There has been movement afoot in the last few years that has focused on the magic of Decluttering. Decluttering will change your life! Throwing away your stuff will open doors to follow your passion! You’re wasting your life, your family, your money on all the crap you have. Get rid of it! By backing the dumpster up to the house, you’ll lose weight, get rich, and look gorgeous, all at the same time! Hallelujah! But this sounds way too good to be true…
Except I think it is true.
I first read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing at least 3 years ago, and it did magically reduce stress and make me feel a little less overwhelmed (and yes, I do sushi roll my clothes, including underwear, and I get a little thrill every time I open a drawer and can see everything all at once and in little rolls). I started with cleaning out my closet and was honestly appalled at the garbage bag of actual garbage (clothes, shoes and accessories that were too damaged to be donated but that I had held onto, probably out of guilt and knowing they were garbage) and 3 garbage bags of clothes and shoes that didn't spark joy that could be donated. I didn’t know I had stuffed so much into my closet– where had it all fit in? Just a couple of months ago, I went through my closet again, and while it was much better than the first time I decluttered, I was still able to weed out about 1/2 a garbage bag of clothes that were denotable, and 1/2 a bag of worn out things.
My Year of Minimal Shopping project has been encouraged by the recent cleaning out of my closet. Do I really need to have so much stuff that I can discard a whole garbage bag of it every couple of years? That seems like a lot. Clothing– with the exception of replacing worn out items– is on the No Shopping list for the next year. Hallelujah!
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