1. Live
a prioritized life: You have to determine the things that
are truly valuable to you. Is it more important to keep the old college books
or the family pictures? Is it more valuable to have things that may be helpful
one day in the future, or things that you need for the day? By taking inventory
in your life of the things that you truly find important, you will determine
the basis for the following steps.
2. Get
rid of the clutter: With priorities in hand, go from room
to room, asking the questions: do I need this to live for today? Does this item
or object have a more sentimental rather than functional value? If I need to
replace it, can I ever get it back again? There is a tier or hierarchy that you
can use in order to divest yourself of the things that you have; that hierarchy
is here: A. Sell the items online via ebay or some other Web based forum. Doing
this will enable you to get the most cash for the things that you desire to be
rid of. B. Sell the items at a garage sale or at a specialty outlet… bookstores
have continued to purchase used books even in the downturn. C. Give to charity.
If the organization is a 501c3, then you also obtain a tax deduction. D.
Recycle – get some measure of value. E. Burn – at least you are getting the
value of warmth from the things you had. Perhaps you could even cook food on
the old magazines you don’t need and couldn’t sell. F. Trash – send it to the
landfill.
3. Assess
your current needs: Your goal, after ridding yourself of
clutter, is to use the things you have more efficiently. If you don’t have the
space to do what you need to, but have a lot of things still around, start
re-arranging how you have stored the things you have. For kids, it can become
like the video game, Tetris… use your Tetris skills in order to determine
better ways of storing the things you have left. Also, maybe you don’t need 20
dresses. Maybe you actually need five. Lose the rest of them, and enjoy the
freedom that comes from having space to move.
4. Change
the positions of furniture to match the current situation that you are in:
When you can’t move, if you have gotten rid of cluttery items, maybe you can
reposition your furniture. Remember that clutter causes a lack of freedom to
move. As living beings, we were designed to move. As Americans, our threshold
for a comfort zone with people is much larger than those in other cultures… so
the space needs we have may not be the same for everyone in the world.
Furniture is only helpful to the extent that you can store the things you need
AND recover them easily when they are needed.
5. Go
vertical: Much of the unused space that we have is actually
on the walls. With a little thought, you can transform and hide the cluttery
items by (gasp) purchasing a wall
mounted cabinet to place them in. Be sure that you have a couple strong arms
and a stud finder from which to hang the items you need. You will be surprised
at the amount of space you save when you start seeking structural solutions to
your organizational problems.
6. Change
the things you value – remember that even when you
have a lot of things, your life doesn’t consist in those things. Value time
spent with family doing free things like taking walks, swimming at the beach,
etc. instead of doing things that require that you spend money.
7. Emphasis
on design, efficiency and quality of life over
space – face it. You don’t have space. So, make up for the lack of space by
focusing on bringing more quality into the space you have. It is amazing what
painting walls can do to a room… color can actually be used to enhance the
perception of depth in a space.
By taking a few steps back and re-examining why you
are doing what you are doing, you will be able to shape your life so that
although you are stuck in a certain situation, you don’t have to feel trapped.
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