Do you want to achieve the beautiful interiors as mentioned in an earlier post? Perhaps you need to declutter your house (and maybe your life) first.
If you need a gentle nudge in the right direction, and a good laugh to get you started, then I can recommend Lessons in letting go : confessions of a Hoarder. The author, Corinne Grant, was a regular contributor on the tv show Rove and I’m impressed that she laid bare her embarrassing hoarding secrets so publicly in this book.
Once you realise that you are not alone at filling your house with stuff that you don’t really need, then you could start to re-organize your house with the help of these titles :
- Unstuff your life
- What’s a disorganized person to do?
- Organized simplicity : the clutter-free approach to intentional living
- Storage with style
Become the ultimate TradeMe junkie and make some money while decluttering your life with Trade Me Success Secrets. Just remember you’re there to sell, and not to buy more stuff to fill up your house.
If you are up for the ultimate decluttering challenge, you could take up the 100-thing challenge like Dave Bruno to pare down your belongings to 100 items.
Think you could pare down your life to that extreme?
Christchurch City Libraries Blog 
Be careful what you wish for…I have had every single book ever out of the library on decluttering over a period of years and I mean years. Mostly they just cluttered up the few surfaces I had left to me or I put them on the bedside table hoping I could absorb their wisdom by some sort of weird osmosis. Then came February 22nd 2011 and every collection of clutter I ever owned was gone. Did I feel liberated? No I did not. In fact I started to collect (or clutter) again as soon as possible. But the tragic thing is I still get the books out of the library! Banish clutter forever is currently on a pile of books taking up surface space in my small rented living room. Will I ever learn?
I’m not sure why decluttering has become the thing to do, as if it has some kind of intrinsic merit. I love my clutter, and was devastated when I lost some of it in the earthquake. All the little bits and pieces I’d collected from church fairs and junk shops, all irreplaceable because they were just junk. I hate the minimalist look I have at the moment, but know that the minute I start putting stuff out on shelves that there will be another big one.
I don’t have “clutter”. I have “stuff”. Or I did have “stuff” until the earthquakes started. I have managed to escape to a fair and a junkshop to replace some it. I now keep my “stuff ” in a box until the quaked finish.
We built a bigger house to make room for our stuff. Plus a huge shed for my husband’s stuff, and a three car garage which fits just one car because its full of stuff. I love stuff.
Yes! that’s the spirit. Perhaps we should form a Clutterholics support group.
My loss of ‘stuff’ from February, and having to put into storage anything that was left, was indescribable. It made me appreciate what did survive (one coffee cup that survived has had 15 years of being carted round the world and up & down NZ), and has given me a new ‘eyes’ to look at all the gorgeous things in the op shops I am frequenting on my journey north.
I’m longing for the day that I can do what simone has done, and build a house to make room for more stuff! In the meantime, I’ll only be able to collect memories & experiences as there is no more room in the boot of my car!
So my earthquake forced declutter just means that I’m looking forward to the day when I will be able to collect more stuff 😉