De-Cluttering

(The English cupboard before and after)

Did you see Oprah last week when she had the de-cluttering guy, Peter Walsh, as a guest? He and his decluttering team are going across the country in their little VW convoy to help us Americans clean up our messes. I suspect they won't be stopping here, much as I could use their help, but he claims that just 10 minutes per day will bring amazing results on one's own.

So I've taken him up on that claim.

Now, I'm not an appallingly messy housekeeper. The floors aren't littered with clothes; there aren't opened cans of decaying pet food on the counters; the bathrooms get cleaned once a week (more or less), I vacuum and wash the floors regularly, I do the laundry two or three times a week, etc. But  I certainly have areas needing improvement. Behind closed doors, for instance, havoc reigns. 

So I've spent the past few days attacking one cluttered site after another. The living room end tables are now organized and free of stuff that had been stored in them for years. (I finally found the Princess Diana cancelled postage stamps that I was searching for a year ago, and I also found a treasured photo from my college years.) My roll-top desk is now extremely clean and uncluttered. The quilt cupboard, which is more of a craft cupboard than anything else, was yesterday's chore, and although it probably doesn't look much better to you who don't know it intimately, it's MUCH cleaner and clutter-free to me, its owner.

Today I tackled the English cupboard in the kitchen.( The before and after shots appear at the top of this post. I wish I could figure out how to upload photos in the order I want them to appear.) If you see little improvement in my quilt cupboard, you'll have to admit you see major improvement in the English cupboard. Gone are candles I'll never use, candle holders I'll never use, cookbooks I haven't used in years. 

This de-cluttering gives me a new sense of freedom. I love having my life less weighted down with stuff. I think it was Ernest Hemingway who owned few actual "things": a few clothes, a wristwatch, that was about it. He felt we become prisoners of our possessions. I think he's right.