A word that you might have heard a lot of times not just with respect to your wardrobes but also as a way of life. Decluttering urges us to discard anything that doesn’t bring value into our lives. The feeling could be so strong that at one point in time we feel that we just to throw everything out and start afresh. We want to pack up everything we don’t use or possibly everything that does not have a spark left and get it out of our lives and the sooner the better. The objects we have accumulated burden us, take up our time and energy, and, clutter the emotional space that we should be leaving open for more meaningful pursuits. We feel that once we rid ourselves of the burden of clutter, we will be freed. We can finally start living a minimal lifestyle. Yet, decluttering our life is an art.
Decluttering might not consider the effects of the purge on the community and the planet. You might consider it quick and convenient to take 10 trash bags of unwanted clothing to the nearest thrift store, how many of those garments will actually be reused? How many will instead be shipped to the developing world where it will end up on second-hand clothing markets, destroying local tailoring industries? You know that the results of your decluttering might end up as a landfill even as we convince ourselves that it’s not the case.
There is no quick fix when it comes to decluttering our lives and re-organizing, and the habits and thought-processes that underlie the accumulation of too much stuff. Here are 5 quick tips to adopt a minimal lifestyle:
- Step 1: Don’t start too big with your decluttering project. Going straight to your worst clutter spots can make you feel overwhelmed. Instead, start small with a basic desk or workspace. Starting small offers direct results from your tidying practices. These smaller accomplishments will help you feel good and keep you going.
- Step 2: Segregate your belongings into 3 different boxes: upcycle, donation, and trash. Upcycling clothes is easy and a lot of fun. You can even gift your upcycled clothes to friends and family. Donating your worn-out clothes is also a very eco-friendly practice.
- Step 3: Keep some organizational equipment handy for the things that you want to store. It’s best to declutter and strategize your organizational system before purchasing the equipment and then buy just what you need to store the same.
- Step 4: Do not forget that decluttering is a process.Your first attempt at cleaning up may just scratch the surface, and that’s okay. You may not get picture-perfect organization results in your first time. Remember that decluttering is meant to enable you to live a comfortable and minimal lifestyle.
- Step 5: Let the ‘one-year’ rule run your life. The one-year rule is a staple for decluttering. The idea behind it is that if you haven’t used something in a year, it’s time to get rid of it. In some cases, this way of thinking works really well, as we grow out of some clothes and interests or find that some things just aren’t for us and we don’t intend to return to them.
- Step 6: Take a step back and breathe. You did it! How does it feel? Does a mostly empty closet make you feel happy?
Where do you begin decluttering and organizing?
It might seem like an uphill challenge to fully organize all of your excesses. Buying organizational tools and drawer dividers might not help you feel more organized if you still have too many things. It is easy to fall into a frenetic pace if you’ve decided that clutter is a problem that is causing you to stress in your day-to-day. But the last thing you want to do is to make the experience stressful. Similarly, if you are feeling that you would have more time and energy for sustainable lifestyle choices, such as upcycling clothes, recycling old plastic containers for something new if you could just get rid of your clutter, then it is a great idea to look up DIY videos and implement some of them. It will also go a long way in reducing your carbon footprint on the planet.
It might sound like mere semantics, but the art of slow decluttering approaches the task as a form of ‘letting go’, rather than ‘getting rid of’ things. Almost everything in your home has some inherent value, if not to you, then to someone else. The action of ‘getting rid of’ things is easily co-opted into the dominant cultural norm of single use, planned obsolescence and waste. This can have two effects- it can either encourage you to throw things out without consideration for what or whom it could be useful for, or it can lead you to hold onto things that you don’t use or need simply because you don’t want a useful item to go to waste. The very process of ‘getting rid’ of things really lends itself to the idea of waste. It is slow and, at times, painful process to unpack the influences of our culture of excess on our lives. Paradoxically, by trying to rush the process you can end up in a cycle of purge and re-clutter. Unless you address the underlying subconscious influences on your behaviors and desires, the clutter creeps back in. Deliberate mindfulness is needed, and an understanding of gradual habit change. This is missed if you try to rush the process to just get it over and done with.
However, reframing the decluttering process as ‘letting go’, enables you to approach the exercise as a form of release. You are not getting rid of an item, you are letting it go so that it may be valued and useful to someone to adopt a minimal lifestyle. It is a waste for an item to go unused in your home. When you know that it is going to be valued and used by someone else (of for some other purpose), it is easier to let it go. The process of letting go becomes all the more important as time progresses in your slow decluttering journey. In the beginning of the process of decluttering, you have items that are easy to release from your life. But eventually you will start to find items that you are not using, but which are tied up in your identities. Usually, these are old identities that are no longer serving you. This might be study notes or textbooks from your university days, things that you no longer refer to, but which are difficult for you to get rid of. Getting rid of these items is difficult because of the emotional attachment to that time in your life. Due to the complexity in the emotional attachments, rather than get rid of these items quickly, you need to honor yourself with the time and space to be ready to release the old identity and the items associated with it. This may be through contemplating the other ways in which you can remember those memories without holding on to that part of your identity. By pacing the process, the internal change — and detachment — happens in unison with the external change, and the change is here to stay!
