In early 2021, I felt like I was losing my mind. We were in the middle of renovations, just after lockdown, right after being burgled, and with a newborn baby.
Desperate for some calm, I gave away 80% of my belongings.
Not out of some lofty ideal like rejecting consumerism, but because my sanity as a mother depended on it. Maybe I could even spark a little joy.
Over the course of more than two years, I sold, donated, and dumped everything that wasn’t essential. But peace of mind was a little harder to find than I thought.
Contrary to what the minimalists tell you, simply 'having less' won't magically make your life easy.
Getting rid of obvious clutter is a relief. Not having to enter rooms sideways to navigate around piled-up shoe boxes, unused sheets of gib, and bags of concrete mix did make life easier—but not peace-of-mind easy.
The vast majority of minimalist spaces you see belong to young guys that have no dependents and spend most of their time adventuring.
If you have a family, you can’t just reduce your interior to a Macbook and obligatory green plant. Even Marie Kondo has “kind of given up” on tidying the house after the birth of her third child1.
Even in minimalist spaces, visual balance matters. Too few items can make a space feel awkward unless grouped intentionally, and without enough storage, clutter will still pile up.
Sometimes you need more storage containers! There, you have my permission.
Also, for some things, having less is a relief. For others, having less is a burden.
It didn’t take long to realize that having the bare minimum of everything was not sustainable. If I wanted to be present with my little one, go back to work, and help with the renovations, I needed streamlined household systems - and having less is not always practical.
During renovations, I wanted spare headlamps, measuring tape, and masking tape. While potty training my toddler, I needed a near-endless supply of fresh undies and pants. In the middle of the most hectic years of my life, I don't want to run extra loads of washing just because I have a capsule wardrobe and want to wear white.
And I sure don't want to change my plans for the day because I’ve run out of fresh socks.
As Allie Casazza, author of Declutter Like a Mother, says, “... this process we're going through is not about trying to create a home where things are perfect; it's about creating a home where things are lighter.”
My verdict: less is not always more (time, headspace, energy …). Don’t aim for minimalism, be honest about the way you live and make realistic purchase decisions. Instead of Minimalism - aim to be intentional.
Which leads us to the next challenge …
Decisions drain energy, making decisions fast is a skill and sometimes, making decisions is harder than acting on them.
In essence, clutter is delay. Delayed action, and delayed decision making. There are many reasons to delay things …
we prioritise short term, immediate comfort (procrastination)
we are biased to believe that ‘Future Us’ will have more time, energy and resources to deal with the situation (wishful thinking)
we don’t have the authority to move forward without permission from others (lack of authority)
we are worried to make a wrong decision, even if there will never be enough information to have perfect confidence in our choice (perfectionism)
I spent a lot of time (too much time) picking up thing after thing, carefully deciding if it should be kept, gifted, donated, sold, or dumped.
The act of decluttering is, in essence, about making decisions. But what I hadn’t anticipated was how draining those decisions would be, especially when perfectionism sneaks in.
I could have done it in a day - given a large enough skip bin and a sufficiently ruthless mindset (and I would have wanted to). But I didn’t give myself permission to be ruthless. I wanted to be grateful and appreciative and make the best possible decision for every single thing.
I checked the regulations for donations during COVID, asked around for the perfect recipient for each special thing, digitized letters, notes, and memorial cards, built a makeshift studio to take photos for listings, invited strangers to our home, weeded through journals and unfulfilled visions for the future, and began to associate the foul smell of the dump with the bright blue of tarpaulin and the ratcheting of straps.
I was stingy with my money but not stingy enough with my energy and time.
Careful decisions drain energy, even small ones. The opportunity cost of energy lost is too high. These days, I no longer hold onto the second shoe if the first one is broken.
Decide fast and back yourself later!
The pain of decluttering does build awareness - but it’s a slippery slope towards perfectionism.
Tidy up for long enough and you will automatically learn to make more intentional purchase decisions. You will think twice before you bring anything new into your home.
That’s a good thing, and possibly a way to fend off lifestyle inflation - but after a while of vastly more intentional purchases I noticed something else: I became upset whenever I had to buy something for the family. I was worried to pick the wrong thing. I had become paralysed with perfectionism.
If you are prone to perfectionism, you run the risk that you want to get every future purchase right. But it’s impossible. No matter how many reviews you read and how well you weigh up pros and cons, you will still buy a few things that you wish you didn’t and you’ll have to give them away. At work and at home, ‘80/20’ beats perfectionism.
There will always be a little bit of 'waste.' At least, don’t waste your nerves on wishful thinking or, worse, guilt.
Nothing fuels the fires of perfectionism like feelings of guilt and shame.
Owning too much made me feel guilty, because I didn’t feel like I deserved ‘so much’.
Giving away too much made me feel guilty, because I didn’t feel like I was appreciative enough.
I felt guilty about buying the wrong things,
and guilty about buying the right things and not using them.
I didn’t just feel guilty for doing wrong (e.g. buying a non-refundable appliance with the wrong voltage) - I felt ashamed for being wrong (e.g. for being a consumerist human being with a larger than necessary footprint).
It is hard not to feel shame when you are confronted with the reality that the thing in your hand, the thing you so hoped to cherish is actually broken. Not because of the thing, but because of you.
the well meaning gift that you truly don’t want,
the letter from somebody who’s heart you have broken,
or the vision board that never came true.
I was surprised by how quickly I doubted myself. How quickly an imperfect decision to buy a crappy Kmart Bookshelf turned into ‘there’s something wrong with me’.
I missed the ‘joy’ of a tidy home because I held a grudge against myself.
For decluttering to truly bring peace of mind, I had to get rid of one more thing: my desire to punish myself for who I am.
Break free from the pursuit of possessions - the pursuit of perfection - and most importantly, the prosecution of yourself. That’s the most important thing to declutter.
Marie Kondo, known for her KonMari method of decluttering, mentioned in a 2023 interview with The Washington Post that after the birth of her third child, she has 'kind of given up' on keeping a perfectly tidy house, acknowledging the balance between tidiness and family life.