As of late, we’ve discovered that perhaps we are a bit of a hoarder. Not the “own 200 rats” kind of hoarder, but perhaps we hold on to things a bit longer than we really should. While we know logically that the memories from our trip to Thailand live inside of our heart, and in the many pictures we have on the internet, getting rid of that one tank top we bought that never quite fit right, and never will fit right has been hard to do.

However, it finally came to the point where we realized that all of the things cluttering our space were also causing anxiety in our mind. It was time to just do it, and start the spring cleaning process.

So we rolled up our sleeves and got started.

Luckily for us, we have a boyfriend who enjoys organizing, and going through things, so he gave us some tips on how to begin to tackle what seemed like an impossible task.

First thing’s first: create categories. The three we used were from the “Getting Things Done” book by David Allen.

They were broken down like this:

Things that you currently use

Things that you will need in the future

Trash

Pretty simple. Now, you have to be careful not to put everything you kind of want to keep in the “future” pile. These should be limited to things you will DEFINITELY use in the future, not that one dress you may wear again, sometime, at some point, to a cousin’s wedding in 2020.

Some people also use the categories: Trash, Keep, Donate.

Once we divided everything up, we did another sweep through the “future” pile to make sure we weren’t just holding on to some extras, and started throwing things away.

We ended up with around 4 bags of trash, three bags to donate, and organized the things we were keeping as well. We even made a pile for our clothing swap party we are hosting later this month!

It felt good to get rid of old things, making room for the new.

So if you haven’t done any spring cleaning, just do it. There is no better time than now.

-Sasha Huff