Your house is a just a pile of stuff with a cover over it – George Carlin
A google search for decluttering brought up 1.9m results. There’s links to creative ways to declutter your home, decluttering secrets from professional organisers, what not to do when decluttering, how to cut clutter from your home, decluttering your home AND your head & even questions whether the cult-like rise of decluttering is even healthy!
Turns out that simply buying less shit (stuff?) isn’t an option even worth considering. And lest I sound like I’m on some moral high ground, here’s an inventory of the stuff that’s on my desk alone!
- Two monitors
- A wireless modem
- A webcam
- Three speakers
- Two camera battery chargers
- A laser pointer
- 5 USB sticks
- 11 Calligraphy pen holders
- 15 bottles of ink
- 12 bottles of gouache colors
- A lamp
- A clock
- 3 Photoframes
- A mug full of pens (20?)
- Lens cleaning liquid
- A laptop
- Headphones
- Toastmaster magazines
- A dictionary
- A thesaurus
- 6 other books
- A remote
- A mobile phone
- An in-tray with stuff I don’t want to look at just yet
- A keyboard
- A mouse
- A mousepad
When I tell my kids they have far too many toys (or anything else), I’m reminded that I can’t preach what i don’t practice.
The last few days have been spent cleaning out stuff that was most likely a spontaneous purchase. Three garbage bin pickups, a council cleanout booking, two recycle bin pickups, & some stuff we’ll never use given away to friends who have some use for it- all in the last three weeks. There’s still an enormous amount of stuff that will continue to depart our household over the course of the year, but I have no doubt other stuff will take its place.