Response to Reader Question: Childhood Momentos

A good question was recently posted in the comments on the Introduction page for our challenge.

I believe that sentimental objects are not a problem unless they interfer with the quality of our present life. If mental clutter has invaded your life via childhood momentos, whether yours or your own children, the thoughts below are worth a read.

If you have more ideas in response to her question, please don’t hesitate to share!

la triste contenta said...

hello, how can I get rid of my son's preschool art work? it's so hard for me and it is not the same if I just take pics of them... Oh my! and they occupy a lot of space and I hardly use them in a regular basis, but I think (feel) they're a treasure (for me and probably for him in the future)... I'm confused with this issue... the same happens to me with his baby clothing!!!

Suzanne said...

Uh oh, you are in trouble. If you are already feeling these physical items roping you in emotionally, can you imagine how overwhelmed you will be with many more school years worth added in?

You are not alone though. So many moms have to find their way and learn the art of balance; not only with artwork but with many items of their children's childhood.

All I can offer are some perspective-inducing thoughts and any support you'd like as you work through finding your balance between cherishing the past without letting it overwhelm your present.

* Our children will not hate us for parting with anything from their childhood. With that said, many people do like to have a little something to look at from their past. The key is to remember that everything is too much and not special. Keeping some select things allows each piece to be appreciated, admired and to serve as a memory tie-in between our past and who we are now.

* Kelly from Tidy Brown Wren, a preschool teacher, shared some very useful tips for managing kids paperwork during the school year. I have no system and see a lot of useful information in here to incorporate into my own life for creating a system that will work for me!

* Check out these ideas on how to display childhood art so that it can be appreciated now, as well as saved for the future.

* I know you mentioned a photograph not working well for you but maybe this combination will help with some of the items? From Why we hold on to sentimental clutter by Unclutterer: “Snap a digital photograph of the item and keep only the image. Save these pictures securely online in a program that allows you to keep notes about the image (like Flickr or Picasa)…Write a journal entry about the item before you get rid of it. The act of writing down the memory will let you think about the experience, which is usually more valuable than the object itself.”

* For baby clothing, I found it easier to declutter the special items if I knew the child that would be wearing them. Hopefully, you know some people with similar gender/sized children and can pass these items on. That way they can be worn and be special to someone else (another mom) rather than having them stored away where no one gets to appreciate them.

* If you’re so inclined, look for creative opportunities to repurpose some of the items, such as transforming clothing and blankets into quilts and framed artwork or drawings into wrapping paper and cards.

* Pretty much, look for ways to gently separate yourself from whatever you can. You may not become a reformed sentimental keeper but you will have less overall!

Top 5 Posts:
How I Define Clutter
Decluttering: A How-To
I'd Rather Stay Home From Work and De-junk
Decluttering Made Simple (27-17-7)
Ever Felt Afraid to Declutter?

Focus Challenge - Month 5 (2010)

This month's Focus Challenge is courtesy of MaryJo Monroe, a professional organizer in Portland, Oregon with a passion for clutter control and inexpensive decorating. In addition to being a professional organizer, home stager and home redesigner (using what her clients already own), she also writes at reSPACEd, a blog offering ideas on home design and organization for the budget-conscious.

Sooner or later in the decluttering process, you come across an item that you do not love nor use anymore, yet can’t bring yourself to discard. There are several reasons for this. Here are seven of the most common reasons:

1. Perfectionism: We believe we cannot make the perfect decision about this item, (e.g. What if I throw it away and need it later? What if I can’t find a place at which to recycle it?) so we end up making no decision at all.


2. Helpfulness: We may be able to help someone and save the day by having just the item that he or she needs.


3. Anthropomorphize: We kind of feel sorry for the item for discarding it, so we don’t. Maybe this item has been with you through thick and thin and it would be doing it a dishonor by simply throwing it in the trash.


4. Proof of Love: Greeting cards, letters and gifts are all indicators that someone loves or loved us.


5. Identity: We reason that if we have a lot of craft supplies, then we are crafty people. If we have lots of books, then we’re intellectuals. The items represent a part of ourselves that we want to believe is an authentic part of ourselves.


6. Past Memories: An item represents something we want to remember in our past, and we are afraid we will not remember the event if we get rid of the item.


7. Boundaries: Particularly with collections, we don’t stop collecting, even when we run out of space. We figure if a few are good, a lot is better.
   

Take a look around one room of your choice, maybe even a room you have already decluttered, and make sure that every item – and I mean every item – is something you use or something you love. If you find something there that does not meet that criteria, see if one of these seven reasons is the culprit. My appreciation to Sandra Felton, founder of Messies Anonymous, for supplying me with this list.

