The idea of “decluttering” your home, and the idea that this is going to be an extremely beneficial exercise for anyone, has been around for some time now – and has certainly been experiencing regular revivals in public interest, courtesy of various minimalist movements.
While it’s true that decluttering can be a very positive and uplifting exercise for many people in many situations, it’s not necessarily a given that you should be too quick to “Marie Kondo” your home and eliminate a major proportion of all your belongings.
Here are a few tips that can help you to figure out whether you actually should, or shouldn’t, de-clutter your home.
- Consider moving any belongings you’re not sure about into storage, and see how you feel without them in the home for a while
It’s one thing to see the belongings you currently have in your home and to decide that you don’t really need them or want them, in theory. But it’s a different thing altogether to actually no longer have access to those belongings.
If you’ve got a bunch of belongings that you’re not really sure about, you might want to investigate your options and get a storage quote, as opposed to immediately ditching those items.
Simply renting space in a self storage unit for a month or two, and transferring all those “surplus” belongings into that self storage space, can help to give you a much clearer sense of perspective. Maybe you’ll find that you don’t miss any of those belongings at all, but maybe you’ll find that you’d really prefer them to actually still be in your home.
- Ask yourself whether the issue might just be that you don’t have enough home storage options
Perhaps what people really hate isn’t so much “having too much stuff,” as “having a messy home,” where too many items are sitting around in a haphazard fashion in the open at any given time.
But if that’s your concern, then it might just be the case that you simply don’t have enough home storage options at your disposal in order to keep things properly neat, cosy and organised.
Sure, it might actually be that you do have too many belongings of different types that cause you to feel stressed and overwhelmed. Then again, maybe simply buying some boxes and wardrobes could alleviate your worries.
- Pay attention to whether your belongings cause you to feel negatively while simultaneously lacking a clear purpose
If you have sentimental belongings that make you feel really good, it makes sense to hold onto them unless you are forced to do otherwise. Likewise, if you’ve got belongings that are definitively and directly useful to you, it makes sense to hold onto those as well.
Don’t put pressure on yourself to get rid of things that you would really prefer not to get rid of, simply because you think that it’s a good general practice to “have less stuff.”
Pay attention to whether your belongings actually cause you to feel negatively, while simultaneously lacking a clear purpose. Those are the key criteria you should use for deciding to get rid of things.
