#Declutter March 20

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Today contribution to the 30-Day Letter Writing Coach4aday Challenge is on the decision to DECLUTTER.

The challenge involves composing a letter to yourself when you were an earlier age. The goal is to focus on a value, habit, or choice that needs to be adopted or made.

Since the beginning of March my wife and I have been working a spring-cleaning project to declutter some upstairs bedrooms in our home. Engaging in an activity that means letting go of materials things is not all logical. It involves different emotions that both of us had to navigate.

Day 20-Letter-Spring Cleaning

March 20, 2023

Dear Dan:

Well, the past two weeks you and your wife have sure engaged in some heavy-duty spring cleaning in various parts of your home. Time and time again over the past fourteen days you have had to decide on what to give away, what to throw away, and what to keep. The picture below shows a portion of what had to be sorted out.

Many decisions that you attempted to make logically gave way to various emotions.

Emotions to Navigate

That list of feelings included:

Attachment

Scarcity-I might need that item one day.

Overwhelming-where to start?

Loss of Sentimental Memories or Family History

Wasting money on items you purchased

Having to spend money in the future to replace what you get rid of.

The American Pickers Syndrome -You are going to throw something a valuable collectible to Mike Wolfe or Frank Fritz.

Tips

Each of the above will be a small battle but what will help you declutter are the following tips:

1. Attack the project in small steps-doing something everyday for two weeks accomplished a lot.
2. Is the item really irreplaceable-I encountered that with one item I wanted to keep as a future replacement part-a search on eBay I located multiple choices-it went in the trash.
3. Sentimental Memories -we utilized our camera or scanned the documents of what we wanted to keep-Children’s Report Cards were one example.
4. Wasting money on things we purchased-We had to overcome the emotion with logic-if we haven’t used it in a decade what was the cost to us to store it. Most of the items in this category were donated or given away.
5. If we had a feeling something might be of value, we researched it or kept it. We only decided to keep something without researching it if it was small in size.

The decluttering project has provided a new set of feelings.

1. Less anxious
2. Confidence
3. Happy

Decluttered Dan