonably, you’ll never want to chance finding anything like that again. So your massive (and growing) stack of paper will sit there smugly looking at you, safe in the knowledge you daren’t mess with it, misquoting Dirty Harry at you – ‘Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?’ – and watch you quickly scuttle away to safer pursuits (what’s for dinner, or what’s on TV?). Don’t let your paperwork become a thug! :)

So – if you want to finish this thing, cut yourself some slack. Not sure how? Imagine you're helping your best friend declutter, and they found the same ‘scary’ piece of paper in their stack. What would you say to them? I'll bet it's not 'You stupid IDIOT! How could you let this happen?!' .... probably more like, 'Hey, don't worry about it, at least you've found it now and not in 3 month's time, eh? Look, we'll get it sorted. Let's finish up our decluttering session and then we'll make a plan of how to deal with this. Okay?' … so now put this bit of paper over there, in a special ‘eep!’ pile of it’s own, ready to deal with soon … there, feel better?

As to the rest of the stack … if you come across a massive document that you need to read through (or anything else that will take you a while to decide about) … just remember, a 'first pass' through the stack is OK. It’s better than nothing, and you can probably trash a good 20-30% of the pile just on the first run through (empty envelopes, junk mail, vouchers that have expired, Christmas cards from people you no longer know…). Then, later or another time (when you’ve cut the darn thing down to size), you can have another run through in some more detail.

Guilty or green?

Are you avoiding decluttering because it’s too much hassle to categorise all the rubbish? Look, just cut yourself some slack already. It’s great to recycle things or donate items to charity (and don’t get me wrong, I do it as much as I can); and if you have a valuable item (we’re talking about a good camera, laptop or sports equipment here), it makes sense to sell it on.

But if we’re talking about a couple of file folders worth of paper or a shelf of clothing – it’s not going to ruin the planet’s chances if you just trash it this one time. Sometimes you just need to ‘get it gone’ and out of your life for good. If you feel guilty, take the opportunity to switch to paperless billing, or ensure that you recycle all the new bills you receive (once you’ve dealt with them, of course!). Truth be told, if you make that a new habit, that will do the planet more good over the long term.

Don’t panic!

A lot of the worry and stress comes from feeling out of control. Just take a deep breath. If you make it to the finish line, you will have a lot more control; you just need to cope with a few hours of uncertainty first. You can do this!

Also, remember you don’t have to DO the actions associated with the paperwork whilst you’re decluttering. As a rule of thumb, unless the action takes less than a few minutes, just add a note to your to-do list and then shred/throw/scan the hard copy paper, before getting right back to decluttering.

Rarely, it’s OK to cheat ;)

If the in-laws are due round momentarily, you don’t need to declutter, you need to cheat! Decluttering means making decisions, getting rid of things, processing what an item means to you. Cheating means tidying like you did when you were a teenager! Shove things into drawers or hide them in your wardrobe! Go on – you know you want to!

But don’t say I didn’t warn you … this is not a permanent strategy. When the in-laws have gone, schedule a real decluttering session – unless you relish the prospect of discovering bank statements in your sock drawer in 3 months time! :)

And the end result? 5 bags, yey! :)

As an example of successful 'cheating', this weekend I spent around 4 hours decluttering, and got rid of a total of 5 bags (3 of items and 2 of paperwork) from my study. I was rather disappointed to find I couldn’t even notice the difference from the way the room looked, even though I knew I’d done a fair amount of work.

My boyfriend (the master of all things neat and tidy!) then spent about an hour helping me with the room, which looks so much better for it! My desk is clean, and I can sit down to work at it. It’s nice.

So what happened to all the stuff? It’s all still there, but neatly stacked around the edges of the room or placed in boxes, not spread across my desk/chair/floor. It’s not a permanent solution – I still have a lot to do – but it sure does help me keep up the motivation, as I now feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Am I talking rubbish?

Comment at will! What works for you when you’re decluttering?