Liberating That Precious Junk was written by Andrea Phillpotts. She is a writer and teacher in Richmond. Opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of any school district, organization, or school. Her column appears every other weekend in The Richmond Review.
The crocuses have risen and glorious sun rays stream through my windows, illuminating the dust bunnies and boxes in my home.
This could only mean one thing-time for spring cleaning. The hardest part is imagining where to start.
I attended a presentation in Richmond last week on decluttering which gave me more than a few suggestions. Dressed in a crisp suit and toting a well-organized storage unit, Linda Chu had some solutions to my disarray. “Organizing 101 doesn’t exist,” she told the packed crowd.
Most people collect their organizing habits from family patterns, good or bad as they might be. Linda’s aptly named company “Out of Chaos” teaches people how to declutter their lives and lighten their load.
She shares many outrageous stories like the professor who could never find student papers in his office and the woman who was keeping her own umbilical cord after finding it stored away in her mother’s basement. Ew!
Cleaning clutter frees people but to get there, they first need to cross a mess threshold. For many people, it’s not being able to put your car in the garage because of all the junk in it.
Maybe it’s opening a closet and having its contents avalanche on you. For me, it was my husband’s not talking to me for two days because of the mountain of clothes on my dresser.
In any case, people need to want change before change can happen. Then they are ready for Linda’s system of S.P.A.C.E.* – sort, purge, assign, contain, and evaluate.
The purging-of-junk stage is the hardest. Ask yourself, when was the last time I used this item? If it were to vanish, would I notice? Did I even remember I had it in the first place?
Gainfully recycling or donating the object to charity will help the process. Having a buddy help you will definitely makes you more ruthless with your precious junk.
I walked away from the decluttering conference confident and itching to attack the mess in my house.
I’d like to tell you that my spring cleaning and organizing is complete but I’d be lying.
Chu does personal consultations and more information is available through her website at www.outofchaos.ca. I’m tempted to drop her an email. The dust bunnies are calling.
*The S.P.A.C.E. principle was originally developed by Julie Morgenstern in her book Organizing from the Inside Out.
