How Decluttering Changed My Life

“You own things, then they own you.”

“A proper place for every thing and everything in its place.”

It started when we visited the home of an older mentor couple at church: their living room had two sofas and two end tables, and that was it. Nothing very large or fancy, but the feeling was clean and spacious: refreshingly simple. I found out one of the wife’s favorite books was Don Aslett’s Clutter’s Last Stand; after reading that, I went on to read about Marie Kondo’s method (she’s so huge—see article here—that a bunch of googling was all I needed). Last summer, I decluttered our entire house, and it’s really changed the way we live.

My biggest roadblock to decluttering was feeling like it was a waste to get rid of stuff: but Aslett argues that we should consider the time and effort it takes to store, clean, insure, transport, and protect our stuff. Consider the cleaning alone: Aslett, who owned a cleaning company, estimates that only fifty percent of cleaning is the actual scrubbing things clean; the rest is moving around all the stuff. Clutter is one of the greatest stealers of efficiency and time: it can take more time to get what we need than to use it. Aslett suggests that the mental and physical toll of keeping an unused item around is greater than throwing it out. Aslett quotes the 80/20 rule: 80% of value comes from 20% of things. We actually rarely notice that something is gone.

Then there are the economic principles. There’s the principle of sunk cost: you’ve already incurred irrecoverable cost in the stuff; you shouldn’t let that factor into your decision about its future. There’s the principle of status quo bias, when you let most of your stuff stay just because you can’t think of a good reason to get rid of it (instead, for example, of every item you own being thrown away unless you can think of a compelling reason why it should stay). Finally, there’s the folly of prediction, which states that we systemically make bad guesses about the future: we shouldn’t hang on to something because of potential future value, but should only use present-day valuations.

But I think decluttering also reflects a deeper mindset, a prioritization of your life. It is being respectful of and thoughtful about what you own. It is taking attentive care of what you have. It reflects for us a discipline of simplicity, where we consciously try not to acquire too much.

Practically, the process is simple: 1. decide what is clutter, 2. throw it away, and 3. take good care of the rest. Tidying is not the same: that simply shifts clutter from place to place. Similarly, storage solutions aren’t really the answer (Aslett likes to say, “room is doom”). I liked Kondo’s technique: you go by category (clothes, books, papers, etc) rather than room, and decide what is clutter by asking yourself: does this spark joy? If it doesn’t, thank it and let it go.

I didn’t quite get that anthropomorphic about it, and as I read I began to doubt Kondo has kids—I had to stage the process and do it when they weren’t around—but it worked. Probably the biggest (and easiest) category was clothing: it was so freeing to give away stuff I had hauled around since college that didn’t even fit anymore. I liked the thought process for gifts: thank the gift for what it’s done for you in the gift-giving moment, then let it go. The most enjoyable part was decluttering our closets, which now have more space than things. Aslett says, “when you clutter your closets and drawers with things, you’re cluttering your feelings and thinking—freedom in your dwelling allows freedom to dwell in you.” Interesting.

The ultimate change was really in mindset, which is the only reason these techniques last: we’ll habitually give or throw things away, we keep things in their places, and we try to be careful about what we acquire: we consider not just the moment, but the future keeping of it. I care more about cleaning and it’s easier to do so. Looking back, it helped me take greater ownership of our home, which made it easier to stay home more, which has certainly changed our lives.