Chapter 3 – Declutter Your Office and Your Home

Clutter causes confusion. Living or working in a cluttered space reduces your productivity and makes you feel overwhelmed. It reduces your ability to easily switch between tasks and filter information. It also negatively affects your working memory making it hard for you to remember where you placed some of your stuff.

According to Feng Shui, living in a clutter-free space increases your luck and fortune as well.

Day 5 – Get Rid of All the Things That You Do Not Want or Need

Look around your house. Do you really need everything that’ s in it?

If you want to live a clutter-free life, you have to get rid of EVERYTHING that you do not need or does not spark happiness in your soul. We all keep stuff we don’ t even like just for the sake of keeping them or perhaps feeling guilty or wasteful when throwing them away.

To embrace a minimalist lifestyle, you should get rid of:

• Things you no longer need or use for more than 3 months
• Things that are damaged beyond repair
• Things that have already served their purpose
• Newspapers that are more than three days old
• Pens with no ink
• Mismatched socks
• Extra buttons
• Expired makeup, beauty items or even supplements
• Old condiment packets that you will no longer use
• Excess hair ties
• Your kids’ baby clothes and old toys
• Books that you are most probably not going to read again or no longer helpful.
• Expired medicines
• Old spices
• Craft supplies that you no longer use
• Old bed sheets
• Old CDs  and DVDs

Go through all the items in your house and search for them one by one. Now, listen to how you feel when you touch each item. Do you feel joy? Do you feel regret? Do you need it? If an item no longer sparks excitement and joy in your being, you need to let it go even if it has sentimental value and even if it’ s expensive. Do not be afraid of getting rid of something that cost you a lot of money. If that item has already served its purpose then you need to let it go.

Place all the items that you want to get rid of on the floor. Then, you need to classify the items into three categories:

✓          The ones you have to throw away (things that do not work anymore)

✓         The ones that you have to donate (things that still work, but no longer spark joy in your being)

✓          The ones that you can still sell