In times of overwhelm, I declutter. There’s something about having control over the things I own, and how much of it, that brings me a sense of calm. Sometimes, I feel like my personal space is the only thing I can control and decluttering gives me that.

My childhood home routinely felt contentious. I grew up with an alcoholic father and “walking on eggshells” was a part of my day. Naturally, I developed some coping mechanisms. I’ve been noticing more and more lately how these coping mechanisms I had as a child are ones that I use as an adult.

Cleaning and organizing was one of those coping mechanisms. Part of it was to people please, and maybe even be given a few dollars.

But the other part was to remove something that my father could get upset about, and replace it with something that made him happy. I think that small feeling of control that I had over my surroundings helped to also remove some anxiety that I felt.

When I left home at 18, shopping became the way that I dealt with anxiety. Procrastination from studying. Go shopping. Stressful test. Go shopping. Bad day at work. Go shopping. Etcetera.

Eventually, the shopping led to immense feelings of anxiety. Go shopping. No money for necessities. Go shopping. Debt. Go shopping. Too much stuff to deal with. Etcetera.

Throughout all of this, decluttering was there. It was just a supporting character. In my attempt to fill some hole with stuff, decluttering made it feel like I had some kind of control. Like the incessant shopping was my choice.

Decluttering allowed me to continue to buy things by continually making room for more things.

But decluttering is just a tool. We give it a use and how we use it matters.

For years, I was using it wrong. I was using it to support unhealthy behaviors. It wasn’t until 2015, when I decided to conscientiously reduce the amount of stuff that I own, that I started to use it correctly.

But even then, I wasn’t using it to it’s full potential. Part of me was still falling back on it as a way to clear out space to make room for new stuff. It was a vicious cycle, one that I wasn’t sure how to end.

So I just stopped. I stopped decluttering. Lately, I’ve stopped buying things.

When I started writing back in 2018, it was to document my journey towards minimalism. I had envisioned a slow living journal where I could share my thoughts and struggles.

One of the things I kept reading about while consuming information on minimalism was a “capsule wardrobe”. As someone who’s always loved clothes, it sounded like a great way to have a “minimalist wardrobe” while not getting rid of all of my clothes.

Further research led me to join a 10-day capsule wardrobe challenge on Instagram. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t done that because all of a sudden, I was gaining followers. This is usually a good problem to have but it shifted my focus. The more and more that I posted about my capsule, the more followers I gained. I felt like the 15 year old version of myself being told on the school bus that “I was the most fashionable kid at school”. And it had the same effect on me as those words uttered on a winter morning many years ago.

Wardrobe posts out-liked any other kind of posts, so that’s what I started to post about all the time. I also started to center most of my other writing around my capsule wardrobe and personal style.

I guess it was my way of niching down.

Little did I realize that it would perpetuate my shopping addiction.

As much as I tried to tie my capsule wardrobe towards consuming less and styling more, which are 2 things that I will always wholeheartedly endorse when it comes to clothes, the truth is, I was continually buying clothes to have something new to post. And even though the vast majority of those things were preloved, it was still consumption. I was still consuming for the sake of consuming.

I was using the “1 in, 1 out” rule to replace perfectly good clothing with other clothes, oftentimes as a style experiment to have something to write about.

In the past 3 weeks, I’ve removed 6 bags of stuff from my house.

Two went to a local consignment shop. They contained some of my nicest items that I no longer wear. Ones that I was holding onto in the hopes of selling them online. But they sat there, with a few likes and no offers. It was apparent that they weren’t going to sell easily, so I decided to remove both the physical and mental clutter from my life.

Another 3 were dropped off at goodwill – 2 contained household items such as rust colored curtains and a cotton canopy that my daughter now longer wanted. The third contained some children’s clothes and other items from my wardrobe that didn’t make it in the consignment selection. They were nice, but not fancy brands.

Finally, a bag of mostly men’s clothing sits in my car waiting to be donated to the local homeless shelter.

I think about all of these things that I’ve decluttered. To me, they mean many hours wasted.

Hours spent working to make the money to buy them. Hours spent sourcing the actual items. Often to follow some trend. Hours spent maintaining these items, thinking about decluttering them, and then finally putting the time in to get rid of them.

Hours spent on a hamster wheel, constantly moving but never getting anywhere.

But, most importantly, hours wasted not thinking about the things that are really important to me. Hours spent not working on having uncomplicated spaces.

I don’t want to declutter anymore, at least not how I have been. But that’s because I don’t want to continue buying things that I really don’t need.

I still need to work through my emotional attachment to clothes and finally get down to a true minimalist wardrobe, one that only contains the items that I actually wear. Decluttering will be a part of that process, but I won’t be replacing the items that I get rid of.

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