Here are some tools for detachment which you can practice in everyday life:
Mary Carlomagno, owner of the organizing company Order and author of several books on the subject, says it may help to consider that “the things you think you love — like a pair of Gucci booties — can’t reciprocate. That relationship is one-sided.” Instead of hanging on, try to adopt the following for decluttered lifestyle:
- Take a photo. Carlomagno likes the idea of taking a photo to keep and letting the object go. This solution could prove to be very helpful when it comes to gifts and paper memorabilia — a way to preserve programs from a wedding or your grandmother’s bedspread without having to find a place for them.
- Start an “out-box.” For each object, ask yourself, “Do I use it?” “Do I love it?” “Do I need it at my house?” Put any no’s in a designated box. Reassess the contents regularly, and you’ll see yourself detaching from much of what you were initially reluctant to part with.
- Anthropomorphize your stuff. Well, sort of. Consider the feelings of the neglected, unused object in the back of the closet, and the thought that something might get more use elsewhere will motivate you to donate things to someone who needs them more.
- Let go of “someday.” As I went through the process, I came to realize that it was almost always easier to go to the hardware store than to sift through piles of screws looking for one the right size. That if you hadn’t worn a pair of shoes yet that you had owned for a decade, you probably weren’t going to.
We want to hear your experiences of decluttering and organizing your wardrobes and your life! Share with us your feelings if you tried the above tips and we would love to hear from you!
3. Wondering how your wardrobe can help you curb climate change? Let us tell you!
The fashion industry produces almost 10% of manmade CO2 emissions – more than aviation and shipping combined. These alarming facts went unnoticed as we got swept off our feet by the charm of the fast fashion industry. New fads right off the runway, sometimes even picking up from the high-fashion streets at bargain deals was something we could not turn our heads away from. It was not long before this started to have an extreme downside on the people and the planet.
Reaching zero net greenhouse gas emissions will require far-reaching changes in human activity, which in fashion terms includes changing both the way we produce clothes and how we consume them. Where can we as consumers begin to do our bit for the planet?
Invest in your wardrobe
Quality over quantity. Invest in timeless pieces which will last you across seasons and occasions. Functional basics can be paired with each other to create a unique style statement. They key is to buy less but buy better and treasure what we own. Our grandmom’s saree is still an artistic piece of beauty and surprise when our moms wear it and perhaps we did too. But how many of our clothes can be handed down to generations to come? The artisanal and intrinsic value in thoughtfully crafted clothing vows to stand the test of time. Reusing those clothes can also enable us to get off the seasonal treadmill. By knowing what you should spend on, you can start to build a timeless wardrobe that can save you money and have you feeling amazing.
It has also become essential to be mindful of the materials that we buy. A regular cotton T-Shirt takes up 2,500 litres of water to be made. Even as an agricultural crop, cotton’s carbon footprint is lower than that of polyester, but fertiliser use releases nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with 300 times more warming power than CO2. Polyester, as a plastic, is made from oil, and extracting and processing the raw material to make it is highly energy-intensive. Polyester is non-biodegradable which means all the discarded clothing ends up in landfills which pile up on our planet Earth with nowhere to go. Of the vast majority of clothes in the waste disposal stream, roughly 70% end up in landfills. They outlive us and possibly will, the entire planet Earth. Decomposing clothes also emits toxins that are released in the air, water and soil harming the flora and fauna of the neighbourhood.
It is worth investing in alternate natural planet based fabrics which consume less water and less chemicals across the value chain. Hemp, tencel, organic cotton, linen, banana fabric and other such fabrics are skin and planet friendly fabrics. They have a lesser carbon footprint on the planet and are biodegradable.
Invest in Wear and Care
The necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can also be made possible if we not only buy a lot less, but also get much better at handling the end-of-life stage of garments. We must stop thinking of clothes as disposable, and adopt circular fashion principles that treat the life-cycle of a garment as a closed loop.
Taking good care of an item of clothing can help to significantly increase its lifespan. Pay careful attention to the instructions on the label of each garment. They advise you best on the wash and care instructions for the particular garments, the maximum recommended temperature an item should be washed at etc. Try to wash your clothes as less frequently as possible, not that you should wear dirty clothes, but the more you wash them, the more they lose their quality. Learning to complete basic repairs on your clothing — such as replacing a loose thread or a missing button — can make them last longer and save you a tonne of money.
Considering the afterlife
When the outfit is at the end of its life for you, consider handing it down or donating it. Donating clothes helps the environment as it cuts across all steps of value chain to make a new product. Clothing donation will ensure that all the water and energy that was used in the creation of new garments will not simply go to waste. The longer used clothing is in circulation, the fewer clothes will be produced and discarded at landfills. Pre-loved clothing is now also sold at thrift stores and has high value.
We have an opportunity in front of us to bring the fashion fraternity to the forefront of the global sustainability debate and show the world the vast potential our contribution could make towards achieving these goals. Let us make it count!