Experiments have shown that having too much choice can lead to decision fatigue and actually feeling less happy about the choice you ultimately make. If you have ever been stuck in front of your wardrobe not knowing what to pick, you’ll be painfully aware of this.

If this is you, I recommend considering a capsule wardrobe, a practical way to be minimalist in your clothing choices and allow for sustainability in the items you are wearing.

What is a simple life? Everyone will answer this in their own way, but for me it’s a life free of complications that allows me to enjoy whatever opportunities present themselves. If this conjures up images of minimalist homes, that’s not entirely wrong. But let’s make one thing clear: minimalism comes in many forms, and it doesn’t necessarily involve acres of empty white marble surfaces with a strategically placed cactus.
 
Happiness does not have to include ‘stuff’, I’d even say that stuff often gets in the way of happiness.

Memories are tricky things. They live in our minds but they seem to have a life of their own. They pop up whenever they feel like it and have the ability to bring immense joy, but also deep sadness.
 
We humans are attached to our memories and cherish them to a point that we want to hold on to them at any cost. And in this process we often go overboard in our attempts to keep them alive. Therefore, it seems like a good idea to preserve physical items that remind us of a memory, a person, a circumstance or a place. But this also leads to a plethora of items in our homes that serve no other purpose than to conjure up a memory.

You may have experienced “empty nest syndrome” yourself or seen it happen to your parents. It’s one of those unavoidable moments in a parent’s life when the last of their children has left the home to strike out on their own.

Empty nest syndrome may seem like a silly thing to worry about, but it can hit as hard as menopause, male midlife crisis or a death in the family. In fact, it’s the polar opposite of the sandwich phase when the sheer number of things to do creates overwhelm, now it’s the lack thereof that creates symptoms similar to retiring from work into the retirement void.

Men traditionally tend to work the same job for a long time, maybe with the odd promotion, but rarely involving a drastic change of direction or vocation. This leaves them particularly vulnerable at two points in life: when the midlife crisis hits, and when they retire from their job.

Midlife crisis is usually hits in the late 40s, when men start to wonder if they are ready to do the same thing for another 20 years or so. When retirement hits, the regular daily structure suddenly falls away, leaving a black hole that is hard to fill, particularly if his life had been focused on nothing but work for decades.

Overwhelm is the result of a a drastic change in circumstances. One of those drastic changes is the menopause.

While the menopause is really a short moment in time (when the period stops for good), it is preceded by the perimenopause, when much of the physical effects start to affect daily life. This perimenopause usually starts around ten years ahead of the actual menopause. The classic effects include heightened anxiety, low mood, irritability brain fog and many other signs that the female body is undergoing a fundamental change.

Overwhelm is not as unusual as you might think, it comes as an unexpected surprise in professional settings, but also in private life. One of the big triggers in private life comes with the expansion of your family: from single person to living with a partner, then add children to this mix and overwhelm is pretty much unavoidable.

When things suddenly get more complex it’s all the more important to explore which options you have and which tools are available to keep everything as simple and clear as possible. So here are some pointers:

Possession and ownership are two different sides of the clutter medal: possessing an item simply means that it is in your hands, while ownership means that you have full control over what happens with that item. I know, a bit of legalese here, but bear with me on this one.

Usually, they go hand in hand, but if someone borrows a book from you, they now possess it, while you own it.

The best way to successfully declutter is to focus on a single thing at any time. That could mean only to deal with a manageable number of items, not mixing making choices with considering what follows next, making sure that each decision only has to be made once (“touch it once” strategy), and others.

The most common way to sort through a category is using four boxes...

Any decluttering project is only going to be as successful as you are able to make decisions about the items you are working through. In my mind, this is the most important aspect of any such endeavour.

Of course, being able to stay focused is part of it, too, but it all boils down to asking the right questions when you try to figure out what stays and what goes.