Overcoming Decluttering Paralysis: Ask the Right Questions

"The wrong questions can lead you astray"

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.

Many people make a crucial mistake: they look at a pile of their belongings and ask themselves what should go. In reality, it’s much better to ask yourself a different question: “why does it have to stay?”. And you’ll have to find a solid answer to that question for every single item!

There are many reasons why something might need to stay, and to some degree that depends on your original decluttering goal: you want things to be more tidy and organised, you need more space, you want to downsize, etc.

Caution: you might also be worried about what happens to the items once you discard them. If you want to sell them or make sure that they find a good new home, take a step back right now. These lines of inquiry have nothing to do with your original goal, but rather what happens to unnecessary items afterwards. If you want to avoid getting bogged down, stick to deciding over “keep” and “let go” at this point.

Many items will easily fall into either category, but some need more consideration. In those cases, I suggest finding out if an item is linked to your past (sentimental), used in the present (practical) or saved for future action (aspirational), and then identifying if your reasons are realistic or not.

If an item is not sentimental in nature, you may want to ask yourself “Does it serve me right now?” and “Is it realistic to assume that I’ll ever make use of this in the near future?” If the answer is not a resounding YES, maybe it’s time for a reality check and find out why it’s so hard to let this go.

Often we assume thing will come in handy in the future out of mindset of scarcity, the worry that this item is unreplaceable if we let it go now. In that case I’d question how useful it was in the first place, packed away in a box in the loft. In reality, we can often make do with different tools, find other solutions or simply live without a particular item, without missing out on anything.

That said, there is nothing wrong with having some refills or items we only use occasionally, as long as we actually use them rather than assume we might need to use them sometime. “Sometime” is your worst enemy when it comes to making decisions, because it can easily lead to large accumulations of “just in case” items that do nothing but clog up your space and add to stuff you need to manage in some way, now or in the future.