Four Selfish Reasons to Declutter Your Home in a Month
Give away everything you haven’t used in the last two years
“Have you been doing Swedish death cleaning?” asked my best friend when I gave her a bag of books from my cabinet. We met one evening in a cozy cafe and sat beside a cat sleeping in a corner.
“I hope not” I laughed.
I’m 44. I have plans, you know.
Every time I open my floor-to-ceiling bookcase, I’m happy to see how empty it has become. Books, lamps, file folders, hundreds of photos, childhood memorabilia, souvenirs, and Christmas decorations had been multiplying behind opal glass doors for years for a few reasons, one of them being that my mom always says:
“You don’t want to give that away, do you?”
Growing up in the 1950s Southern Europe, she spent her childhood in poverty and now stacks her bookcase with decorations and dolls.
Then one day I decided:
If my mom thinks it’s a pity to get rid of some of these things, she can have them.
But I never asked and the figurine/book/picture would remain on the shelf smirking at me knowing it was safe.
In the end I did ask and she didn’t take much, so I ended up selling the rest to…