And my thanks to MaryJo for graciously accepting my invitation to share her expertise. These 7 mental clutter culprits do cause physical clutter. We accept your challenge to use that insight this week to zero in on the clutter hiding in our home because it's been shielded by mental clutter. As we say around here...Mental clutter manifests itself into visual clutter. When you purge the physical clutter, the mental clutter will follow it out the door!

Be sure to subscribe to reSPACEd to see all of MaryJo's clutter-busting inspiration.

Top 5 Posts:
How I Define Clutter
Decluttering: A How-To
I'd Rather Stay Home From Work and De-junk
Decluttering Made Simple (27-17-7)
Ever Felt Afraid to Declutter?

Decluttering: A How-To

Decluttering physical items is actually a simple process. We, the do'ers, are what make it difficult.

Always Start In 3D
Define your area -- a drawer, a closet, a 1 ft space in a room, etc. (zoom in on your target to help from being overwhelmed by whatever else may be nearby or that will detract your focus from your defined area, i.e. more clutter, an area that you don't like for other specific reasons, etc.)

Determine categories to use for sorting the things stored in that area (a specific use that makes sense in the area, memorabilia/keepsake, homeless object that didn't belong in that area, etc.) and create a gathering spot for items in that category (i.e. a box or basket, a clean spot on the floor, a shelf, etc.)

Decide which category each piece in your defined area belongs into & sort the items accordingly by placing them in the gathering spot. (Deciding comes from a position of feeling/being powerful over your stuff, instead of being overpowered by it.)

A fantastic bit of advice that I have incorporated into my own life came from Alex Fayle at Someday Syndrome, in the Unclutter guest post Instructions for decluttering your home (in less than 500 words).

"Use the sorting time to reminisce about the objects — don’t make any decisions at this point. Allow the emotions to come up and clear themselves out so that when it comes to the streamlining stage you are free from the emotional ties and can make more objective decisions about them."

And...Action!
The final step in decluttering is Action, instead of Reaction.

Many of the reactions we encounter when decluttering relate to negative feelings...(feeling) that money was wasted, (feeling) guilt about the item, (feeling) unhappiness about our home & personal belongings, (feeling) overwhelmed by it all in general, etc.

To gain power over your stuff, instead of being owned by it, we need to focus on equating decluttering with Action instead, and positive Action at that.

So, what positive Action are you going to take regarding these objects?

Ask yourself the basic decluttering questions.

Do I want this?

Do I use it?

Do I love this?

Do I need it?

If you can’t say yes to any of them, then you have your answer: it is clutter to you. As Alex says in the above article, "Life is too short to fill out our spaces with things we’re indifferent to."

Once all items have been put into a category, it's time to get everything to its home.

Trash
Gather those items and take them from your working area first thing; preferably all the way to the trash can.

Donation Worthy Goods
Put all items together in a box or bag and put them in your car. The next time you are out and about, plan a stop at the local donation center of your choice.

Items to Keep
Now that there are less items in the area, the items you are keeping can be better organized and stored/used. Make it so.

Or, quite possibly, where the item was before was not the best home for it. Was it "homeless" and not stored with other like items? Was it there just because it always has been?

There are many questions I could pose such as these, but I hope that during this process you are learning to formulate your own questions in your mind. The Action will come from your answers.

It's Just An Object
Always remind yourself, especially in the beginning of any decluttering project, that you want to discontinue reacting to your stuff.

Deciding on your Action, and taking it, will empower you in ways that lead to a much more positive role in your own life. A side benefit is that each action fires up your Motivation Meter as well, and that also creates a positive effect in your life. The accumulation of positive Action will create balance in your life, including ownership over your stuff.

I encourage to begin to examine your life in terms of Reaction vs. Action. You may be surprised to realize the effects reach farther than just clutter!

Focus Challenge - Month 11

Over the last month I have been thinking about February 22nd, which will be the official end of the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge. I have already heard from some challengers that they are signing on for another 365 days. Way to go!

To me, decluttering doesn't end. We all consume. We all buy. We all have to decide what stays and what goes, because there is always more clutter trying to make its way into your space and into your mind.

Only you can decide how you will proceed after February 22nd. Has this been fun while it lasted and you are ready to put your efforts into a different area? Has decluttering become routine and you can't imagine not regularly decluttering? Have you run out of things to declutter? Did you finally begin addressing mental clutter and don't want to stop?

