Do you find yourself stalled trying to declutter your space because you keep thinking you might, maybe someday need this stuff? Everything seems to have a ‘potential’ use and you KNOW just when you let that go you will need it. So you keep it…and never use it.
The law of attraction comes into play when we let things go. The law states what we focus on expands. It’s like when you buy a new car, all of a sudden you see that car everywhere, because you are focused on it…looking for them. The same thing happens when you declutter, the stuff you ruminate about letting go of will all of a sudden be needed, because your're looking for an ‘I told you so’ about letting it go.
But I can tell you from 12 years of experience that when you do let that stuff go, even when you may need it in the future you find an alternative solutions and only miss it for a few minutes, a lot less time than you most likely would have spent searching for it in your cluttered space.
I use to be a preschool teacher, decades ago, and I could see potential in all kinds of stuff that could be used for crafts for the kids. All you crafters out there know what I am talking about…with a creative mind EVERYTHING has the potential be transformed into something else, so you keep everything. Eventually you have so much you can’t possibly use it all. At some point I had to really evaluate all the stuff I was keeping, some of it had been in my pile for years and I never used it. So I spent some time decluttering and letting the unused stuff go, being realistic that if I had not used it in years I was not going to.
To Help you evaluate things to let go here are 5 Questions I ask myself and my clients when they are struggling with letting things go that they think they might, maybe someday need:
- What is the worst thing that can happen if you don’t have that item?
- Will you actually be able to find it if you did need it?
- Could it be replaced by something else in the house?
- Could you borrow the same item from someone else if you needed it?
- Is it worth the cost to store it indefinitely?
We all think we need to be prepared for everything, the trade off is a cluttered overwhelmed space. I believe we can live a simpler life with less to maintain. Instead of focusing on what we let go of, how about focusing on what you get – a clear, calm simplified home.
If you are struggling with letting things go and decluttering you space it’s time to get help:
http://kaossolutions.com/declutter
