Get Rid of Clutter for Your Kids’ Sake

If you have a hard time throwing out cards, letters, old bills and other stuff of daily life, here’s a suggestion: If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your kids. I’ve talked with so many people around the country who have recently gone through the experience of cleaning out a recently deceased parent’s belongings.

One woman said to me, “After cleaning out my mother’s house, I swore I wouldn’t leave phone bills from 1972 and all the Christmas and birthday cards I’ve ever received for my kids to throw out when I die.”

I received a letter from a reader in Los Angeles who struck a familiar chord. She wrote, “My mother’s favorite sayings were, ‘You never know when you might need it,’ or about clothes, ‘Everything comes back into style sooner or later.’ Her house is jammed with things she’ll never use again. These days we’ve all got so much clutter in our lives. I’m determined to pass on a different message to my own kids: ‘If you don’t need it now, give it away. If you need it later, you can always get it again.’ ”

If the pack-rat gene has afflicted you, make a commitment to clear out some of your clutter. Here are a few suggestions for getting started:

1) Pay a bill, then, unless you need to keep a copy for tax purposes, throw it away. I know there are experts who say hold on to bills for three to six months and then toss them. That would be fine if we had the time to go back every six months and get rid of them. But with all the new material constantly coming into our lives, no one has time to do that.

So get rid of it now. If you need it later, you can always call the company that issued it and request a copy. The same holds true for bank statements and canceled checks. Ask your bank to issue you a simple electronic statement every month, minus the canceled checks. Use the statement to balance your checkbook; then toss it.

2) Minimize keepsakes. Ask yourself if you’re guilty of hanging on to your children’s belongings because, like one mother I know, you think, “Someday they’ll thank me.” I heard from a woman who had just finished cleaning out her mother’s apartment when she moved into a nursing home.

She was amazed to find many of her own mementos.

“Mom saved the corsage from my high school prom,” she told me. “Why? I saved it for a year, then forgot about it.” Decide to give up your role as the caretaker of imagined treasures. If your kids want to save it, let them do it.

3) Stop keeping items to “read later.” How often do you set aside a piece of mail, a magazine article, a clipping or a recipe you’d like to try someday, only to watch the pile collect dust on a corner of your desk or a cabinet in the kitchen? Be honest with yourself about the likelihood that you’ll get around to taking action. If you’re not prepared to handle an item or piece of mail on the spot, toss it.

4) Go through the stacks of unread material on your desk: the announcements, research reports, trade magazines, financial analysis and FYIs. Have your name taken off the list of the things you don’t have time to read or have no real need to see. You’ll be much more effective if you focus on being up-to-date on the information that is directly relevant to your job.

We can’t know it all, so don’t clutter your office with stacks of information you don’t have time for. In this day of Internet access, we can almost always get a piece of information if we really need it.

5) If it’s in the attic, get rid of it. A friend of mine who is moving to a new home realized that she hadn’t touched the boxes in her attic since they were stored there the last time she moved seven years ago. She confessed that she wasn’t even sure what was up there.

This time, rather than moving all of that useless stuff to another attic, she has decided to simply have it hauled away without even going through it.

“It’s obvious that if I haven’t needed any of those things in seven years, I probably never will,” she said. Take a look at your attic, garage or basement and consider how much of what’s there could be passed on to someone who could put it to use.

We all know the feeling of liberation that comes from cleaning out a desk drawer, a tool chest or a kitchen cabinet. It’s that freedom we’re aiming for here. If you take one or more of these first steps, you’ll experience an immediate relief from the burden of stuff you have in your life.

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Elaine St. James is the author of “Simplify Your Life” and “Simplify Your Life With Kids.” For questions or comments, write to her in care of Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111 or e-mail her at [email protected].