I came across these videos today and thought it was well worth providing an example of a classic mistake people make when they think they’re decluttering. In the video below is a woman who, being inspired by the clutter show on Oprah recently with Peter Walsh shows us around her house to view her clutter prior to her declutter effort. Now what I noted when viewing her before and after videos is that first of all (as she stated) her home is by no means seriously cluttered, however she does have lots of stuff poorly organised. She was “motivated to declutter” and the after result is quite impressive - and a big congrats to her, well done!

What she has done however is a classic mistake of ‘undirected’ declutterers and that is; she ran out and grabbed more boxes and the like and organised her stuff, trouble is, it still takes up the same space! just that now it looks better and she probably knows for a while where things are (don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing). What did she do wrong? She didn’t actually declutter - looks like all the stuff is still there to me - correct me if I’m wrong. The real process of decluttering for people for whom it just doesn’t come naturally is to actually get rid of stuff you rarely use and can easily do without, never use, don’t even know you’ve got, belongs to someone else etc etc…

Some questions to ask yourself are:

• Do I really need this?
• Am I making use of this often is enough to justify keeping it?
• Can I take a photo of it and then sell or donate it to someone who could make use of it / a charity?
• Is having this item making me happy?

Here are the before and after videos - let me know what you think!

BEFORE

AFTER