Tips for clearing clutter

My wife and I are hoarders. We get stuff and have trouble doing away with it. This leads to a shamefully messy house, and excessive need for storage. We’ve tried all manner of overcoming the problem, but without a consistent effort, we pretty much fall back into over-collecting soon after clean-ups. I’m going to give it another shot, after having found Zen Habits’ 15 tips to declutter.

13. Internalize that your value is not in your “stuff”. It is just “stuff”. And realize that your value grows when you share your “stuff”. Hoarding is a selfish act.

I think this one really applies to me. I tend to buy when I’m stressed or down. Some people eat – I spend. Bad Randy.

1. Declutter for 15 minutes every day. It’s amazing how much you can get through if you just do it in small increments like this.

One of the reasons why I like this list so much is almost everything on there is as simple as this opening step. I can much more easily stick to it if it is easy and I can start with a low commitment. Much like I’ve been most successful sticking to day-after-day of frozen dinners with known calorie counts, I think I can be more successful decluttering and cleaning if I do small increments of clean-up daily with a room-by-room cleaning plan.

[tags]Declutter, Zen Habits, Cleaning[/tags]