Keep just what you need
When organizing, the process of sorting and eliminating items are crucial first steps. We need to see what’s in the clutter and what can be kept and what needs tossing. Filtering through the “rubble” we discern the necessities then decide how to store them and where. Often clients need to save more the first time around because they aren’t ready to part with certain notes, cards, clothing, memorabilia, their children’s toys, etc. When we revisit such items, as they have progressed through the elimination sojourn, they are often more readily open to letting go of first round items that no longer hold such importance.
This is a balancing act of letting go and deciding what to keep with my nudging them to rethink what they’ve kept to ensure they really want and need it. I have one client who I call my archivist who has archived her entire life from childhood school work through high school, college up through today. We know where holiday and birthday cards for each year live as well as all of the school and artwork for her 2 children, divided out by school year. This, for her, holds a lot of value and importance and so we’ve taken the time to separate out this data and store it where it can be accessed if needed in a protected way (ie, clear bins, marked, with silica gel packets to avoid moisture). Another client has a challenging time letting go of magazines and other information. In his case, in order to meet him where he is, we have stored past issues of his favorite magazines under the house. I personally don’t agree with saving of reams of magazines since they will more than likely never be looked at again and new information is flying at us at warp speed that we couldn’t possibly take it all in. A few favorite images, recipes, ideas, can be scanned into a computer and saved digitally for later reference. Even then, most of us will rarely look back at those things until one day we are forced to and then we end up tossing out wondering why we saved it in the first place.
Ultimately, it comes down to the meaning we ascribe to our things. Things in and of themselves have no meaning except what we give them. Are the things we are keeping truly worth keeping and why are we keeping them? The “one day”, “someday” scenario comes into play here as in, “one day I might need this,” or “someday I hope to use this.” Unless a new day of the week has occurred without me knowing it, one day and someday are not new days of the week. We need to be really honest when deciding what to keep and store. Sometimes a client needs to go through a full round and then decide to let it go and other times, it is something of value and it needs to be kept.
One of the greatest ways to delude ourselves is all the millions of dollars Americans spend yearly on storage units. Things we think we need or things we don’t want to deal with, we put into storage to hide them away. We spend untold thousands of dollars on things that aren’t worth keeping. And because it’s out of sight and out of mind and automatic payments accompany it, we forget ALL about it. If we tallied what it’s cost us to store these things and their true monetary value, we’d purge those things pretty quickly.
Make a decision and ask if you really need to store it. What’s it’s value and worth to keep it and if you truly need it and want it. If you should need help with these decisions, call 510.501.1213 for help.