Declutter Your Space — Weekly Challenge 005

Whether you’ve got a cluttered drawer or a room that could be on Hoarders, we can all probably take some time to organize. This week’s challenge: Declutter a space.

This can be as big or as small as you want to take on: drawer, shelf, table, closet, bin, room, house, office. One of the best declutter books I read (also probably the only declutter book I’ve read) is Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

The tip that had the most impact on me: hold an item and ask if it sparks joy. If it doesn’t, thank it for its service and toss or donate it1. It’s also nice to remind yourself that by clearing out the ‘ok’ items, you’re better to appreciate the items you truly care about.

That tip alone helped me downsize a large one bedroom apartment filled with stuff when I moved in with my minimalist fiancee. And it helped again when we moved across the country and only shipped a few boxes.

But don’t think I’m some cured clutter freak. I still pay for a storage unit of stuff that’s 3000 miles away. And I come from a long lineage of hoarders (my grandfather had a full on house of just stuff).

This blog post has the most essential tips from Kondo’s methodology, if you want to give it a look.

For me, I’ll be decluttering my shelves that were full of financial papers for tax time. And I’ll be doing some digital decluttering, clearing out my Facebook and Evernote Inbox.

What are you going to declutter?