Decluttering your life: week 13 and the wrapup

Hey y’all! Can you believe it’s the middle of November already? That’s right—we’ve been through 12 weeks of tips for decluttering your life, and I hope you’ve learned a few ways to get your life (and stuff!) in order.

For your 13th week, I want you to think about your relationship to stuff. I’m not trying to stereotype here, but I’m not talking about guys having a lot of sports equipment and video games, or girls having a lot of clothes and makeup. I’m not asking you what you own; I’m asking you what you think about what you do own.

For most of my college years, I was afraid to throw anything away. When I moved into my own apartment and it took an entire U-Haul truck to hold my belongings, I thought I’d accomplished something. But then I noticed that a year or so later, those same boxes I’d had the guys from my church put in my dining room were still there. I didn’t even really know what was in them.

When I finally opened some of the boxes, I saw there was a lot of broken junk in them; things I didn’t want or need, or that didn’t work. A lot of outdated books, magazines, catalogs, concert tickets, clothes that were out of style, and other worthless stuff was cluttering up my life. I had been collecting a lot of nothing. I’d asked those guys from my church to move boxes of garbage. I held on to things I wasn’t using anymore simply because I thought I might need them again.

I wasn’t eligible for an episode of Hoarders or anything, but I definitely had too much stuff. I guess I was treating my possessions like a blanket—as long as I had them around me, I was...I don’t know. That’s the bad part. I don’t even know why I kept all that stuff. (Thankfully, I have a lot less stuff these days.) I didn’t need cleaning or organizing skills...I just needed to own less stuff.

Does this sound a lot like you? Do you have boxes of things you’d never part with, but only a vague memory of what’s in them? Is every single surface in your bedroom cluttered with stuff?

Try an experiment this week. Pick a shelf in your bedroom (not the closet) and take ten minutes to clear it off completely. Do a quick sort through the stuff and throw out what isn’t useful, and put the rest away. You can decorate your shelf with a few knickknacks, but don’t clutter it up again.

Now keep that shelf clean, just for this week. Whenever you notice that shelf, ask yourself if you like it clean. Do you miss what was on that shelf? Do you feel anxious or weird when you look at it, or do you maybe feel relaxed and a little proud of yourself?

If you want more clean shelves, then do them one at a time. It seems ridiculously limiting, but doing it this way gives you a way to ease into having less stuff without it being stressful.

But also—and this is important—if you want less stuff, you can’t make your whole life about acquiring stuff. Girls, don’t let shopping become one of your main interests in life. Guys, don’t believe the lie that throwing money around makes you awesome, attractive, or important. Spending all your time, attention, and money on acquiring things is a good way to look like a shallow human being who is more interested in things than in people. You can still buy things, but try to place a check on yourself about what you do and don’t need. Don’t let your hard work of cleaning out your life go to waste.

Now remember, I’m not saying don’t buy anything. I’m just saying you own your things—they don’t own you. Put things in their places, but also put the idea of stuff in its proper place in your life. Stuff can be fun, useful, awesome, enjoyable, and worthwhile. But it’s only stuff. Some people get rid of an item of clothing every time they buy a new one. Others limit the number of their possessions (but this can be just another way to obsess over stuff). Whatever you do, just make sure that it helps you keep your belongings at a manageable level.

So now we’ve been through 13 weeks of cleaning up your life. Take a little while to evaluate whether doing any of this made a difference for you. Make a list of the top three (or five) things you want to keep doing, then remember to do them. Here’s hoping getting a handle on clutter becomes a lifelong habit for you!