The Ten Things I Haven't Missed After Decluttering
It’s hard to imagine how many unnecessary items you have in your home. Whenever I work with clients, one of the most common phrases I hear is: ‘I completely forgot I had that!’ And most of the time, these things go in the discard pile because let’s face it, if you’ve forgotten its very existence, then it’s probably something you no longer need in your life.
I completed my own tidying and decluttering journey over 4 and a half years ago. Back in 2016, when my husband and I were preparing for a homebirth with our first baby, we spent 4 months looking at every single item in our home and deciding whether it was useful or brought us joy. The KonMari Method of tidying was transformative because through tidying by category, no item was forgotten about. We had never decluttered in this way before! Previously, decluttering had been an exhausting process and only motivated by a negative ambition to create more storage space for our continued mindless shopping habits.
After we created our home sanctuary, we have been able to successfully maintain our tidy and organised home, along with protecting the systems we established to ensure things never grow out of control again. Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the things that I come across in clients’ homes which remind me of the items I no longer miss…
1. Clothes which no longer fit - I was guilty of holding on to clothing items with the intention of getting back into them someday. Sound familiar? The truth was, I was NEVER going to get back into those skinny jeans I owned when I was 18… especially post-baby! And holding on to them and seeing them hanging in my wardrobe made me feel deflated. I believe we should never hold on to things if they stir negative emotions within us.
When it comes to my clients, the question I ask is: Does this item motivate you or demotivate you? If it isn’t a source of inspiration to get you moving to fit into them again, then it’s time to say goodbye.
2. Uncomfortable shoes - I remember six months after Romeo was born, I headed out to some drinks in London with my friends. Thrilled that Romeo was sleeping in the evenings (and ready for a dose of pre-mummy freedom!) I put on my 4 inch heels and headed out. I reached the corner of my street and turned back. There was NO WAY my feet were going to survive these shoes for an entire evening if I couldn’t even wear them for five minutes! Back home, on went the trusty one-inch ‘heels’. I’ve now resigned myself to the reality that I will never be more than 5 foot 3 inches tall. And I’m okay with that. All my shoes that no longer fit my current criteria were donated. I haven’t missed them and my feet certainly breathe a constant sigh of relief.
The question I ask is: Do these shoes fit your current reality? If they no longer represent the person you currently are (or the person you hope to be) then say goodbye to them with gratitude for the (tall) memories they gave you.
FYI: It’s perfectly normal to continue decluttering after you’ve finished your KonMari Tidying Journey, just like I did. Joy checks continue long after you’ve finished the tidying marathon. KonMari opens up the door to continuously reflect on whether your items are still relevant in your current lifestyle.
3. Wire hangers - You know the ones… you get them from the dry-cleaners and before you know it, you’ve got around 50 and they somehow replace the plastic ones (where do all of the plastic ones go you ask? This is still an ongoing mystery to me too). In every home I work in, I’m guaranteed to fill an entire bag with wire hangers. When I tidied my clothes, I remember donating about 100 wire hangers to the dry-cleaners. I dislike the way they look, they way they feel and how they annoying become tangled with one another in the wardrobe. Furthermore, in my experience wire hangers are too thin for most clothes and often cause stretch marks on the items and bend over time, causing clothes to hang at strange angles.
The question I ask clients (seriously): Do these wire hangers spark joy? It’s perfectly common to feel the need to invest in good quality hangers once you’ve completed the KonMari category of clothing. I invested in 100 matching white wooden hangers and I’m not afraid to admit, that they bring me joy every time I open my wardrobe. Sometimes the small details make all the difference!
4. Expired food - This part of the process was quite difficult for my husband and I. We love good food and he loves experimenting with different recipes but we felt so embarrassed and shameful when we discovered a whole bag worth of items that we out of date and had to be thrown away. In our efforts to be more sustainable, this memory is a good reminder to use what we have and constantly check in with the contents of our kitchen cupboards before we shop. Finding out-of-date food items is a common experience for my clients too; one of my clients had a jar of cinnamon from 1984 (yes she said goodbye because the contents were more liquid than powder), another had two bin bags worth of special ready-made diet meals that had to be discarded as they were four years passed their use-by date and another client found something resembling candy floss that had attached itself to the back wall of her sweetie cupboard.
The key question: Check the date. Are you brave enough to take the risk of eating it? Would you serve it to your family members feeling fully confident the contents are safely edible? If you have to think, then they answer is probably no. Say goodbye and start fresh with your intention to be 100% aware of the food contents in your kitchen. No food prisoners: no item or ingredient gets left behind.
