It is human to hoard. People hoard mostly for two reasons;
we value earthly possessions and the more we have the happier we are; and we
cling to things because there is always the possibility that we may need it
sometime or the other.
Sometimes it is a pity that people spend their whole lives
collecting things and cling to it for dear life until the day they have to move
home. Then it is a traumatic experience to realize all is or was in vain – the
majority of your possessions are nothing more than clutter!
Here are some tips to avoid this traumatic experience:
1. Top of the list is to go through your house periodically,
eliminating items you no longer want or you no longer use.
2. Always start clearing up the clutter from the outside in.
This means that you must take care of the clutter in a room or living area
before digging into your storage places.
3. Once you are finished with your living areas work out a
schedule to work on each individual storage place. Best is to schedule at least
one hour a day for ‘quality’ time of cleaning up. When the hour is finish, stop
and continue with other scheduled chores.
4. To ensure that items are genuinely considered and not
just rearranged within the storage places, obtain 4 large containers and
classify each container with a label of the eventual disposal of each item; for
instance ‘for charity’, ‘for garbage’, ‘belongs to someone else’ (children or
family) and ‘decision pending’.
5. Within the time scheduled for each day, only tackle a
small portion of the storage area and do not empty the storage of all clutter
at once. This will lead to chaos and definitely to demotivation to continue.
6. Many people shun
from clearing up clutter because they cannot bear to throw things away. To
overcome this, donate it to charity; at least you will feel better because the
underprivileged will enjoy it.
As motivation for this dreadful task of cleaning up clutter,
the following food for thought: For every item cleaned-up, a vacancy is created
for bringing something new into your house!
