This post originally appeared on Surviving and Thriving.
Just before my recent move from Seattle to Anchorage, Alaska, I wrote an MSN Money piece called “What I learned from de-cluttering.” But that was before I’d finished packing.
What I’ve learned since then? That I didn’t de-clutter enough.
It was shocking to see how many boxes I wound up putting in the moving van. As a result, I have half a dozen suggestions for your own future moves…
- Stage a “wear everything challenge” in the weeks or months before a planned move. As I folded clothes into a suitcase I wondered whether I’d ever wear some of them in Anchorage. A couple of shirts had never been worn at all – I bought them at an outlet mall while shopping for something to wear to my daughter’s wedding – in 2008.
- Ask yourself if you love each item so much that you’d give a stranger cash from your wallet. Because that’s what you’re doing if you hire a mover, or even rent a moving van.
- Ask yourself if you’d pay to store each item. Because it could happen, if the closets in your new digs aren’t big enough.
- Institute a “one in/one out” rule. Every time you bring a new item home, get rid of something else. This keeps possessions from piling higher and higher. (A friend’s mom has a “one in/two out” rule, and lives a happily uncluttered – but by no means minimalist – life.)
- Consider a scanner and a camera. Scan documents like your kid’s drawings and schoolwork. Take pictures of items that you put in the “discard/donate” pile so you can look at them later. You can’t keep everything. (Not that I didn’t try – I’d hung on to 12 years’ worth of my daughter’s report cards and some Christmas ornaments she made out of egg-cartons.)
- Give yourself permission to shred. My MSN Money colleague Liz Weston wrote a very useful article called “How to purge your financial clutter.” Read it and heed it. I still had bank paperwork from the early 1980s, for heaven’s sake. Fun fact: I used to pay $45 a week for child care. Those were the days.
Readers: Got any de-cluttering tips to share?
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