5. Chipped glasses, mugs and crockery - I remember a time when my husband and I first lived together. We lived in a tiny studio apartment in Marylebone in London. This was the stage where we had all of our hotch-potch university plates, chipped glasses and stained mugs in our kitchen cupboards. My husband noticed a new chip in one of our glasses one evening and upon further inspection, his finger went right through the glass! Although the blood loss probably amounted to the capacity of a table spoon, the memory itself is enough to make me feel faint! When we went through our kitchen items, every time we came across an item with a chip, crack or potentially hazardous fault, the memory of the finger through the glass came flooding back to both of us. These items had to go and into the recycling they went.
The key question: Do these items bring you joy when you use them? Often, memories are brought to the surface of our minds when we use particular items. If the memory is rooted in negativity, fear, anxiety or sorrow, we have to actively question whether this item serves us well in the future.
6. Extra shopping bags - We used to use a WHOLE cupboard to store our shopping bags. We just shoved them in and had no idea how many were there, until we KonMari’d them of course! We had around 150 plastic bags (this was the pre bag for life era). We had tried to organise them in our own way (or what we thought was our own way but evidently not because I’ve seen so many other clients organise them like this too!): to have one chief plastic bag and put all of the other plastic bags in there. In the end, we kept 15 and folded them (I’m not joking, FOLDED them) and kept them in a small children’s shoe box.
The key question: How many shopping bags do you actually need? Choosing target numbers is key when you’re exploring and determining how many are actually necessary to support you in your life. Even plastic shopping bags deserve your full attention when you’re creating a joyful home.
7. Expired medicine and supplements - We discarded around half of our medication and supplements because they were out of date (off to the local pharmacy they went) and in the process, we freed up half the amount of space in our bathroom cabinet. What’s there to miss about redundant items that take up residence in your home? Nothing!
The key question: Is this item in date and good quality? Do you have so many duplicates that it would take you three lifetimes to use the supply? If the answer is yes to the latter question (and the packages are unopened) consider donating the duplicates to your local hospital or (if you’re unsure about the quality) your local pharmacy.
8. VHS tapes and cassettes - I was someone who bought every single VHS tape of Friends. Each VHS had four episodes. Each season had around 24 episodes. This meant I owned 60 VHS tapes of Friends. I also owned an equal amount of VHS tapes for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. And this was just the beginning. Don’t even get me started on my Jim Carrey crush at the time, which meant I had to own every single film he ever made. All in all, I had around 200 VHS tapes… That could no longer be used because I no longer owned a VHS player. It was the same story for cassettes. Sadly, they all had to go to the tip (and ultimately to landfill) because at the time there wasn’t a sustainable option of recycling VHS tapes and cassettes. I’ve since recovered from this guilt with my new commitment to buying things that can be used well, repurposed or recycled sustainably. We learn from our mistakes. But for the VHS tapes and cassettes, I don’t miss them (and more importantly, the vast amount of room they used to take up!).
What I ask clients: If you don’t currently own the technology (or plan to invest in the relevant technology) to use something that is classified as ‘outdated’, why are you keeping it? Let it go with gratitude for teaching how you to be a more mindful, sustainably-conscious consumer.
9. Redundant electrical cables - The scary drawer of long-forgotten, redundant and useless wires, cables and devices that had died years before don’t need much of an explanation here. For us, items like this used to annoyingly attach themselves to several other items when we attempted to extract them from the drawer, and we’d actually forgotten they were there in the first place because they no longer serve a purpose in our home. What was there to miss?!
The key question: When was the last time you used this item? What is it for? If both answers lead to a blank, confused expression… the most common end result: bid these items farewell and restore your sanity.
10. Manuals for products you no longer own - When my husband and I went through our papers, we spent a whole afternoon just tackling manuals. Around 75% of them were manuals for things we no longer owned. In my experience, manuals just become part of the woodwork. They scatter around the home, and are often stored next to the item which they’re meant to service and support. And when that item moves on, the manual remains, unnoticed.
The key question I ask my clients: Do you still own the item that this manual supports? If yes: Do you need 100% of the manual? Most manuals I come across have around 20 different languages and unless I’m working with the presenter of the Eurovision Song Contest, there’s no need to keep 100% of the manual. Just rip out (or cut neatly if you’re a tidy freak like me) the relevant information in your language, staple the pages you wish to keep and recycle the rest. And even better, check to see if the manual is available online. If it is, recyce the paper copy guilt-free!
So there you have it. These are the ten things I no longer miss in my life. It’s liberating to reflect on them and feel the relief that they are no longer cluttering up my home (and therefore, my life). What are the things on the list above that you resonate with? How far have you come in your own tidying journey? If you like the ten reflections above, let me know your favourite take-aways in the comments below…
Happy Tidying!