A while ago now, I was recommended a youtube video of a lady trying Swedish death cleaning. The philosophy of Swedish death cleaning (lessening the burden on your loved ones by decluttering your junk so they don't have to when you eventually pass on) wasn't really all that inspiring to me personally, but just watching this lady clear out her "deal with later piles" and her ideas of what made items worth keeping or worth getting rid of really made me reconsider the stuff I was holding on to. I mean, I clean my spaces regularly and I do get rid of stuff I don't need anymore, but I always end up with stuff that gets shoved in a cupboard or draw somewhere. Stuff I cant bring myself to get rid of but don't have a place or use for, stuff that I just don't enjoy owning. Several more decluttering videos later and I've discovered for me that's really what it boils down to, owning stuff that you actually like.
Turns out this idea is a large component of minimalism. I've never liked minimalism. I always thought it was just this trend of the 2010s that had to do with modern homes and people with no personality. Youtubers buying massive mansions, every room painted white, and then they don't actually have any furniture to fill out the space, so its just echoey rooms that take 10 years to walk from one side to the other. I feel like a lot of people saw minimalism that way, maybe a lot of people still do. But turns out there's a lot more behind it than just an aesthetic. And even thinking back on my experience with digital minimalism, which aims to use technology in a way that serves the individual, not hand them a bunch of junk they didn't ask for, minimalism is just more broadly the same thing (who woulda thunk it?). And as a side note: I am slowly allowing myself to enjoy minimalism, even aesthetically.
So with this newfound inspiration what have I done? Firstly, I wasn't in a position to physically declutter my space so I instead started work on a digital declutter journey (which I might talk about another time). Once I was *able* to start my physical clean though, I coincidentally had my computer moved to my new bedroom which had a mountain of stuff I was refusing to clean dumped on the desk. So the first step for me was to clear the desk. I dumped all my junk onto my bed, set up my computer, and then worked my way through the pile of mess. I set up a bin bag for rubbish to throw away, and a box for sale/donation items. Anything I wanted to keep *must* be put in its place immediately. If it doesn't have a place it belongs, then I would reconsider if I actually needed it. Unfortunately I do not have a lot of display or organised storage space (due to my room being small and storage areas also needing decluttering), so I ended up with a fourth category of items deemed "to be put away later". I'm currently waiting to have some shelving put up which should hopefully give most of that pile a place to live.
There are a few goals to the declutter. Firstly, everything should have a place it belongs and those items end up in those places as naturally and with as little effort as possible (so tidying up on the regular is easier). Secondly, no more owning junk I'm too lazy to deal with and don't even care about, if I forget I own it then I *probably* don't need it. This also should help with storage space by generally owning less. Thirdly, similar to the last point, I should enjoy owning the things I own. "Does it spark joy?" is a key principal of the popular KonMari method (another cleaning method I came across that otherwise didn't particularly interest me), if an item wasn't useful, then I'd next think about if I enjoyed owning it. This mostly applies to decorative items, like posters, or my collection of furbys which I also like to proudly display. Obviously I kept things I use regularly or semi-regularly, so things like my camera tripod which I don't use often, or spare cords for my computer, got kept because they're not causing my any emotional burden and they do, on occasion, get used so are helpful to have on hand.
Despite all the guidelines I was setting for myself, there have been items I cant quite part with, so I've had to set new goals for them. One example is my bathroom and makeup bags, both of which I had recently switched out. For the longest time my bathroom bag was this red leather-ish textured bag which I've never liked the look of, but it did its job of holding the stuff it needed to, especially as my other bags were not big enough to fit my toothbrush case. I was going to make my own bathroom bag, but while I was op shopping I spotted this pretty purple bathroom bag that had different compartments and everything, so I got that, took it home and everything fits nicely inside it. My makeup bag recently was a small bath and bodyworks (I think that's the brand?) bag/pouch/thing which I liked because it only had to hold the small amount of makeup I use regularly. Then it got switched to an actual, larger makeup bag because I didn't like the bath and bodyworks logo being plastered across it. With these changes being so recent I wasn't entirely convinced these bags would work for me in the long run, and didn't want to part with my old, more trustworthy bags just yet. So I've collected them all together, set them aside, and decided that if I truly don't need them, I should eventually forget about them, so when I find them again I'll feel more comfortable giving them away. In fact another general rule I've decided on is that I do have to go through my things more than once to really learn what I need and what I don't. Sometimes the first declutter I'll decide to keep something, then I declutter again a few weeks later and decide that actually I want to get rid of it.
Okay so I started writing this like, months ago now. I don't even really know how to finish off what I was saying so let me just start from the present and maybe fill in with some older thoughts here and there. Or I suppose I could start by asking how has my decluttering gone so far? I have managed to identify a decent amount of stuff that I'm ready to part with, but most of it still hasn't made it out the door. My rubbish has gone to the bin, but my donation pile has only made it out of my room and just continued to pile up there. To make matters worse I'm not the only one adding to the pile so its grown a bit out of hand. I don't have a way to take the donation pile all at once or in any large portions, so for now I'm just really trying to commit to taking small amounts out with me to drop off more regularly, and get rid of it bit by bit. Once I make some reasonable progress with that I'll probably have more stuff in my room to donate as I continue to work through it all. Also I'm still waiting for help to put that shelving up...
I think another thing I intended to add onto this post was a more comprehensive list of "rules" I wanted to focus on to help me keep my clutter down. I saw this video which goes over 10 minimalist rules, that I then took and made a few small tweaks (combined two rules and dropped another rule all together) to suit my own taste. My version came out like this:
#1 Buy nice or buy twice
#2 If it's not a "HELL YES", then it's a "No", or the "Spark Joy" rule
#3 Declutter before organising
#4 If you don't use it, you loose it
#5 Wishlist + wait
#6 A place for everything, everything in it's place
#7 Don't buy a problem
#8 Have a "why" before you buy
For the sake of not completely plagiarising the video I don't want to go into too much detail on each of these, though for the most part they are pretty self explanatory. Some of them you'll noticed I've already touched on briefly and actually you could probably condense them down to less rules considering a lot of them overlap in some way.
My blog post so far has had a lot of focus on removing junk, but there's a very large component here to do with over-consumption; how do we even end up with so much junk? Would you be surprised to hear, another reason I cant take the whole of our donation pile to the op shop at once is because their bins are consistently full? I don't think the average person is at fault for making a few bad or impulsive purchases here and there. Doing a spring clean and finding you had a lot more stuff lying around than you realised. Most of the stuff I'm donating is either second hand or something I bought from the op shop, but I still cant help but feel guilty about it all. In my old journal I have a list of stuff I planned to buy that I just forgot about. Things I wanted to spend my money on, then later when I had the money, I was more interested in spending it on something else. So even though I don't really shop online, and so don't usually "wishlist" items (the video specifically referred to online wishlists), I found even rules like that applied to my own situation in someway or another. I guess I don't feel I have any abnormal issues with impulse purchasing things, but considering how the world we live in is built around encouraging over-consumption, it's something I want to be mindful of and also just acknowledge here.
So where am I gonna go from here? I'm really not in any rush to completely declutter my space, in fact, I'm happy to have even made a start. It's an encouraging feeling to develop this as a skill, which maybe sounds weird? But this really is more than just cleaning, it's really consciously thinking about what I own and how it makes me feel and learning to let go of things that aren't making me happy, and it feels good. So every now and then, when I have the motivation I'm gonna keep doing my little clean-outs with all this in mind. Then hopefully one day, I'll no longer feel burdened by any "deal with later piles".