What is Clutter?

Clutter is a word we all use often to talk about the general little piles of stuff all around us. But when it comes time to declutter those little piles we are suddenly looking at specific things. Perfectly good stuff in pretty good condition. You do not just get rid of items like that. You just need to find a great way to store it, right? Uhmmmm… not necessarily.

Trash is clutter, but not all clutter is trash. So when you are looking at all of the still good stuff how do you know which ones are clutter?

Define Clutter

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and the same goes for one woman’s clutter.

I can not make up a list or give a definite accurate description for clutter that would help you when looking at an individual thing. Any definition I would give to you would make total sense right up to the second you are holding something that seems to have some value left in it. That is the moment we get the urge to want to put it away being unable to see it as clutter.

It may be easier to first determine what is not clutter.

• If it is something you actively use, it is not clutter.
• If it makes your life easier or contributes value to your life, it is not clutter.
• If it is something you need to keep for legal reasons, it is not clutter.
• If it is something that puts a big smile on your face or  inspires you it is not clutter.

If the pretty little thing in your hand meets any of these requirements, do not hesitate to keep it. Regardless of what someone else may think.  You can reserve the right to change your mind later, but at least for now it works for you. It is not clutter.

But what about everything else? There is so much left right?  If you follow the adage of when in doubt keep it, you will not make as much headway.  You will keep doubting. You will not feel as good about your progress as you would if you knew one way or another.

Asking The Questions

There are several questions you can ask and ways to change the way you look at things to help you decide if it is or is not clutter. At the end, you may have some things you are still unsure about, but this should help you with a lot of items.

Whose is it? Does it belong to you or to someone else? If it does not belong to you, it is really not up to you to decide. If it belongs to a neighbor, friend, the library or anyone else outside of the house, you need to give it back. Put it in your car or right beside the door right now before it gets moved into another pile.  If it belongs to someone else in the house, make sure to check out the link and then designate a place to put it so that it is out of your way and you can get the owner to help you decide later.

Is it broken?

Has it expired?

Does it make you unhappy?

The 80/20 Rule.  If you were to look at everything around you, you use only 20% of your stuff 80% of the time. (If you look at your closets, you wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time.)

1. For each item you can ask, “Is it in the 20% most used?”.  If your answer is yes, it is a keeper.  If it fits any of the bullets above consider it in the 20%. The rest of these will help with the remaining 80%.
2. Is it something you occasionally use? Do you have something else that could do the job as well or pull double duty? (If you do decide to keep it, consider storing it more out of the way.)
3. If you have never used it, do not intend to, and it does not make you happy, it is probably clutter.  Regardless of its condition. Regardless of how useful it could be.
4. Be honest with yourself about the things you intend to use. How long have you had it with the intention of using it?  How much do you have that you intend to use, someday? Will you really ever get around to using it?

If it is something that you use the majority of the time, you want it really accessible and easy to find. The best way to organize that 20% is by having plenty of room to store it conveniently.  You want it front and center.  You do not want to have to dig through a bunch of other stuff to get to it.  Keeping that in mind will make it easier to be more critical of the other 80% that is so much less important to you.

Determine the items value. When you are putting a dollar amount for the value of an item, you can not think about the money that was spent to purchase it. The money was real, but that value is not. If you were to go to a resell site such as Ebay or Craigs List and look up the item, what price tag would you see? That is the value of the item. If you think of it using today’s value, is it easier to let it go?

Replacement. It may cost more to replace the item if you were to buy a new version. Instead of thinking about the replacement expense, ask yourself IF you would want to replace it if something happened to it. How long would it take you to notice it was missing if someone took it away without you knowing? Some items you realize you would not notice missing. You would not pay the replacement price.

Real Value. There are some tools that are very inexpensive, but worth their weight in gold. There is another exercise that will help you look at each item not for its actual value, but for the value it offers to you. You can take a second to put a monetary value to the space it occupies. It puts every item on more of an even playing field. Then you can ask yourself if each item is worth paying the rent for the space it occupies.

Every inch of your home is valuable real estate. Take a minute to do an exercise that figures out how much you are paying each month for each item to fill the space. (This is just a perception exercise.) Take your monthly mortgage or rent payment then divide that number by the approximate square footage of your home. (Approximate numbers are close enough.)

Now some space is more valuable than others. Storage space is of premium value. Take the figure you just got and multiply it by 2. That figure gives you an idea of how valuable each square foot of storage space is worth in your home. (The space of a shelf of a single upper kitchen cabinet is about 1 square foot.) Take that figure and divide by 30.

You now know about how much you pay each day to store any item. Call it the daily item rent. When you look at it that way, things that pull their weight and those that do not are fairly easy to identify. Pick up any item and ask yourself if it is worth the rent. If you were to look at that figure as the payment you are making to store items in a square foot of space, which items do you mind paying that rent for and which are worth it for you?

Is it available online? For paper not legal or financial such as manuals, magazines and newspapers, often you have access to the information online or can save a digital copy instead of the real thing. (We will get to filing in another article.)

Would someone else be able to use it? Sometimes we just hate the idea of waste.  If we can think of it as being useful to someone else, we can free ourselves from obligation. It makes it easier to donate it, sell it, or give it away.

If you still can not make up your mind, you may need to decide if you are really in doubt or if you are just a victim of the endowment effect.