Start small. Picking a defined small project allows you to deal with the issues you encounter and learn lessons that will serve you well for bigger projects. Small projects take less time and you are more likely to get a general view of the project and bring it to a successful conclusion.

Plan ahead. Be clear about your goal and why exactly you are doing this. Is it lack of space? Or maybe you struggle with finding things? Once you have that clear goal, make sure to make it the measuring guide when you make decisions.

Decluttering is not only about extracting items that no longer serve you, but dealing with the follow-up: Let’s say you organise a drawer and after sorting and extracting you find that there are two distinctly different types of things here. Will both categories go back into the drawer (hopefully separated in some way), or do you need to find another (more logical) place to shift one of the categories?

And of course, you’ll have to deal with whatever you have decided to let go: is this going to the rubbish bin, can it be recycled or donated to a charity?

Make enough time. Many decluttering projects fail because they are done in the spirit of “I’ll just do this quickly” and then you run out of time. When that happens, more often than not, all the stuff goes back into a drawer, box or bag and is – once more – relegated to “maybe later”. Unfortunately, this often leaves you with more of a mess than you had before.

Running out of time is actually one of the main reasons why projects aren’t finished. Time is a tricky mistress, but there are ways to manage this resource during a decluttering project: either do projects with no other plans afterwards so you can spend as much time as you need, or you can try and cut a project into smaller bits that feel more manageable time-wise.

Stay motivated. This is where the first three steps come together: each time you finish as small project and you see the improvements – small as they may be – you’ll be rewarded with a sense of success. One more job done, some items easier to access, things looking more tidy, etc.

I’m aware, of course, that small projects will not immediately change you life in a big way, but they are much more likely to succeed in the early stages of your efforts and they will teach you how to tackle larger ones (think: loft or garage).

Anything you own can go out of fashion overnight and turn into something you no longer wear. Mostly, this dead weight will end up in some hidden wardrobe, box, loft or storage unit … kept for a long time and forgotten.

Most people follow fashion for one of two reasons: fitting in (= doing what everyone else does) or setting yourself apart from the others (= by adopting the new and unusual). The real question is: do you want to fit in or stand out?
Either way, you will end up with items that only serve you for a short period of time and then accumulate things you never use because you live in hope that a particular style may just make a reappearance sometime soon.

To break this cycle, it may be a good idea to think about cultivating a personal style rather than following every new fashion that hits the stores. Following trends may help you fit into a peer group and avoid any confrontation regarding your outfit, but having your personal style gives you more freedom in your choices and keep you away from the constant hunt for the next new thing.

Of course, having a personal style does not mean you can’t look for new things, but maybe the pressure to follow suit is taken down a little and you end up being able to manage your wardrobe space a little more easily.

In practical terms, the most space-efficient option to hone your fashion is a capsule wardrobe with a couple of standard pieces that can be combined with stand-out highlights to add variation. Think of the capsule pieces as a canvas for the more fashion-forward pieces that stand out and can be updated easily. You can still follow trends but you won’t have to change everything.

A capsule wardrobe does not have to be boring either, we don’t all have to look like Steve Jobs! The ‘capsule’ element does not have to be defined by its colour (usually black or muted tones) but could be a particular model in several colours, or you may limit the added elements to certain lengths or shapes.

It took me a while to find a style that I like and I have stuck with it ever since. It’s a comfortable cut of trousers that suits me, plus T-shirts, pullovers and various shirts. I choose the colour of trousers, plus a top that suits the temperature and weather. Not exactly a capsule wardrobe, but close enough.

I have had my share of clients with expired foods that have resulted from buying in bulk and then either forgetting the tins, or losing interest in eating that particular stuff.

You need to ask yourself: how and where do you store things? Most of us don’t have enough proper pantry space. Storage in a typical British home tends to be limited, so bulk-bought foods often end up in the garage or somewhere in the back of cupboards, where they are easily forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. And then the same items are bought again, eating up the savings you make on the initial bulk-buy.

Add to this the psychology of shopping: can you refuse a cheap deal that is offered on your way to the checkout till? A special offer? Or – even worse – Black Friday deals? The real question to ask yourself here is not so much “Can I refuse this ‘cheap’ offer?”, but “Do I actually need this?”

When you find yourself in front of an “offer”, keep in mind that someone else wants you to buy this, and ask yourself why that would be the case: check expiry dates and conditions. And then consider where the “offer” ends up in your home. You may just come to the conclusion that you don’t really want to go ahead.

