stuff, Stuff, STUFF! Clutter is Bringing Me Down, Man.

Chapter, Fashionably Light

Aug 06 2013

Gold Tape

stuff, Stuff, STUFF! Clutter is Bringing Me Down, Man.Stuff…stuff…

stuff, Stuff, STUFF! Clutter is Bringing Me Down, Man.

Yet. More. Stuff.stuff, Stuff, STUFF! Clutter is Bringing Me Down, Man.

At university, I grew accustomed to minimal living.

I packed my bags carefully, and in this de-cluttered bliss, anything I didn’t need glared at me so obviously so I just got rid of it. Ahhh….

Returning home means returning to all that excess stuff that didn’t make it into The Wayfinder. Most of it fits into the No-I-Don’t-Need-It-really-But-Maybe-I’ll-Hold-Onto-It-Just-In-Case category. My room is spacious and so naturally, it attracts clutter. And that’s kind of overwhelming. It’s easy to take a couple of unwanted items to Oxfam, but a roomful? Where to draw the line? It’s like a battle of Awesome Stuff vs. Borderline Clutter and the Awesome Stuff is rather outnumbered.

De-cluttering was a thing from my past, and coming home to it was like Georgina Sparks coming to town to remind everyone of That Dark Time.

To top it off, I noticed myself feeling sluggish. Flopping onto my bed was becoming a habit. Face-in-pillow kind of flop, shutting my surroundings out, or trying to. I need my clean surfaces, for with clutter my eyes whiz and my mind goes with it, and then I just Flop.

The clutter was actually draining me.

So I decided to take action. The task of de-cluttering everything was equally daunting and addicting, depending on how fired up I felt – I was either too lazy to get started, or too pumped to stop. The point of the de-cluttering is to be able to think more clearly and live less distractedly. Sooo let’s not spend life getting distracted to the point of de-cluttering all day, okay.

Each night before bed I pick one area that irks me. A drawer, surface, shelf, whatever. My task is simply to make that space not irk but inspire. This is usually a combination of rearranging, recycling, and donating. One space at a time. Maybe this process will never end. But it certainly helps to chip away at it.

And trust me – the Flop feels so much better after a bit of effort to deserve it.

miss xandra bee

P.S. More on clutter, of a different sort.

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