What Makes You ‘You’? Or, How to Declutter Without Thinking About It

Look around at everything you own. Open the cupboards that are stuffed with papers and Things To Do. Pull open your drawers and observe everything that you think makes you You. Open your wardrobe. Take out every secret, hidden thing, and lay it out bare.

Sit, and take in everything. The books you’ve yet to read, the notebooks full of half-started ideas and writings, the clothes you haven’t worn for months, the bulging folders. This is You.

This is You, because you’ve let Yourself become the items you own, the crap you hoard, the things you’ve made yourself believe Matter to you.

Breathe in, and breathe out.

Breathe in.

And out.

Get a few bin liners, one for Charity, one for Recycle, one for Get-This-Out-Of-My-Face Rubbish. Pick up the first item you don’t like the look of.

And let it go.

Because you know that these clothes and these papers and these books and these notebooks and these things are Not You.

Get rid of as much as you can.Maybe for as long as 2-3 hours – it’s easier once you’re on a roll. But probably best not to get rid of every single thing you own in one fell swoop; you might regret it the next day.

Then again, you might not.