Thoughts on Decluttering

Hello and welcome back for our final week in this Decluttering Series – A Journey to Sparking Joy.  If you have followed along these past weeks, you have read about our interpretations as we have read along with the book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

A Journey to Sparking Joy:
Anderson & Grant
Making it in the Mountains
DIY Passion
Dwelling in Happiness
Zevy Joy
Cupcakes & Crinoline
Lost in the Found
The Happy Housie

We covered categories such as, Clothing, Accessories, Shoes, Books, Papers, Kitchens and Momentos.  It was interesting to see each of the ladies’ (listed above) approaches and how they tackled each challenge. I learned so much from them and from this book.

(#7 Pillow, Painted Fox Treasures, link in sidebar)

When I started I didn’t really think I need to know much more about clearning or decluttering our home.  In fact I felt pretty confident that I had mastered this chore (generally speaking).  I quickly learned that this was not so and I had much room for growth.

Through each week I was freeing up room in our home and living spaces.  I was unloading and giving bags of our things away.  Things that we did not truly need or did not bring us joy by keeping stored away.

I came away every week with a common theme in mind.  The idea that my delcuttering was based off of what I wanted to keep.  Not what I wanted to get rid of.  This really changed my heart about decluttering.  For so many years I was discarding things based off of what I did not want.  Making this small shift in thinking yielding huge results.  It made the tasks simple and straightforward.  I now have a list to run through when I am organizing; I lay everything out, I put away what I want to keep and I give away or discard the rest (depending on what it is).  This was true for each category. Even more, I felt the freeedom to let go of things that just did not make me happy or served a purpose.  I look back now and think about how funny it was I was hanging on to some things instead of letting them go.

I would recommend this book, knowing and acknowledging that not every piece of it is a “one fits all”. But that there are very useful tips and ways to think about cleaning.  Some may seem appropriate and others not.  For example, there were occasions that I just did not have the time to carry out the task as recommended in the book.  I did however, use many of the suggestions and still felt sucessful with the results.  I will just need to continue working on some areas in our home.

Thanks so much to the ladies who did this alongside me and what a pleasure to participate. I hope that this was helpful one way or another if and when you decide to try something like this out.  Our home feels better for it and this was a refreshing way to go into a busy holiday season. Make sure to see what these talented friends had to say and share.