ESSENTIAL CLUTTER PURGE CONCEPTS...

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2 ESSENTIAL CLUTTER PURGE CONCEPTS... Purge by Category Not Area: It s a good idea to pick four or five main categories of items to purge and make sure you purge each of those categories completely before moving on to the next one. (See #2 under planning below) Purging categories has several benefits over just starting with the living room and moving on to the bedrooms etc. The most important being that it s easier to get a feel for the entirety of your stuff and therefore make better decisions on what to keep and what to remove. It is also very important to start with the easiest categories. Moving on to the harder more emotional and thought provoking categories only after giving your Keep/Remove decision making muscles some good practice. Save Specialty Areas for Last: After purging by category, there will be a few specialty areas that need attention. The bathroom and kitchen for instance and possibly the garage. Once you ve gone through and purged the main categories it s much easier to tackle these specialty areas and some of their particular needs.

3 One Fell Swoop! Your purge project should be planned for a designated amount of time. Two week day evenings, a long three day weekend, or even a week off from work. (By the way it will always take you substantially longer than you think.) As much as possible you should attempt to complete the project within the allotted amount of time. This does several things for you; first, it creates momentum and guards against procrastination. Secondly it helps with the concept mentioned above regarding getting a really good grasp of the totality of your stuff thereby enabling better decision making. ESSENTIAL CLUTTER PURGE PLANNING... Actually Have a Plan: So many people launch into a de cluttering project by simply throwing a bunch of unused and broken items into a few cardboard boxes and making a dump run. This will result in the hap hazard removal of some of the most obvious clutter but it will not create the clutter free life of simplicity you are ultimately looking for. It s much better to make a plan. Take some time to think

4 about what you are going to do. Make some goals for your clutter purge. Write them down. Make a list of the categories you are going to tackle and possibly even a check list of sub categories. Take the time to get emotionally and physically ready for the challenges that lay ahead. There are going to be some very tough and possibly emotional decisions to make in the near future. Having a written plan will go a long ways towards keeping you on track. Decide on Your Categories: (and the order of implementation) You ll need to have a very clear idea of which categories you are going to attack and in which order. Here are some category ideas in the order I would suggest you implement them: Clothing Books, papers etc. Furniture Miscellaneous, tools, lawn/garden etc. Things of high monetary value Things of sentimental value Your categories may be different and you may have more, or you could have fewer (this is your purge and only you can judge the completeness and effectiveness of it.)

5 Get Family, Roommates, Kids and Significant Ohers on Board: Done properly your clutter purge will be a life changing paradigm shift to one degree or another. It is imperative that the lines of communication are open and functioning with the people in your life with regard to this change. If you can get them on board and pulling the oars in the same direction that s awesome! This is not always fully possible. At the very least you will need to explain exactly what your intentions and goals are for a simpler and more clutter free life and ask that they at least honor your wishes when it comes to removing the clutter from the space and keeping it clutter free into the future. Please do not launch into a full clutter purge without at least informing the people you are in relationship and or live with of your intentions. Designate a Triage area: One of the key concepts of a clutter purge is to get everything you own in whatever category you are currently working on out into the open and in one spot. Depending on the size of your space and your project this could be your living room floor, your garage or even

6 your driveway (Depending on weather conditions of course.) When my wife Jeannie and I did our first purge back in 2008 we used our drive way. It was quite a sight for the neighbors! Get Mentally and Emotionally Prepared: A clutter purge can be a bit of an upsetting experience. You are going to be tasked with making decisions about potentially very emotionally charged pieces of clutter. Anything from photos of your grandparent s trip to England to the tie you wore to your senior prom. This is not a project for the faint of heart. Just understand you will be asked to make tough decisions and know that the freedom, clarity of purpose and serenity of a clutter free life hangs in the balance. The good news is there really isn t a way to screw this up. However it plays out for you is perfectly fine. I would caution you however to be as ruthless and tough minded as you possibly can be about the emotionally charged and sentimental Stuff. Remember that just because the item isn t in your space any longer doesn t mean you don t still have the memory.

7 ESSENTIAL CLUTTER PURGE IMPLEMENTATION Get it All Out in the Open: Prepare your triage area and then remove all items in the category you are working on from wherever they are hiding. Get them out into the light of day. For instance if you are working on the clothing category take everything out of your closets. Including the hall closet, the pantry, the coat racks and the random coats and work clothes hanging in the garage. Plus, don t forget to haul Uncle Ernie s tuxedo and the ski outfit you haven t worn in 10 years out of the attic. Get it all out. Underwear, shoes, boots and the hand me downs you were saving for your cousins kids. Create Three Main Piles: Your three main piles should be labeled as follows Keep Remove Store.

8 The Remove pile will have four sub categories: Giveaway Donate Sell TrashGiveaway denotes items such as the aforementioned hand me downs for your cousin s kids. If you are going to give them to her, Do it! If not move them to the trash pile and be done with it. Donate of course just means a run to the Goodwill. Sell and trash are pretty self explanatory Does it Speak to You or Contribute to You in Some Way? You should approach your decision making with the idea that you are deciding what to keep not what to remove. This makes it easier to not second guess yourself when you get done with a category. Anything that isn t in the Keep pile is automatically on its way out. Address each item individually and if possible touch it or hold it in your hands. How do you fell about this item? Does it speak to you? Doe s it contribute to your happiness and or well being in any way? Does it contribute to your productivity? Listen to what your gut tells you and try and keep the Keep pile down to only those items you are absolutely sure of.

9 Start Early and Stay the Course: You must resist the urge to stop in the middle of your clutter purge and go shopping (please tell me you re not bringing more Stuff into the space you are in the process of trying to de clutter!) or head off to Johnny s baseball game or go to lunch with your neighbor or any of the other 1000 and 1 great excuses you can come up with for putting this thing off until next Tuesday. If you stop in the middle of your purge the chances of you completing the project plummet to near zero! Beware the Dreaded Storage Unit: There are situations when you will need to store things. Not everyone has the room for all of their needed and wanted items. However you must be very careful to not simply remove the clutter from your living space only to have it end up in a pile in a storage shed somewhere. If it s useful, you love it or it contributes to you in some way, or if it has great monetary value then of course go ahead and store it. If not, out it goes!

10 One in One Out: Once you have run through all of your categories and purged your specialty areas take a moment to revel in the freedom of your newly de cluttered space. Notice how you can breathe again! Be present with the clarity and serenity you have created. Congratulations! Now, to keep it clean, clear and clutter free, you ll need to institute a few new rules. The first is to focus on a place for everything and everything in its place. The second and most important is the one in, one out rule. This rule says that for every item (other than food and consumables such as copy paper and office products etc.) that you bring into your space you need to designate an equal or similar item to remove. Sounds easy but you need to be diligent and focused to make sure it happens, otherwise you ll end up right back in the cluttered mess you started with quicker than you can say minimalism...

11 Hope this has been helpful. Feel free to contact me with any questions at Good luck and good Purging! Cary David Richards