A Complete Guide to Decluttering Sustainably
About a year ago, Marie Kondo did her very famous youtube video decluttering her life. It got so famous that now there’s a full book on how to declutter Marie Kondo style.
Being the copycat that I am, and an absolute junkie for sustainable life changes, I decided that I was going to start my year by decluttering my room (which is kind of like decluttering my apartment because I pretty much have all my important belongings in there).
But, before I started, and because I like to make educated choices, I decided to dig a little and learn a little bit more about what decluttering really is and how it can help our sustainability problem.
Basically, decluttering is the act of getting rid of things that you don’t need anymore.
Now that we have learned what decluttering means, it’s time to ask: is decluttering Marie Kondo way the most sustainable way to go?
In my experience, the answer is yes and no. Yes because you are making an effort to walk to a more sustainable lifestyle, owning less and therefore having a lower footprint, but No if you decide to just trash all your excess belongings.
By trashing all your unwanted belongings you are just contributing to the rising problem on our waste production. Getting rid of things you don’t need and switching to a more minimalistic way of living is great, but only if you do it sustainably.
Since I know you are dying to learn how to start you 2020 a little bit lighter after getting rid of all the extra weight you don’t need in your life, I’ll leave you with all the things I did to make my decluttering process a lot more environmentally friendly.
1. Donate or thrift the clothes you don’t want anymore
I started in my closet and let me tell you, there were a lot of clothes I owned that I didn’t even use anymore. Not because I didn’t know I had them, but because they aren’t my style anymore.
So, instead of just putting them in the trash, I called my younger cousins and they came to pick the clothes they liked and fitted them. The ones they didn’t want I sold to a thrift shop that was going to change the clothes and give them to charity kids.
It was a win-win situation. If you don’t have cousins that would want your clothes or don’t know any thrift shops, you can also sell them, give them to a friend or even donate to a charity. The possibilities are endless.
2. Find a new owner for your old books
Personally, I love reading and I’ve always loved, so I had a lot of kids books that no one was really reading anymore. Besides that, I also had all my text books that my mother made me keep and I really didn’t know what to do with them.
After giving it some thought, I ended up donating the story books to my brother’s school library, where many other kids will be able to read them. And I donated my textbooks to my old school where they will be given to the less fortunate students.
All my old books are getting a new use, something that wouldn’t have happened if I had just thrown them in the trash can.
3. Recycle as many things as you can
I also love writing, especially with pen and paper, so I had a lot of studying notes and papers from when I was in college plus a few used notebooks that I kept because I thought they were pretty.
Unfortunately, those also had to go. So, instead of disposing them in the common trash, I disposed of these items in the correct recycling bin.
In the end, decluttering is about making your life free of what you don’t need and keeping that motto as your lifestyle. But it’s really important that we do that sustainably. The more we consume, the more trash we produced, so if we can reduce our consumption by decluttering, we also have to think green and declutter in the most sustainable way possible.
