Reflecting upon this month’s theme of Assessing Treasures, I immediately recall the famous quote  from William Morris, who said, “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful and believe to be beautiful.” Let’s explore your home’s treasures in terms of what you use and what you love.
Do you use it?
In our Clutter Diet program, we often tell people that keeping things you don’t need is like continuing to eat when you are already full. Think about what you’re bringing into the house and what is accumulating. If you’re not using it, why are you keeping it? Make some tough decisions to clear out the deadwood and make room for new blessings to come into your home and life.
Closets can be a particularly difficult area with a lot of unused clothing and accessories. Have you worn the item within a year? A well-known method in our professional bag of tricks is to organize your closet and then turn all of the hangers backward so the hook is facing you. Each time you wear something, you return that hanger to the usual direction. After a period of time, such as six months or a year, you can easily see there are clothing items you have never touched, so you are clearly NOT using them! The decisions are then very easy.
Do you love it?
Sometimes we keep things simply because they bring us joy, recall memories, or anchor us to another time, place or person.
Remember that things are not memories…memories exist in our minds. Discarding an item does not mean you don’t love someone anymore or don’t respect the past. It’s possible to find a way to honor the memory without keeping the item. Sometimes our clients have been very satisfied to take a photo of a special item and discard or sell the item itself, so that the memory is still preserved but it doesn’t take up space.
If you are going to keep something for sentimental reasons, why keep it in a dark corner and never see it? If something is valuable to you, it needs to be celebrated and enjoyed. Consider displaying sentimental items in a shadowbox or other frame to get them out of their hiding places and into your daily life.
Some of our memories come in the form of older media formats such as slide carousels which are very bulky. There are scanning services now that can scan in your old slides and convert your movies and other memories to a more updated (and smaller) media format, enabling you to dispose of your bulky items and enjoy your memories more easily. To find these services, do a search for “scanning services” plus the name of your city.
BE DELIBERATE about what you choose to have in your home—if you don’t use it or love it, let it go. |
