Follow These Simple Steps to Declutter Your Closet
1. Don’t panic! – Take a before picture and then just take everything out of the closet.
2. Sort all of the items in the closet into categories that are logical to you. Don’t overthink it. Just put like with like, as you did in kindergarten. 🙂
3. Make decisions about what to discard: duplicates, no longer used items, items in disrepair.
4. Clean the closet. This is excellent Feng Shui (feels good too!)
5. Put items back into the closet, placing the most often used items in the easiest to access locations.
6. Take an after picture and celebrate your success.
Here’s my De-Cluttering Diva’s blog post w/ photos of my closet-clearing (see end of e-mail). Cleaning that empty filthy floor felt fantastic! I never would have guessed they could get me through that in one day. They had to hold my hand a bit when I opened some bags of old toys & child clothes, as I got teary. We just set those aside to go through later. I had a good long cry on my own over those clothes another day, still not sure what I’ll do with them or how I’ll store them. We found 10 gallon jugs of emergency water from 2009! Undrinkable now, but can water the garden. The tubs they were stored in now hold quilts & pillows. I found other stuff I’d forgotten I had. She’s helped me see it won’t all get done in a day, but it is feasible to make major progress in small steps.
Meanwhile, I go on smaller de-cluttering scavenger hunts just about daily. Sometimes it’s just to take an extra unneeded old sieve from the kitchen up to the growing new pile of discards in Megan’s room. Other times I’ll dig into a section, like one I have on a shelf of empty photo frames mixed in with documents & photos.
One thing Pam advised me was to cluster Stuff in a category, like knitting & crochet, which were scattered around the house. I put it all on a table & pondered it a few days. I decided I was through with knitting, & if I change my mind I’ll buy more supplies. Meanwhile, others can enjoy the many needles, books, etc. I’d collected. I kept the crochet stuff (smaller) for now & the books & yard. I put them in containers & fit them into the games closet in our computer room, which I’d been clearing out. That felt really good.
I realize I’ve had many Lives in these past couple of decades, each w/ its own equipment or manifestations. Questions now are what am I done with & ready to shed give away, maybe photograph & discard vs. still a passion. What are really just good memories now that I don’t need to hang onto physical reminders of, vs. projects I still want to work on? I’m hamstrung by those hobgoblin doubts, such as What if I need it again? I spent a lot of money on that! I used to really love that! What if I’m making a mistake? Pam advised me over & over to consider what’s the worst that can happen if I let go… have to buy more knitting needles? Need to find a new chair? Have to admit that phase of my life is over & done? Not tragedies.
And her biggest wisdom that moved me: every object has a string that goes to our mind & heart. Too many will cause us to stagnate & feel stuck, tired or paralyzed. Keeping too much Stuff has many costs! I can hardly describe how wonderful it’s feeling to let go, once she helped me start the process & guided me through it. I just wasn’t getting enough done on my own. Her presence, experience, & willingness to be hands on (we move stuff together) has been so helpful. Her fresh eyed observations & questions (“Why is this lamp here? Oh, it doesn’t work very well? What about getting rid of it?”) are worth a lot, since much of the Stuff has become invisible to me. I have SO much more room in our dining room now (more photos to follow)!!