Speaking about paying for things, you may have encountered one of the many “buy now, pay later” services that allow you to pay purchases in instalments over a period of time. Those payments are usually interest-free, but only as long as you pay them in time. If you don’t, you may find yourself paying significant interest, though.

Such services can be particularly troublesome for those who struggle with managing money because it’s easy to accumulate instalment upon instalment and lose track of the total of repayments due. In my mind, they are more problematic than paying with a card, because the card payments CAN easily be followed up with bank extracts or a banking app. The delay payment services tend to claim money irregularly, and it’s a bit of a nightmare to follow up on the status quo, and it’s easy to overspend.

There is something to be said for cash payments when it comes to staying on top of your spendings.

Suddenly, shopping had become an ‘activity’ or even an ‘experience’ that could provide fun, especially when experienced in the presence of like-minded friends.

Similar to any other activities we find pleasurable, this jump-starts the production of endorphins in the body, and as with other addictions, and we want more of it. And so we return to shop some more. Where does all this leave us, though? First of all, we seem to have lost sight of an important bit of knowledge: that there is a difference between ‘needing’ something or simply ‘wanting’ it.

The next step is ‘retail therapy’, going out with the intention to buy things because it makes you happy, because it takes you away from your daily (often depressing) life and into a world full of wonders, constant change, and the dreams of being famous, rich or beautiful. In the end, it’s a distraction from some other underlying issue, of course, but it’s an attractive one. It is also very addictive.

That brings us back to where we started: remember those society ladies 150 years ago who started the trend of browsing and drinking tea? Venture a guess why they did this? Probably they were tired of being cooped up at home and found the thrill of browsing attractive, maybe even slightly addictive. The only thing that’s changed is that in the modern world shops actively encourage such behaviour whereas back then it was rather seen as a nuisance to have someone wander around a shop without buying anything.

There is an especially bitter taste to all of this: if it all boils down, it’s the act of shopping that gives you the mental boost, not the item itself. However, the item is here to stay with you and it could be considered as clutter from the moment you bring it into your home.

There may be no sentimental attachment or practical use to many of the things you pay for, they only have negative effects: they cost you good money, you have to carry them home, store them somewhere, and in the end you’ll have to take the difficult decision to let go of something that has accumulated all the resentment associated with that journey.

Shopping addiction is a serious matter and it’s important to be able to recognise it in yourself, and take the necessary steps to remove yourself from that particular trap.

First of all, what is a “renewable item”? Electrical items often come with ‘renewables’ associated with them: think of your printer (an item to use until it dies) vs the ink cartridges (renewable as they have to be replaced regularly). Fairly obvious, right? Those cartridges are no different from using up a pencil, a kitchen sponge, toilet paper, and then replacing them when you run out.

The difference appears to be mainly a question of durability and how much multiple use an item can withstand. Wear and tear play a role here, of course. But there are other forces at play here, some of which have nothing to do with the item itself, but rather in its production and the fact that someone is making money out of selling you replacements.

Even the division into renewable items and items for continuous use has become more of a grey zone over the last hundred years or so. Think about items like diapers, disposable razors, fast fashion, plastic bottles, etc.: at some point not too long in the past all those were NOT renewables, but things to clean and reuse.

More often than not, it comes down to what we perceive as convenient: most people – when faced with washing diapers – will quickly return to the disposable ones. Nobody wants to carry around a glass bottle filled with water, although some giant drinking bottles aren’t actually more convenient than a glass bottle.

Much of what we use today is made to be thrown away to make it more convenient, and we fall for it. How many single-use coffee cups have you thrown out lately? They sound more environmentally friendly these days, but they are still covered in a thin layer of plastic to keep the cardboard from dissolving, which makes (most of) them difficult if not impossible to recycle. Unless you bring your own reusable cup, you are still adding to the rubbish bin.

On top of that, many of the items that are meant to be durable are produced with planned obsolescence in mind: they break earlier in order to make us buy a replacement. On top of that, we are also being brainwashed into replacing fully functional products with the latest version (“with improved icons”). Be honest: how many working electronic devices are hiding in a drawer at your house? Most of them will only be guilty of having been replaced when a newer, shinier model came on the market?

Consider this: maybe a slightly more expensive item that does its job for a long time is preferable to a cheap one that you have to replace on the regular?

