Behind the Puddle

Before We Declutter, Let’s Look at the Home We Are Living In

For four weeks, we have intentionally avoided beginning with a closet, a basement, a junk drawer, or a stack of boxes. We have been learning how Decluttering Decades approaches the work because what we believe about our belongings will affect almost every decision we make about them.

Now, we are ready to begin.

But beginning does not mean grabbing garbage bags and choosing a room to empty.

Our first step is to look at the home we are living in today.

Walk Through Your Home as It Is

Most of us stop really seeing the homes we live in.

We step around the same basket. We reach over the same pile. We search for the same missing things. We move something from the chair to the table when we want to sit down and move it back again later.

Eventually, those little accommodations become normal.

This week, I want you to become curious about them.

Walk through the parts of your home you regularly use and try to see them as though you were noticing them for the first time. If walking through the house is difficult, you can do this from your chair, one space at a time, or simply pay attention as you move through your normal day.

We are not looking for everything that is wrong.

We are looking for information.

Start With Safety

Before we worry about whether a bookshelf is overcrowded or whether there are too many coffee mugs, we need to notice anything that makes everyday movement unnecessarily difficult or unsafe.

Pay attention to the paths you use to move from one place to another. Notice whether belongings, furniture, cords, papers, shoes, boxes, or other objects require you to step around, reach over, squeeze through, or change the way you naturally move.

Look at the places where you sit down and stand back up. Notice the route to the bathroom during the night, the stairs you regularly use, and the entrances you need to move through while carrying groceries, laundry, a purse, a cane, a walker, or anything else that changes how easily you navigate the space.

If something could contribute to a fall or prevent you from safely moving through your home, it moves toward the front of our priorities.

Safety gets to go before sentiment.

Then Look at Everyday Life

Once we have noticed immediate safety concerns, we can begin looking for friction.

Friction is anything in the home that repeatedly makes an ordinary activity more difficult than it needs to be.

Maybe the coffee maker is easy to use, but the coffee is stored somewhere difficult to reach. Maybe the medications you need every morning are mixed among things you rarely use. Perhaps getting dressed requires searching through clothing that hasn’t fit for years.

Maybe the kitchen table cannot easily be used for a meal because it has gradually become the place where everything lands.

None of those situations necessarily requires reorganizing an entire room.

They give us clues about where a small change might make everyday life noticeably easier.

Notice What You Have Adapted To

This may be one of the most useful things you do this week.

Notice the things you have quietly adapted yourself around.

The cabinet you no longer use because reaching it hurts. The door that cannot completely open because something is stored behind it. The chair covered with things that you move whenever someone visits.

Maybe you keep something in an inconvenient place because that is where it has always been.

Human beings are remarkably good at adapting.

Sometimes we become so good at working around our belongings that we stop realizing the belongings are no longer working for us.

Frequently Used Things Deserve Convenient Places

Think about the things you use every day.

They should generally be among the easiest things in your home to find, reach, use, and put away.

That sounds obvious, but decades of accumulation can reverse the relationship. Things we rarely use occupy the most convenient spaces while things we need regularly get pushed behind, underneath, above, or around them.

We are going to gradually change that.

The home you live in today deserves priority over the possibility that you might someday need something you haven’t touched in fifteen years.

Do Not Start With the Hardest Place

When people decide they are finally going to declutter, there can be an urge to attack the worst area first.

That may be the basement filled with decades of boxes. It may be the garage, attic, spare bedroom, storage room, or closet nobody wants to open.

We will get there.

But beginning with the most overwhelming space can require hundreds of decisions before you have developed confidence in making them.

Instead, we are going to build our decision-making muscles.

We will begin where the decisions are useful, manageable, and connected to the life you are living now.

We Are Looking for Priorities, Not Problems

There is an important difference between walking through your home looking for everything that is wrong and walking through your home looking for opportunities to make life easier.

Decluttering Decades is not a home inspection.

You do not need to create a giant list of everything that needs to be fixed, cleaned, sorted, donated, repaired, organized, or removed.

That would simply turn your home into one enormous assignment.

We are looking for what deserves attention first.

Maybe that is a pathway.

Maybe it is the place where you take your medications.

Maybe it is your favorite chair.

Maybe it is the kitchen counter where you prepare meals.

Maybe it is the place where you put your keys and spend ten minutes looking for them the next morning.

The most important place to begin may be surprisingly small.

Begin With What Will Give Something Back

There will eventually be work in Decluttering Decades that takes more from you than it gives back immediately.

Sorting photographs can be emotional. Going through inherited belongings may be exhausting. A garage filled with decades of accumulated things may take considerable time without looking dramatically different.

That is another reason we are not beginning there.

Our first changes should, whenever possible, give something back.

A safer pathway gives you easier movement.

A usable chair gives you somewhere to sit.

An accessible cabinet reduces unnecessary reaching.

A cleared portion of the kitchen counter gives you somewhere to prepare food.

A place for the things you use every morning gives you a little less frustration tomorrow.

Those improvements help us understand why we are doing this.

Your First Decision

As you move through your week, identify one place where a relatively small change would make your everyday life safer, easier, or more functional.

Not the place containing the most stuff.

Not the room you are most embarrassed about.

Not the project someone else thinks you should tackle.

Look for the place where resolving something would give something back to you.

Then make the task small enough that you can actually begin.

You are not cleaning the kitchen.

You may be making one section of the counter usable.

You are not organizing the bedroom.

You may be clearing the path between the bed and the bathroom.

You are not tackling the living room.

You may be making your favorite chair and everything you regularly need beside it work better for you.

That is enough for a beginning.

And If Today Is Not a Good Day

Some days you will have the energy to make the change you identified.

Some days you will not.

We are not going to pretend those days do not exist, and we are not going to use them as evidence that the entire project has failed.

Make the task smaller.

If you cannot address the whole surface, address one corner.

If you cannot stand and sort, sit and make a few decisions.

If even that is too much today, notice what you want to return to when your capacity is better.

And if you are wondering whether you are genuinely respecting your limits or simply avoiding something uncomfortable, return to the question that has been with us since the beginning.

Look to your right.

Look to your left.

Is there one thing within reach that I can make a decision about today?

Sometimes the answer will be no.

Sometimes the answer will be one old envelope, one broken object, one magazine, one thing that belongs somewhere else, or one thing you already know you no longer want.

One decision is enough to keep the conversation going.

This Is Where Decluttering Decades Begins

We are not beginning by asking how much we can remove from your home.

We are beginning by asking what your home needs to do for you.

We are going to protect safety, improve everyday function, make frequently used things easier to access, learn how you naturally use your spaces, and gradually resolve the belongings that have accumulated through decades of living.

There will be plenty of time to open boxes.

For now, look at the home around you and ask:

What small change would make living here better?

Start there.

Now, we have begun.