When you sign up to my weekly newsletter, you get my free Time Management Purpose Pack and an email that asks you if you have any questions for me.

Mostly I just refer people to specific posts on the blog (as I seem to have covered most of them) but I liked this question I got recently so I thought I’d answer it here.

Kimberley said

I seem to not be able to get rid of things! I often feel emotionally attached to objects/ stuff may need them again!

I love questions that talk to the mindset about organising. I think I spent about half the workshop talking mindset because it is that important.

Remember my definition of clutter is things you don’t love or use (and I think I saw this on Laura’s blog, “that you don’t have the storage for”).

So if you know you should get rid of things and you feel emotionally attached, start asking yourself why you feel that way.

Sit with the question for a couple of days if you must because this is very important and you’re going to breeze through the rest of the organising process if you spend time upfront thinking about these things.

I also want to add that if you feel like rushing through thinking about this, that might be all the more reason for you to really think about your motives…

1. Maybe you have some hoarding tendencies because you didn’t have much money at some point in your life?

Ask yourself if you really, honestly couldn’t get x again if you needed it.

2. Maybe you’re hanging onto things because they’re from special people in your life?

Remind yourself that the thing does not define the special person. They don’t love you more because you hung onto the ugly vase

3. Maybe you’re hanging onto things because they remind you of special times?

I wrote about sentimental organising here. So… take a pic and let the item go.

Two questions for my readers:

Do you have hoarding tendencies?
How do you make it easier to let go?

This is a picture of my memory box.

It’s slightly bigger than A4 (printer paper size). I have an A4 folder in there with my goals from every year since 1998 (nerdy, I know, but that’s me!), which is when I started setting goals properly.

I have some birthday, Christmas, and anniversary cards, notes from people, etc. in there. Of course I don’t keep everything and when the box starts getting too full, I go through it and see what I can let go of.

This works for me because I’m restricting my memories to a container and creating a physical boundary.

How do you store your memories?

On Friday in the Declutter Challenge, I wrote about sentimentality, which is why a lot of us hang onto stuff.

Kristin wrote a beautiful comment on that post so I went over to read her story.

It’s beautiful, beautiful and I ask that you go and read the story of her wedding dress here.