I started out a messy child. No joke. I had a path cleared in my room to get from the door to my bed (and maybe my dresser). By the time I was a teenager that changed and I started decluttering. The problem was, even though I decluttered, there was a ton of stuff I still held on to. No matter how many times I moved (and no matter how much I let go of) I took all this stuff with me. If I’m being honest, it was all things I felt like I needed to keep.

 

This went on even when I was living in small rooms in apartments in NYC. When I was married and we had a toddler in a 900 square foot condo, I was trying everything I could to keep it clutter free. I read all the books and blogs on minimalism and I took decluttering courses but something was missing. Although I got through so much stuff - I still held onto a lot of stuff out of obligation, guilt, fear, and so on.

 

It wasn’t until my partner and I moved in together and combined households that it started to change. Before the move and a few months after we were doing basic decluttering. We asked ourselves questions like: do I need this; does this fit; does it work; etc. However as we decluttered and came across more personal items, I noticed all of my training from when I was a social worker/therapist started coming into our conversations. We had discussions of why an item was important and what the story was behind it. I would ask questions to myself about holding onto items for guilt and obligations that had been passed down to me. The more questions I asked, the clearer it was for me on whether or not I really wanted to keep something. All of the items in my home started becoming a choice and not anything more than that.

 

I had been flirting with the idea of being a professional organizer for years but it didn’t seem to really be the right fit. What I wanted was to help people declutter. And now that I found this new way of seeing objects and going deeper into why we hold onto things, I wanted to offer that to other people who struggle with the harder to declutter stuff. So they can choose what they want in their home and create a space they love.

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