With a month remaining, I want to use our final Focus Challenge for introspection.

1) Think of the 7 pieces of clutter that you purged that were the most difficult, the most meaningful, the most inspiring (i.e., decluttering it led to other things being decluttered that had a fabulous effect on you or your life), etc.

2) For each item, write the name of the item on a piece of paper in the very center of the page. Draw a circle around it. Then, develop a mind map. To do so, draw a line out from the bubble with emotions/feelings you associated with the item. Then, from each of those feelings, draw branches out from it relating to how you felt when you possessed the item and later once you let it go.

It is my hope that our remaining Focus Challenge will provide insight to you on your clutter. Each item that you let go of during this challenge was only a thing, an item, an object, stuff. The emotion we attached to them (aka mental clutter) was the part that was the most difficult to purge.

Gaining this insight will aid us in the days to come by, hopefully, preventing more stuff from having an advantage over us by tapping into our emotions. As you might have heard before, you are not your stuff. You own your stuff; it does not own you...or, at least it shouldn't.

Thank you for taking this challenge with me. I greatly appreciate what I have learned along the way. I hope this journey has also been wonderful for you as well.

Focus Challenge - Month 10

This month's Focus Challenge comes during the time that a person who struggles with mental clutter would identify as a "difficult" time of year. I'm not knowledgeable on the traditions of all religions and all cultures, but I am guessing that most of us are celebrating during this season by exchanging gifts in some way.

After working on ourselves and our spaces for many months to slowly (one-item-a-day) release clutter from our lives, this may be the time of year when we could take in a whole lot more. I say could because the choice is ours. There is no guilt allowed here in the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge...whether in decluttering past clutter or present clutter!

We'll receive an item and go through the wrenching dance between our mind and heart, or even between us and others, about whether we should keep the item. If, instead, we feel positive feelings and the sentence reads, "We'll receive an item and feel ___ (positive feeling here)", the end result will undeniably be we will keep the item.

For experiences that have a "should", realize that you've given up the power of your choice to clutter...both physical and mental!

An end result with a "will" in it is most importantly a decision of your own choosing. A much better way of living, don't you agree?

Hopefully, we have been taught civilized manners and are gracious when receiving a gift. Regardless of it feeling like clutter, mental or otherwise, we know (or are learning) that we are not obligated to accept mental clutter attached to a gift. And, we are already gaining momentum in purging physical clutter from our life. We won't be stopped by this physical clutter.

Only in a private moment with ourselves, after showing kindness to the gift-giver for their thoughtfulness, do we choose to allow the gift into our life or choose to let the clutter go.

Your Focus Challenge is to focus your decluttering efforts for the next month on mental decluttering. For now, it will be on gifts. As the new year begins, with a newer "you" than the last, you will also be setting up a foundation for purging even more clutter from your life.

Happy Holidays to you. Here's to an even Happier New Year!

More on Defining Clutter...

A good question was recently posted in the comments on Focus Challenge - Month 9.

Sometimes, items put away nice and neatly stay under the Decluttering Radar or confuse us. I thought this would be a good post for most of us to read, just to make sure our Decluttering Radars are still charged up and ready. :-)

My answer follows Jacqui's question. What do you think? Do they count as clutter? I'd love to hear your input!

Jacqui said...

Do boxes stored in the attic and in the garage count as clutter? =) I have a hard time letting go. It's definitely getting easier since I'm running out of room to neatly store things out of sight. I'm mostly an "a place for everything, everything in it's place" person. But with the kids accumulating more things and with my sewing obsession (without a room to put it in), its getting harder to store them neatly. My daughter has no problem letting go of most things, but my son is more like me. Of course Mike would just like to see it all go. LOL

Blogger Suzanne said...

Jacqui: First, hello my long-lost friend!!! :-)

Clutter is any thing you don't Love, Want, Need or Use. Defining your own things as clutter or not is only a decision you can make.

Items stored in boxes, whether in an attic, garage, on a closet shelf or just on the floor are only clutter if they don't meet the above criteria.

Meaning...
- Do you want them? This is probably yes, since you've taken care to store them away. But, sometimes, this is the easiest question to answer because we surprise ourselves and realize that, no, we don't want them. So, out it must go!

- Do you use these things? If no, then they are clutter. Decide to use them and do it, or realize that you need less physical clutter in your life and let them go. When you purge the physical clutter, the mental clutter follows it out the door. Imagine, not having the friction against Mike's desires and your own, not forgetting what you have and spending money on more, not feeling emotional mental clutter about it (see next item), etc.

