Summary: Over 11 weeks of decluttering, I committed to and did at least 3 hours weekly, but found the clutter’s scope overwhelming. Much remains to be done. Moving forward, I’ll adopt a different approach inspired by Oliver Burkman’s Meditations for Mortals.
It seems like just yesterday that I was proposing to my accountability group that I would commit to work on decluttering for 3 hours a week for each of the 12 weeks of our fall Accountability Group cycle. One of the group members, wanting to make sure I did not take on a commitment that I could not complete, asked me: “Do you have enough clutter to allow you to work at decluttering for 3 hours a week for the full 12 week cycle without running out of clutter?”
I answered: “Yes. I have enough clutter to last me through 12 weeks of decluttering.” I added something to the effect of “I could spend 3 hours a week for 12 hundred weeks and have enough clutter to last me”. I wasn’t sure how much I may have been exaggerating with my reply, but that is the way it felt.
Now, 11 weeks into the cycle, I am uncertain if I have made enough of a dent in the clutter to be perceptible. I’m not sure if I reduced the clutter by 1% or not. I think it’s likely not. It still seems infinite. I know that a few places in our house are less cluttered than they were 11 weeks ago, but when I look around I see so many many cluttered places that the need for decluttering seems infinite.
Yesterday, I took a series of photos to document the remaining clutter along with maybe a couple of images of places that are pretty good and need little or no additional decluttering. I imagined the pictures might help me, or help us, to get a better handle on our needs and opportunities for decluttering. Now that I have these 37 pictures, mostly showing unique areas of our house (covering that vast majority but not all of our home) I can review what is need from the comfort of my computer or phone anywhere in the world. Looking at the images, it appears that each area shown could use between 1 and 100 hours of decluttering effort. Thus the over 36 hours I have put in over the last couple months are a drop in the bucket and my glib reference to needing 12 hundred weeks to complete the task seem close to reality.
Feeling like the decluttering project may be close to infinite can be discouraging and motivates me to find a new way of looking at decluttering. I would like to shift my paradigm to a perspective that helps me to feel more empowered with respect living with our stuff and the first world problem of having accumulated too much stuff. I continue to learn about life and have found great inspiration in Oliver Burkman’s most :recent book “Meditations for Mortals” in which he suggests a “Done list” (Chapter/Day 4 “Against Productivity Debt: On the power of a ‘Done list’”) that we focus on completing things but not on everything. (chapter/day 9 “Finish things: On the magic of completion”) He explores of the multiple benefits of shifting the way we relate to the things we do, to get to done more often, partly by defining tasks to be finite manageable, and partly for us to push through to reach completion.
In alignment with this new to me paradigm I would like to celebrate a few wins among my decluttering actions over these last 11 weeks. I only remember some of what I did as I was not keeping a done list. Here are a few items I do remember:
- The garage: I went through the garage seeing and touching almost every area inside it, getting rid of many things.
- USB cables plus: collected and sorted through electronics wires from many locations consolidating them into one place sorted in a way that finding what is needed is much easier.
- Deck: cleared out the back area of our deck
- To do list: digital decluttering of my todoist inbox emptying it completely
- Removed from the living room the big pile of things that I took from my dad’s place last summer after he passed away and stacked them neatly in the basement.
- Went through the hanging stuff in my closet getting rid of many items and making the closet easier to use.
Going forward I will keep a done list for my decluttering, and define decluttering actions to be clear and finite, and push more to complete the defined actions. It has been helpful to have a commitment to doing 3 hours per week, this is has not proved to be a sufficient and optimal structure for me.
I have much more to do and much more and to learn, including implementing new ways to pair down the clutter in my environment, as well as adjusting my perspective both on the actions of decluttering and on living comfortably unencumbered by unneeded and unwanted stuff.