Clutter Control Through Boundary Setting

If you are an accumulator, if you snip articles out of papers, or purchase
endless amounts of fabric or beads, or save vast amounts of nails or old
cell phones or your children’s art work. Or if you are crafty and you
collect odd things that you “might use some day” (such as 583 empty toilet
paper rolls), you need to set boundaries.

Keep these items in a container (a box, drawer, old coffee can) and set a
boundary that when it fills up, instead of getting another container, you
will empty out the old one. You and your child might not be able to say
good-bye to a recent drawing, but when the art box fills up, you can dig to
the bottom and select a few old ones that you can live without.

An accountant named Jamie empties out her box of fabric once a year; and
every January, Carl, a financial advisor, empties out the drawer full of
fabulous cartoons and weird stories that he has clipped from magazines and
newspapers throughout the year. Both Jamie and Carl know that the box and
drawer will fill up again in no time and they will never miss what they
eliminated.

Clutter is a huge source of stress. We accumulate it by playing “mind
games” such as “Somebody some day somewhere somehow might need this so I
better save it”.

Sometimes we need another “mind game” to counteract clutter. For example,
another way to set boundaries is: whenever you purchase something new —
whether it’s a tool, an outfit, jewelry or whatever — get rid of
something old. “A tie for a tie, a shoe for a shoe.”

If you can’t get yourself to cut back on what you accumulate, setting these
boundaries or limits will help you keep your accumulations from taking over
your home or office or… your life.