De-cluttering

The weather being what it was, we spent a lot of time inside this week. Kids and dogs being what they are, I also spent a lot of time trying to keep things from falling into complete chaos. Engaged in this futile task, I realised that many things in this house were strangers to me. I couldn't really recall how they came to be here and I had absolutely no idea how to put them away. Worse, it seemed these things rarely travelled solo. Rather, we had collectives, packs, tribes, communities of clutter, living out their aimless days in poorly constructed stacks, piles and sheafs. I found myself walking from room to room, looking for suitable accomodation for boxes of batteries that may or may not have any life in them, what seemed like hundreds of envelopes stuffed with 'important' papers, hand me down clothes that Martha never quite fitted into, two fit balls for that Pilates we are always intending to do, articles ripped out of newspapers and magazines for unspecified future reference, endless roughly drawn schematics of kitchens and gardens that someone, at some time, imagined had captured one or another golden idea, brochures, instruction books for items that I was not even sure we owned, warranties, strange pieces of miscellaneous giftware accrued over many birthdays and Christmases, seed packets, plastic containers that had long ago parted company with their lids, extraneous lids that no longer matched any containers or jars, endless bunny rugs...the list goes on. What to do with it? What if I threw it all out then one day needed a spare battery? What if one of my sisters has a/another baby? Won't they need all these baby clothes?

The longer we were stuck indoors the more I longed for the spartan clarity of a Danish cabin where everything was either essential or beautiful, where everything had its place. Or at least an appropriate storage solution. I flicked through an old Ikea catalogue, unearthed in one of our ancient piles, and dreamed of Pax's and Traby's and Expedit's. I contemplated lock up storage. Perhaps I could work a few more hours to offset the cost? Then, out of desperation (or perhaps it was just procrastination), I googled 'clutter'. And this is what I found. I had a clutter epiphany. 'Organisational giant' Peter Walsh pointed out something so perfectly obvious I'm embarassed that I had to learn it from Unclutterer.com: 'respect the limits that your physical space places on you. There is only so much stuff that can come into your home before it is a place that you don't want to be, regardless of how fabulous your storage solutions may be. Figure out what kind of environment you want, figure out those physical limits and that's it - don't ever allow stuff to exceed those limits' (I'm paraphrasing here). Aah.

I want our house to feel calm and contemplative. I want it to encourage ease of movement and action (doing one thing shouldn't involve the cleaning up or relocation of another). I want it to be simple, yet full of meaning to those who live here, I want there to be care in the details. I want everyone to know where everything is. I want to wake up in the morning and pad out to the kitchen to drink my tea and feel the sun on my face without having to clear a space at the kitchen table. We filled boxes, and boxes, and boxes. We emptied drawers, and bins, and folders. We cleared under beds , on tops of cupboards, behind doors, and most importantly, surfaces. We drove it to St Vinnies, we burned and we recycled. Now that we had arrived at our 'limit', a kind of clutter detente, I extracted commitments from every member of the household: from now on, nothing extra comes into the house without something else going out (that includes you, Bessie). I woke up this morning, and even though it was rainy and grey, it felt good. Very good. Thank you, Mr Walsh. You are an organisational giant.