First of all, you have to make sure you have explored every single avenue that could lead to progress within your own reach. When we focus on a project, we may get locked in too much into a single idea, a specific approach or the use of particular tool to get it done. This often gets to a point of tunnel vision where we stop being aware of other options because we have chosen one particular path.

When we come across a roadblock, it’s important to zoom out and assess if other paths have branched off our original trajectory and excluded certain solutions that now have become useful. Zooming out widens the image and allows us to take a couple of steps backwards and choose a more productive route towards the goal.

Maybe we overlooked a more promising tool or practice, or something that seemed unproductive three steps earlier now turns out to be a winner?

As a second step, consider the choices that you have made along the way and find out if the reasons you made certain choices need to be re-evaluated based on knowledge you have accumulated in later steps. This realisation in itself could help you move beyond the problem you encountered in the first place.

Stepping back even further, you might want to think about outside-the-box assistance from your areas of expertise further afield. Have you come across similar issues in earlier situations and what have you done back then? Could you apply other, not immediately related, skills to solve your problem? Do you need a radically different approach?

I know, all these options take time, but rather than repeatedly running into the same wall, taking time out is often the better solution.

All this said, of course you are not supposed to toil in solitude all the time, but you also don’t want to waste other people’s time, as you would expect them not to waste yours, right?

It’s only at this point that it makes sense to ask for outside feedback. After all the previous review and consideration, you are now ready to ask for specific input with clear questions that highlight a particular issue rather than a generic “I’m stuck, can you help?”

Ultimately, feedback only works if you ask the right questions, and those questions present themselves most easily when you have explored options on your own first. This also helps to crop lines of inquiry that you have looked into yourself before, and fine-tune any new avenues that may result from other people’s input.

I fully support the idea of looking at a failure in order to improve the next attempt at the same thing, after considering why something went wrong and attempting to avoid that mistake the next time. The proper way to develop something new is to iterate a product or process and gradually come to a solution that is as close as possible to perfect. (note: at ClutterMeister, we avoid attempts at total perfection to keep mental pressure in check).

Is it good to focus on failure, then? Yes, but only for as long as that particular reason for failure has not been eradicated. Once that has happened, it’s actually better to let go of that failure and chalk it up as a learning experience that has been fully explored and can be discarded.

That is what usually happens with prototypes. Once a better version has been built, the prototype is a relic that needs to be chucked or put into a museum.

In our daily lives, we encounter successes and failures on a regular basis, but we often focus more on the failures than the successes. Serious research has been done into the reasons for this and it has been found that successes tend to be forgotten a lot faster than failures. We need more successes for something to register as important as we do failures to be imprinted in our brains for a long time.

This rule not only applies to the sense of failure or success, but also to the items associated with those. Many of my clients as a professional declutterer are very attached to sentimental items, things that remind them of people, places and events that have special importance to them. In most cases, those items are reinforcing happy memories, but sometimes I meet clients with items that reinforce sad memories. That’s a double whammy: like failures, those sad events are a lot more powerful to start with, but on top of them an item in their home reminds the person of that event over and over again, reinforcing any bad juju associated with them.

I keep thinking of one of my clients who kept items reminding her of her abusive ex-partner (in her words) “to remember what to look out for in new partners”. A good idea in theory, but having those items around only reminded her of the bad times, and kept her from trusting anyone because there was no room left for good memories.

Learning from your mistakes is important, but letting your life be guided by them is probably not a good idea.

We develop processes in two ways: as we go along or by planning things out. Planning often happens organically: when multiple things need to happen at the same time (like a venue, catering and presents for a birthday party) you most likely take a moment to sit down and make a plan, i.e., you create a process. The more complex something is, the more likely you need a process rather than letting things happen naturally.

You cannot always hope that the transition from things working organically to making a proper plan happens at the right time, though. Consider your email inbox: the organic process would be to respond to emails as they come in and then either delete the email or file it somewhere. If there are too many emails, you need to find a better strategy, like highlighting the important ones or creating a more elaborate folder structure.

Unfortunately, this requires you to see that the situation has changed and this is where we often falter. Gradual change is not our friend – we tend to be too late to recognise that things have gone wrong and then get overwhelmed trying to manage the change and develop a more refined process.

The solution sounds simple: review how you are doing things regularly and adjust as needed. Some processes will need revisiting more often than others. You likely will not need to make many changes to your laundry schedule, but having several kids with varying interest that change over time requires constant review to make sure it all fits into your day.

