Breaking the Cycle of Decluttering

When people decide to embark on a decluttering journey, everyone has a reason. For some it is to ease the stress of a move. Others decide to wholeheartedly jump into a minimalist lifestyle. But for many of us, myself included, decluttering is our way to gain some control over our belongings. I have always been someone who has decluttered— even as a child, I consistently had a storage box full of things in the corner of the hallway outside my room which, whenever it grew into a pile, we would take to a local shelter for families.

One of my favorite “do nothing” pastimes is to watch decluttering videos on YouTube. Seeing people clearing out their lives and recognizing what they do and don’t need brings me so much joy. But something that I notice is that, despite their initial success, many of these people always seem to revert to being overwhelmed by their stuff and their beautiful, organized results usually don’t last very long. Part of the challenge is many of these people have families and life gets busy but, I think many people, not only those on YouTube, declutter to gain some control, but then eventually accumulate more things and end up right back at the beginning and seek to declutter again and again. They temporarily tame the beast without getting to the root of the clutter problem.

I also have struggled with this. Discarding things was never a challenge for me, but, as an only child with a large extended family I would get many gifts for my birthday and for holidays and, whenever I wanted something, my parents usually didn’t have too many qualms about buying it for me, whether it was a book, a toy or clothes. So, even though I was constantly discarding things, my room was alway a bit of a mess, a bit chaotic, because I simply had too much stuff in it. The Minimalists mention this phenomenon in their book Everything That Remains. They say that decluttering itself is a “farce” because decluttering is an action, it is a what, but it doesn’t usually encompass the why of decluttering.

It took me years of repeating the cycle of decluttering to finally understand my why and to finally see the amount of stuff I owned decrease rather than fluctuate between too much and just enough. Once I began to understand why I was decluttering, which in short was that I ultimately wanted to own less, I began to consistently see the results I had been trying to achieve for years. I had finally begun to realize that not only did I have to continue discarding things in order to decrease the amount that I owned, but I also had to curb the amount of things entering my space in order to maintain it. No amount of decluttering and organizing would help me to feel more in control of my belongings, to own less, until I stopped allowing things to enter my life unnecessarily. So, if you are starting your decluttering journey, if you have committed to owning less and understand your why but are still struggling with fluctuating amounts of stuff, here are some tips for you to stop the cycle and stop returning to feeling overwhelmed by your things.

1. Assess how new items enter your home. Do you notice the things you are discarding are small mementos, movie tickets etcetera, or are they free items or impulse purchases? Do you feel like you have nothing to wear and are always looking for a new clothing item that makes you love your wardrobe, or maybe all the special kitchen gadgets in the grocery store call your name. Assess which kinds of items are entering your home and either commit to discarding things that should be discarded before they have a chance to settle in (looking at you, movie ticket stubs) or commit to a no-buy challenge for a period of time. By stemming the influx of incoming items as well as continuing to declutter, the number of items in your home will, eventually, actually decrease.
   

2. Check out your organizational systems and, rather than asking how to add more organization spaces, ask how to work within the space that you already have. Set limits based on the space you have and do not allow yourself to expand beyond them. If your storage isn’t overflowing anymore, but you still feel overwhelmed, decide on blank spaces. Can you leave the top shelf of your kitchen cabinets empty? What about under your bed? Set a limit to the number of clothes hangers you have or discard that second bookshelf. By sticking to a set amount of storage you limit the amount that you are able to own in the first place, and if you want something new, it must be worthy enough to replace something that you already own.
   

3. Be grateful for what you own right now. We truly live lives of abundance. Even if we have debts or sometimes struggle financially, we have so much to be grateful for in our lives. When we appreciate what we have, rather than lament what we do not, we are often less inclined to go out and buy more in order to satisfy an urge to have more and be more. What we have, and who we are, is “enough.”
   

4. Become aware of where things come from. Literally, where in the world do they come from? Who made it? What is it made from? What was the “true cost” of making the item? When we start to recognize the materiality of things that we own and understand the damage that an unchecked consumption/decluttering cycle can do to the environment and to people around the world, we become much more conscious of our habits. I didn’t see the number of clothes in my closet remain at a manageable level until after seeing the documentary “The True Cost” and I became aware of the damage the fashion industry does around the world. It is sometimes a difficult thing to think about, because it ultimately forces us to check our own privilege, but in the end, living more consciously, more connected, will lift you up.
   

Once I figured out my why of decluttering, these tips were the ones that I have used in order to keep myself on the right track. I have found that, not only have these actions given me more control over my things, but I am also more content with the amount that I do own. I have more gratitude, more awareness, and more time, all because I simply own less.