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Simply living without clutter

© Lin Edwards

When I began to live a simpler life, I began to really notice the clutter that had infested my home for years. Like many homes, mine had gradually become cluttered up with stuff I thought I might need one day, or stuff that I fell in love with at a market, or stuff that I'd been given. I had hundreds of books and videos, and even vinyl records I hadn't played for years, and I had clothes that didn't even fit me any more.

Every now and then I would see that the place was so cluttered it was really a pigsty, and I would have a massive "spring clean" to get all the clutter out of sight or throw it out. I usually found myself just moving most of the clutter somewhere else, rather than tossing it, but in any case cleaning up all that mess was such an effort that I didn't want to do it again in any hurry, and slowly the clutter built up.

Well, now I'm doing it differently. I'm taking the advice of a few resources I found on the Internet, and I'm "de-cluttering" a few minutes a day, one small section at a time. It's amazing the difference I've been able to make in just fifteen minutes a day. Over time, getting rid of all this clutter is going to save me money as well as some stress, because clutter costs money to buy, store, and keep clean. I think it's much better to have less of it in the first place. There's enough junk in the world without cluttering up my house with it.

An excellent resource I found is the Flylady. If you join up, the Flylady will send you emails every day to remind you to spend a few minutes at a time getting your home clean and tidy, and keeping it that way. Even if you don't join, there's an enormous amount of helpful information on the site, and it's presented in a fun way. Another good resource is the Organized home, which has numerous hints on how to get rid of clutter, and keep the clutter at bay. Perhaps the best place to start reducing the clutter though is Life Organizers, which has a start-up list of nine things to do to make a dramatic difference in one hour.

The best advice I've gleaned from websites like these is the importance of starting small, and not trying to do it all in one go. So I started by going through one shelf in one cupboard at a time in the kitchen, one drawer at a time in my bedroom, one bookshelf at a time, and so on. It's still a work in progress, but I'm getting there, and the difference is amazing, not just in the way the house looks, but in the way it makes me feel. (I can't bear to go near the garden shed yet though!)

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