Why I Constantly Declutter & Why It Needs to Stop

I’m not gonna lie. Y’all, we had another coming to Jesus moment with our stuff. Why? Because there is too much. If you remember, in 2017 we decluttered and got rid of a TON of stuff. Like, fill an U-Haul ton of stuff. I thought, wow this is great! We’ll never have to do this again! WRONG. It’s as if we hadn’t been working on our minimalist and frugal lifestyle for over a year. We still have junk. We still have cluttered drawers. So what gives? Why do we have so much stuff and what can we do to minimize the incoming flow of things?

Why is there so much stuff?

Like so many people, I constantly feel like I have lot of possessions. In reality, I do have a lot of possessions and I realize how privileged I am to have them. Yet, I have the urge to declutter. In my mind, my house is like that from an episode of hoarders, or perhaps less extreme would be a house before Marie Kondo visits it on Netflix.

Reality? We have nothing in storage, nothing we step over, no boxes stacked up any where in our house, we park both cars in our garage, no toys all over, and frankly, there’s just not a whole lot of stuff.

BUT even though we don’t a lot of possessions, I constantly buy. I always find myself at Goodwill or at the clearance rack at Target. That’s why I created a list of things we won’t buy in 2019. We keep on buying even though we don’t need anything else. It’s as if we have a lack of satisfaction with everything we own and the yearning for something new and different.

This lack of satisfaction or boredom is why the fashion industry makes billions of dollars every year. It’s why most other consumer industries makes billions of dollars every year. Because everyone loves to shop! We are pummeled with hundreds of advertisements everyday and enticed to buy things we don’t need with eye catching displays at stores. The term impulse purchase is my archenemy.

Looking for tips on how to declutter?
– A Simple Guide on How to Purge Your Whole House
– 4 Tips to Help You Declutter in 2019
– How I Eliminated Over HALF of My Wardrobe

So why rid yourself of things if you’re just going to buy more?

When I shop, I don’t shop to replace something I’ve given away or sold. I shop for new and exciting things. It’s as if I have nothing left in my house and there is a 90% off sale at Goodwill. And it needs to stop.

With our “no purchase” list and our “year of no shopping”, I believe that we have set ourselves up to not only purchase fewer consumer goods, but also spend less money. I no longer want to contribute to a society that values things the most. I want to consume less.

One in and one out

So say we do purchase something. It comes into our home in one of my reuseable shopping bags and I plop it on our counter. Before I even take it out of the bag, I must declutter and get rid of one item. If I bought two items, I must get declutter two items and so on. It doesn’t have to be in the same category as the item we brought in but it does help.

You see, the goal is to consume less and own less. Yes, I could just constantly declutter and shop like I normally do but I’m going to change that. I am going to spend less and consume less. It already feels great!

It has been two weeks of our one in and one out method and it has worked wonders. I no longer feel like I have to declutter my whole closet once a month because I bought just a few new things. And I no longer have anxiety when I find a home for the new items that we purchased because we have the space thanks to this method.

To actively be aware of what you bring into your home, and ultimately into your life, makes you think twice before purchasing an item and spending that money that you worked so hard for.