- Do you love them...or do they make you sad, feel guilty, make your life feel inadequate (as in you wish you had time for other interests, but don't, and these things just remind you of that dissatisfaction), etc.? If they bring on unhappy feelings, they are clutter.

- Do you need them? If they are used and loved, then think about whether you need them. For example: Say you have one of something in your kitchen but have another that a relative gave you. That one isn't really your favorite so you put it away for "special occasions". If you bring it out and use it, then only you can decide whether its useful in your life to have a duplicate of something. If you are only keeping the second because of mental clutter, let it go. Find it a better home. Selling or giving things to someone who WILL use, love, need and want them will not be clutter to them, as they were to you.

Happy Decluttering!

Focus Challenge - Month 9

While reading The psychology of clutter by Heather Grimshaw in the Denver Post, the picture really stood out to me. I feel like this, because I can't get on to the next thing. I have looked at some items, knowing they are clutter by definition, but have not been able to drop the ax on them. Why? It's that mental clutter.

(Maureen Scance, The Denver Post)

I firmly believe that mental clutter, in all its forms, can hinder our lives just like physical clutter, and even body clutter. If you haven’t read the blog tagline in awhile, I'll put it right here so you can.

Clutter comes in many forms--sometimes obvious and sometimes not. Physical clutter is obvious, although defining it is a personal opinion. Mental clutter manifests itself into visual clutter. When you purge the physical clutter, the mental clutter will follow it out the door!

You’ve done fantastic dealing with the physical clutter in your life. Do you want to work on some of the mental clutter too? If so, I’m going to lay out my Focus Challenge…I’ll also add a simpler, "basic physical clutter" one for those who don’t want to join in.

Our Focus Challenge

Examine physical items of clutter that have been able to stay around because of a mental clutter hold, whether it was because of sentimentality (i.e., missing someone), practicality (I can't get another like this if I want it again later), etc.

Is there a way to retain it but in an uncluttered way? For example, if it's a fabric item, do you really need to keep the item in its entirety or could you keep a swatch of it?

If it's not the item itself that you cherish, but the memory that it invokes, can you keep a picture of the item?

What about the mental "have to, should do, etc." that has been placed on the item, whether by others or ourselves? Do you "have to" keep this dish from Aunt Sally? If you feel it is a yes, do what you can to make it a cherished keepsake. Treat it with respect by displaying it yourself, or loaning it to a family member who will, instead of being destined to live its life buried in a box in the attic or closet.

Our Focus Challenge Lite

Examine these 7 areas of your home for clutter. Hopefully, you find an item that needs to go and you say "goodbye". Then celebrate another day of staying true to your challenge!

* Any flat surface in your home (i.e. tops of tables)
* Non-refrigerated food storage (Got canned food to donate to a food bank?)
* Any area hidden by a door that is not a room (i.e. cabinets, desk, etc.)
* Your room (This is our private sanctuary...what's in there that shouldn't be?)
* Your vehicle (Taking along extra stuff in the car reduces fuel mileage!)
* On you (anything that would go on you, i.e. skin care, makeup, accessories, clothing...)
* Seasonal (more holiday item decluttering...or even just decluttering a holiday obligation!)

I would really appreciate reading feedback on your thoughts about us working on purging mental clutter from our life.

Regardless of which Focus Challenge you accept, you can do this! Let's stay focused on our challenge!

Wants vs Needs

The topic of "Wants vs Needs" came up yesterday in a conversation with my 6 year old son. I told him that we will always give him everything he needs, but he may not get everything he wants. What he wanted, and was trying to get across to us through his unhappy frustration, was more money to play video games in the restaurant.

Today, I read Journeyer's post on Wants vs Needs. I could feel her words on her past decisions as if I'd wrote them myself.

In my home, we have been working on the "Wants vs Needs" realization for the past few months. Like others, my husband's layoff (and decision to go into business for himself) last November reduced us to a single-income family. As we had always had enough for the extra wants, it is difficult for us to be at the point of saying "I'm sorry, we can't" to financial requests from our children. And, that has included having to say "I'm sorry, we can't" to the requests from our inner child too.

I am very proud of our efforts to tame our wants quite a lot. I'm just getting used to this being our new "norm". I won't lie and say that when the finances improve we will continue with this frugality, though I do believe it has reinforced the idea of "Wants vs Needs" for our family.

It has also had a huge impact on my decluttering. Rather than buying my way through a rough day, I've had to look for other sources of relief that we could actually afford. I have turned to journal writing for the times when I want to feel introspective and have rediscovered the stress relief of using my body (cleaning with fury, doing exercise, etc.) for times when I don't want to be still.