It also depends on the different processes that you have set up and how they interact with each other. It is good practice to keep processes as separate as possible as this allows to adjust each of them separately without having to reinvent not just the wheel but the whole wagon at each review.

A review can be as simple as taking a moment to walk yourself through a process, acknowledge any bottlenecks and find better ways to deal with them. Keep what works and change what doesn’t.

You may also consider if that new strategy you have found could improve other processes you are using. Maybe that time-saver you have found works elsewhere, a new tool can be used in other ways, or combining two tasks could save you some time?

Changing your processes requires time out. You’ll rarely find better ways to do something while you are stressed doing it. You need time to think, so make time.

I’d like to point out the benefits of repurposing rather than recycling: rather than removing things that don’t serve their purpose any more, how about finding a new use for things before considering recycling or trashing them?

It’s an interesting concept, but it takes some creativity, the ability to accept imperfection, and – lastly – some time for reflection. Repurposing often grows from a creative approach to making things instead of buying something new to serve the same purpose. And let’s face it: the store-bought items may start out looking better, but they also tend to be flimsy, plasticky and not made to last for longer than absolutely necessary to keep the buyer from storming into their shop and asking for a refund… perfection only lasts for a while anyway, so why focus on it at all?

Repurposing can be as simple as using a sturdy little boxes to keep tiny things separated in your junk drawer, or cardboard boxes used as floor insulation in your basement in winter. Those things may not be the most attractive options, but certainly functional, cheaper and often more useful than drawer dividers (most don’t fit perfectly anyway) or expensive insulation that is only necessary for part of the year anyway.


Repurposing isn’t limited to physical items: we learn things all our lives, we create strategies and habits that guide us through our days and allow us to be productive at work. So why not use knowledge, strategies and habits in areas other than the ones they were initially created for?

I can speak from personal experience here: I had several different careers along the way: from translator through German teacher, airline ticketing agent, bookkeeper, receptionist, PA, office manager, event planner, project manager, IT trainer to professional declutterer, author and public speaker (oh, let’s not forget part-time circus artist, either).

That’s a lot of experience in different areas! And yet it took me a long time to realise that what I’ve learned in one job can be tweaked to be applied in another. Decluttering and organising benefits from my work as an project manager and PA, and the premise “read everything, it may come up in translations” plus a life-long hunger for knowledge informs how I structure my talks.

Nothing is ever lost, it just takes a bit of creativity to repurpose it to fit new demands.

Maybe you don’t need to find more practical tools, electronic calendars or task lists, but focus more on limiting the effect that an overwhelming workload has on you. Many of us feel that we need to address ‘issues’ we encounter in a practical way, but sometimes the problem lies deeper than the ability to finish tasks.

A calm mind that is conducive to continued focus is created from the inside out. External elements like time pressure, other people’s input – both positive and negative – can make it difficult to find proper balance internally.

Being mindful about yourself is an important stepping stone to inner calm. Learning to become aware when things are off-kilter and need to be righted is paramount to staying on top of your own wellbeing. Growing up, we are often told not to be selfish, help others, be kind to people, etc. However, ultimately those things can only be done after finding ourselves in a good mental space first.

Remember the safety instructions on a plane: place the oxygen mask on yourself first before you assist others? Now apply this to your life in general: how could you be helpful, kind, etc. to others if you don’t start by taking care of yourself? Being mindful of your own sense of wellbeing is that starting point, and everything else follows from here.

A basic meditation practice can assist with increasing mindfulness. Even spending just 5 to 10 minutes a day can build a sense of calm that allows you to let go of anxiety, worries and mental blockages in the long term. If you are unfamiliar with meditation techniques, I recommend looking on youtube or spotify for guided meditations.

The ultimate methods of self-care are the most basic ones: make time for yourself, sleep enough, exercise regularly! More often than not, people believe that ‘time to myself’ will happen organically, but sadly it doesn’t and never will. In order to benefit from proper ‘me time’, you have to firmly write it into your calendar and basically make a date with yourself.

Don’t rely on thinking that you’ll just do something relaxing, but be specific: “going on a day hike this Sunday”, “working on a Lego model Wednesday 6pm-10pm”, “going to the pool each Saturday 9am” are better ways to take care of yourself than “I’ll go outside soon”.

Autumn and winter are coming, bringing lots of night-time available to engage with hobbies, make plans and potentially spend time with yourself, with friends or family. Make use of it, don’t miss out!