“It’s realistic, practical, kind, and considerate.”
Holidays afford us time to rest and be with our loved ones, but also time to reckon with our relationship with things. Things, as in objects.
Why do we declutter? Different reasons, I suppose, and to different degrees.
Some people are more inclined to organize their things and get rid of the old than others. Maybe it figures high up on their priorities. Maybe they have more time. Maybe they have that clean-as-you-go personality so that nothing ever really piles up. Maybe they cannot stand a lack of or absence of order.
I can’t speak for everyone but for me, decluttering is a moving target. It’s always something I want to do, but always something I fail to do completely or in the way I’d really like to. Life takes over, and of course every day you add to the clutter: what you buy, and what you fail to put in its place at once.
Personal space is a luxury for many, especially in the Philippines. It is a concept that is foreign to some. People who get to have their own space may take it for granted but they are fortunate.
Having a neat and organized personal space is essential to calmness and inner peace, and could be crucial to productivity. Imagine saving precious time looking for things you need just because you already know their exact location, or at least the general area where they are likely to be found. To some extent, creativity benefits from it too, because the mind is clear, blank, and quiet, leaving room for ideas to come, develop, and flourish.
Decluttering is a good exercise when one intends to begin practicing minimalism, and focus on the more important things in life. Would it not be nice to want less, and need less, instead of basing our self-worth and happiness on our possessions? Take note I said “begin practicing.” It’s difficult, and the culture we find ourselves in could put undue emphasis on acquiring objects instead of experiences. We’re human – we see nice things, we have a bit of means to get it, and so we do.
Decluttering is good for aesthetics. A nice room or home does not have to be full of expensive furniture. But a tidy one will always be deemed a “sight for sore eyes.”
Lately, however, I have been thinking about yet another way to regard tidying up. What if one morning on your way to work you got hit by a truck? Or you slipped on a banana peel? Or choked on fishbone? Or suffered a fatal stroke? Perhaps when you get to this age you start coming to terms with the fact that you are not invincible, and that life would go on for the rest of the world even after you are gone.
Would my family, for instance, after dealing with their grief, be horrified by what they would find in my room – the amount of disposable items I refused to part with, mementoes big and small I should have disposed of long ago, diaries and drafts of work that reveal a self different from the me they know, too many shirts of the same color, too many pouches, too many containers that in their number have contained nothing? What if they were looking for important documents – insurance policies, for instance, or certificates – and could not find them in my left-behind clutter?
This is by no means an original idea. The Swedish even have a name for it – “dostadning.” Swedish death cleaning has become more popular in recent years, even finding its way to books and popular culture. The idea is to constantly tidy up one’s space as a way of being considerate to the people you will leave behind, such that cleaning up would not be a burden to them.
It sounds morbid but it is realistic, practical – as well as kind and considerate. In the end, we will all pass anyway, and we will all leave behind something, some more than others. “Death” cleaning is just another term for something that is good to adapt and practice in small doses but constantly, every day, for the rest of lives, whether they turn out to be long or abbreviated.