This has had a two-fold effect. I don't buy clutter that I will later have to deal with and have used my "free time" to look inward...both at myself and my home. Doing so is what prompted me to commit myself to decluttering one item each day for 365 days.

It has also allowed me to go shopping in my own home. We are on the tail-end of a major remodel and, as we lost space, stuff from one room was shoved into closets of another. While looking through my home for my "declutter item of the day", I have rediscovered these lost treasures. I admit, I've also found some of my impulse buys from my stress shopping.

Thankfully, I know that guilt over the lost money and such isn't worth it. I pass them on and know that both the physical and mental clutter they were in my life is now gone.

Decluttering by Doing

I’ve been asked by several people if doing something, i.e. an unfinished hobby project or a household repair, counts as decluttering for the challenge. According to my opinion, it does. We declutter to rid ourselves of anything unwanted, unloved, unused and unneeded, and doing these jobs replace the decluttered stuff with good stuff instead.

Then, we go on to talk about how unfinished things make us feel. Some feel mad, some feel guilt and some feel frustration with themselves, but not one person I’ve known has felt good about unfinished things in their life.

In my eyes, the completion of an unfinished thing is one of the top three ways to declutter. Why? Well, let’s start with the obvious: physical clutter. The item in its unfinished state, i.e. a box full of pictures that you want preserved in an album or a small hole in the wall from the doorknob, doesn’t make you feel good when you see it. It might be something that nags at you, like the unfinished pictures project, or unsightly, like the hole in the wall.

Additionally, you may have other pieces of the project that, by themselves, are clutter. For the pictures, you may have a photo album and a myriad of scrapbooking supplies. For the hole, you may have tools and supplies for patching the wall. Once the project or repair is completed, those items will no longer be sitting around waiting to be used. So, you’re actually decluttering many items instead of just one!

Then there is the mental clutter. If you’ve walked by that hole and every single time you see it, you think “I need to patch this”, mental clutter is growing in your mind like cancer. That thought will infect all other thoughts around it and poison them. That small “need to do” thought will become thoughts where you attack yourself (Uh, I can’t believe I haven’t taken care of this yet), where you attack others (Those darn kids need to stop running in and throwing open the door) and, worse, when your ability to overcome this clutter gets weaker by the minute (Geez, I can’t do anything right….which leads us to feel defeated and why bother doing it at all).

For the picture album example, it gets worse. Undone things that would result in happiness are the ones that make me feel the worst, anyways. It’s put away in a cabinet and one would think that it doesn’t enter our thoughts too much. In my opinion, we are happiness and fulfillment driven beings. When we are denying ourselves of these things, the resulting feelings permeate our more conscious thoughts, and, the negative feelings we are experiencing throw a shadow over many areas of mind.

You may not realize how unfinished “happiness items” make you feel bad now, but, when you complete them, you should notice that you tend to feel better than the item should make you feel. That is because the happiness that you now receive from the unfinished item (being able to share and enjoy those pictures more readily is but one part). Overall, you may be feeling something more--joy, a sense of being connected to your past, and a surge in your motivation meter, for example. All of those feelings allow us to feel a more authentic sense of happiness than just the literal representation of a photo album.

I encourage you to Declutter by Doing during your 365 Days of Decluttering journey. You will love the results!

Introducing the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge

From the discussion that started it all comes the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge blog!

Myself and others have challenged ourselves to declutter at least one item from our lives per day for the next year. We have accepted the 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge...Want to join us? :-)

I have learned that, for me, I must never wait for "the right day" to start and must start in the here & now. So, I started my 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge the day I put up a simple poll on a forum asking if anyone else was interested in starting a challenge. My name is Suzanne. I began my 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge on February 19, 2008.

With that said, I want to make this personal to each of us. It helps with the motivation when we are true to ourselves and not worrying about what others want, IMO.

- Anyone who doesn't care when they start must start the day they read this!

- Anyone with a preference for a Monday start, must start on the very next Monday after reading this!

- Anyone with a preference for starting on the first day of a month, must start the first day of the next month after reading this!

I encourage you to share with us about what's going on in your journey along the way. We can chat about our declutter challenge progress, post if we need a motivational "kick in the pants" from our 365 challenge friends, share a picture of a decluttered item or share it's "story", etc.

If you are in the challenge, please post your name and start date loud & proud. You are on your way to a great sense of accomplishment!

I have defined the challenge. Are you willing to accept it? :-)