Why is it so hard to declutter our stuff?

And how can we make it easier?

Dear reader,

I recently read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. As a result, I’ve incorporated 2 daily habits:

1. Reading 10 pages of a non-fiction book each morning, followed by;

2. At least five minutes of journaling.

I’ve always thought that journaling would be a good practice for me as I have a very overactive imagination and I constantly overanalyze every situation.

I’d like to share yesterday’s entry with you…

October 20, 2023 

One month ago I made my last clothing purchase. Have I missed shopping? Not even a little. I've been filling the time that I could've spent shopping, either locally or online, with reading writing and decluttering.

I have a very hard time letting go of clothes. I think I tie my identity to my wardrobe a lot. I'm very proud of my ability to find a unique vintage piece and I tend to not want to let them go because I'm afraid of the value that I lose. Letting them go means that I don't have a “collection”. Letting them go means I won't be able to re-create that really great outfit that I wore one time, a long time ago.

But I am conflicted because I also don't want to keep them. I have a vision of my ideal life and a lot of clothes doesn't fit into that vision - a small collection of clothes that I wear over and over fits into that vision.

I took a big step toward this vision yesterday. For a few hours in the afternoon, I sat on my bedroom floor, surrounded by bags of clothes that I had decluttered over a month ago, as well as some clothes that my daughter was discarding. For a few hours, I carefully went through each item and decided if it would be donated, go to local consignment, be given to friends, go to my mom or into a maybe box.

Now in all transparency, the clothes are still in my possession, but they are out of the house and in the trunk of my car. I am thinking that this is progress.

Reading this back, I find it interesting (and a tad embarrassing) that it’s taking me so long to declutter these clothes. I’ve been doing my no buy year for a week now - taking the focus away from what I can add to my wardrobe and instead focusing on what I can take away, or keep and get the most use out of, is helping me identify my limitations when it comes to the clothes I own and my shopping behavior.

I’ve identified a few barriers to decluttering: my fantasy self, environmental guilt, a loss of value and the ties to my identity.

My fantasy self.

In the winter of 2021, I bought a pink, blue, black and purple plaid mohair blazer. I found it at a local consignment shop in the vintage section. It’s in mint condition and fits me perfectly. I think it’s so beautiful! It would be such a gorgeous piece to wear to an office or to a business dinner.

Except…I don’t work in an office or go to business dinners. My days are spent at home, typically sitting at the kitchen table or on the sofa (my current perch), writing. Or I’m cleaning, walking the dogs or running errands. For the most part, blazers aren’t realistic.

I do have a black silk one for fancier events and an oversized grey wool one that feels more like a casual jacket. Having more blazers than this is excessive for me in this current phase of life.

So why have I been holding on to this mohair blazer that I bought 2 years ago and have worn less than a handful of times? There’s a small (very small) part of me that wishes I had an office job and got to go to business dinners. And I keep thinking about how good it felt to get compliments on it when I wore it in the past.

But it really doesn’t make sense for me to hold on to an item based on what future me might do or based on somebody else’s thoughts about it.

The item doesn’t serve me now, and actually clutters my vision for the future that I imagine.

I would serve myself, and the blazer, better by letting it go so somebody else can enjoy (and wear) it.

The guilt of discarding.

Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash

We are producing, and subsequently, discarding items at an unprecedented rate.

According to the EPA, in 2018, 5.83% of the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), or 17 million tons, was due to textile waste. Of the 17 million tons, 2.5 million tons were recycled, 3.2 million tons were combusted with energy recovery and 11.3 million tons were landfilled.

This was up 14 million tons more than in 2017!

As this data is 5 years old, and with the rise of fast fashion mass production companies over the past few years, I imagine we are well above this value now!

I try to assuage my guilt by reminding myself that the items that I discard are in great shape and I believe that they’ll sell (see the next point to see why I might be wrong in my thinking). But, if they don’t sell, what will happen to them? Will they be sent oversees to end up in someone else’s landfill. Will they end up in the local landfill?

How does my continual purchasing and discarding behavior negatively affect the environment?

The best way forward is to reduce the amount of things that I buy, which in turn reduces the amount of things that I discard.

The endowment effect.

The endowment effect is when a person places more value on an item simply because they own it. This is seen mostly when a person goes to sell the item and sets it at a price that they “feel” it’s worth, not what is reasonable for the item (market value).

I definitely struggle with this. Even if I didn’t pay a lot for the item, I can’t help but think of the value I’m losing if I simply donate or give it away. It’s especially bad with vintage items because I feel like they are so unique and special.

I’ve held on to a lot of these clothes with the idea of selling them, to at least recoup the cost. But honestly, I really hate selling clothes online. So they just sit in bags until I finally decide to list them, but that time never comes.

All I end up with is a bunch of mental clutter thinking about these items that I need to list but dreading the actual act of doing it.

To release the physical and mental clutter, I need to let go of the personal value that I put on these items and realize the potential value that they can add for others.

My self-limiting beliefs.

I wish we both had a dollar for every time I’ve said “I have such a hard time decluttering clothes”. I think we could at least go to dinner at a fancy restaurant!

I’ve made this statement so much that I think I’ve made it a part of my identity! I keep finding excuses for why I can’t let go of these clothes, when really, the act of doing so is so easy…remove the things I don’t wear and give them away, sell or donate them.

I think if I start looking at the process more analytically, and less emotionally, I might be able to overcome this self-limiting belief.

In looking for reasons why it’s so hard to declutter clothing, I came across this reddit thread and one of the comments really stood out to me:

I’ve never thought of the things I don’t wear as sentimental items but I think it could be useful in letting go of them.

I remember reading about a technique in my early minimalism days for dealing with sentimental items: take a picture and then let them go. You can refer back to the picture to evoke the memory without possessing the actual item.

What is something that you struggle to let go of?