Where to stuff the stuff?

This, thankfully, is NOT my house. But I’ve felt like it’s this way many times!

Stuff is messy. For some reason (at least in my home) my stuff never stays where I put it.

Somehow, whenever I clean off my coffee table, it gets covered in stuff again within a day– a day! Sometimes a particularly troublesome piece of stuff lays in the corner of a room for a long time before it moves on, perhaps not even to an “away” place but to another IN the way place.

I can’t help but realize that if I had less, there would be less to put away.

“That’s not quite right” you might think. “If you have a tendency to get something out without putting it away, it won’t matter how much stuff you actually have because you will always be using something anyway.” That may be true but I think there’s something to be said for true decluttering.

Many people declutter by simply organizing their stuff into neater areas (like bins) or maybe by just stuffing things in a drawer/closet/etc. If you instead declutter by getting tossing/donating/selling items away you have more room in every drawer/closet/etc. It will be easier to put stuff away because you don’t have to fight with other stuff that is already in there.

Example: If I declutter my file cabinet to get rid of half of the things that are in there, when the phone bill comes I will not just leave it on the table because I don’t want to battle with the file cabinet. Instead I will: A) put it into the neatly organized and spacious phone bill folder OR (more likely) B) Shred it to trash because I realize that by saving my phone bill I am just perpetuating a cluttered lifestyle. (If I ever find that I need information contained on the bill I will simply call the phone company and request it then. No need to save ALL bills for the off chance that I will need it in the future.)

So this decluttering mindset will help keep things clean. I will be more willing to put things away and I will also be more cautious about inviting more stuff into my home and ruining the good deal I’ve got going.

Of course it won’t eliminate all the housework; but hey, I’m lazy so I can use any help I can get. : P

*Yes, I realize that my last post was a “to be continued” and it will be, I promise! Should be next!

photo credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/therefore/99117966/”>Dean Terry</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>cc</a&gt;