instead, living in the moment allows one to focus on connections: with your family over the dinner table, with your work objectives, with your favorite author while reading a book before falling asleep. this is the clarity we seek and are at risk of missing if we still simply focus on the addition or subtraction of objects.

Bravo… I would like to add that along with mental, physical, and financial clutter, the themes of consumption are really similar to weight loss. This is why we have a lot of fun with the metaphor of losing “Clutter-Pounds” from your home on our site, The Clutter Diet. We help people work it off doing our weekly project plans and provide them direct personal advice from pros who work in the field. It’s a great financial win if people want to do our program vs. hiring an organizer in person (can be out of many people’s budgets). Couldn’t resist commenting– thanks so much for the great article!

- Lorie Marrero, Certified Professional Organizer® and Creator of The Clutter Diet®

I sort my mail every day, put things away and avoid clutter like the plague. This helps me avoid stress and always remember important things, like paying bills on time. Cleaning out the fridge helps me to prepare meals with ease (though I have some shelve detrius that needs pitching).

Stuff takes up space and gets dusty. Less stuff=happy!

http://www.blogher.com/node/21300

Thanks!

Also, I had the pleasure of being interviewed last June by finance blogger Nina Smith for her Ten Money Questions series. We discussed the relationship between spending and thoughtful consuming. For interested readers, here’s the link (let’s test my HTML skills!):

Ten Money Questions

Great article. I linked to it in today’s post at A Dinosaur’s Daydreams.
http://philosaurus.blogspot.com/2008/03/all-marbles.html

But I now have to go out and buy it again, and because you can’t buy just one of whatever it was at the home improvement store, you have to buy a whole packs of 5-7 of them.

We’ve started spring cleaning and a lot of stuff is going to be gotten rib of one way or the other.

Then I have to go BUY it.

Not too frugal.

That is the conflict that makes me insane. I am not talking about a broken lawnmower or clothes I outgrew 10 years ago. I’m talking about the “humane trap” I used two summers ago to catch stray animals ($60 new) or the volleyball net I used for outdoor parties and my camping gear.

It is amazing what getting rid of clutter can do for a person mentally, physically, financially & creatively. It’s sad that “stuff” can have such a hold on us, but it’s reassuring and motivating to know that once we learn to let go, life can become what it’s supposed to be … beautifully “present”.

Thanks for your thoughts & insight — we love it!

My mother has a friend who recently refinanced her house in order to build a garage with loft, just to store books. I know for a fact that she has not read most of the books that she buys and has absolutely no idea of what books she actually owns. The last time I went to her house (before the garage was built) she had piles of books underneath pieces of furniture in her lounge room, and I noted not one or two but FIVE duplicate books in those piles. She is late for every appointment, has very scattered thinking, and her career is very much in jeapordy because of her non existent time management skills.

Another friend of mine is a feng shui consultant and says that 90% of people use their garages to store unused junk rather than park their cars. Think of it, an expensive piece of machinery is sitting out in the weather exposed to the elements and losing value while the ski’s last used three years ago sit in the garage next to the childrens bicyles that they outgrew 10 years ago, and next to these is a box full of half empty paint tins from a job you did five years ago. Sound familiar?

Getting rid of things that we have outgrown or don’t use feels fantastic! Everything we own takes a tiny bit of our attention, whether we realise it or not.