Four Reasons Why Reducing Possessions is More Important Than Organizing Them

Note: This article is from blogger Joshua Becker, who explains that organizing things becomes easier if we reduce our possessions.

The solution to this growing abundance of personal belongings is often to find better organizational tools, skills, or ideas. We believe that:

1. If we had a proper place to put these things, we wouldn't feel like they were messing us up.
2. If we know the correct way to store things, it will be easier to use lockers to put things in.
3. If my kids or my wife were better at tidying up the house, we wouldn't feel like the house was messy all the time.
4. If I had a bigger house, I wouldn't feel the mess in it.

In each of these endless instances, we mistakenly believe that if we could organize our things better, the problem of clutter and stress would disappear.

This thinking is a result of the culture we live in. Keep in mind that we are constantly seeing ads and marketing messages to buy more things, and almost every ad promises us a better, happier, or more comfortable life if we buy the product they are promoting.

We buy things because we think they will improve our lives rather than harm them, and realizing that the things we have bought do not contribute to a better life requires an almost complete transformation from what we were told previously, and worse than that, it requires us to admit that we are wrong.

Of course, it is easier for us to believe that we were on the right track when we bought those things, and the only problem is that we need a better way to store them. So we stubbornly cling to the belief that all these things will make our lives better if we keep and organize them in some way.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with organizing our things, and I definitely recommend this, but there are some important facts that we must accept:

1. Better organization may not be the last solution to chaos, and it may not even be the first.
2. It becomes easier to organize your things when you reduce your belongings, or it can be said that organizing is always easier after reducing.

In fact, often, after we have a few things, we can organize things with absolute ease.

Understanding regulation

Blogger Courtney Carver has increased my understanding of organization more than anyone else, and she does so with two precise sentences:

1. Don't you think if organization was the answer, you wouldn't be so messy right now?

Organizing is always only a temporary solution, and you can organize all your things today but you will have to organize them again tomorrow, no matter how well organized you are. This is one of the reasons why organizing tips and tools never go out of style, and as long as possessions are still in our homes, we need a place to store them again and again.

2. If you had to buy things to organize your things, you would have a lot of stuff.

We live in a way that our ancestors did not. Since never in human history have humans owned so many things as we do today, we have so much that there are entire factories and stores thriving on the assumption that we would rather buy more things that help us store our things than throw them away.

Haven't you thought about how the aisles of supermarkets are littered with plastic cases to store the unnecessary things you bought in the same store? It's like we're paying them for the privilege of keeping more of the things we buy from them in our homes.

Getting rid of possessions is more important than organizing them

If you have a lot of things, keeping less will help more than organizing, and not just for the reasons Kourtney mentioned above; There are other reasons as well:

1. Downsizing is a one-time action

When you get rid of something in the house, it expands the space in the place where it was located, and this procedure never needs to be repeated.

When you get rid of some of your belongings, whether it be by selling them, donating them, recycling them, or throwing them away, you save space in your home and get rid of the worry about organizing them too.

2. Organizing our stuff benefits no one else but us

Organizing our things and moving them from room to room and shelf to shelf provides no opportunity to help other people. The truth is that our surpluses can be a boon to one person, and the unnecessary things in our homes are things someone else desperately needs, and that person may be in your community, whether they are a divorced mom, a dad who got laid off, or someone who just graduated from college. He is still unemployed, a refugee family, or a homeless man trying to make a fresh start.

If we move things from one shelf to another and organize them again and again inside our homes, we lose the opportunity to help others. On the other hand, giving away and donating things gives us the opportunity to benefit people who need them.

Most of us want to help people; we want to solve problems we see; we want to be generous with our resources; and many times we just can't seem to find the extra money or time to do so. We have run out of money, time, and even energy to buy useless things.

Search your house and remove the clutter that fills it. As all the things that exist are an opportunity to provide assistance to other people, this will not happen until you give up the idea that keeping things will improve your life and that organization is the answer.

3. Getting rid of unnecessary items from our home starts with changing us from within

Reducing our things gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves that regulation cannot give us.

For me, this happened when I started taking the things I got rid of to the local thrift center in our city. I took one truckload of things to the donation center, and I felt good about myself. Then I took a second truckload of things over there, still feeling good about expanding the space in my house, and then I took another truckload and began to ask myself some very difficult questions about my life and my habits. Specifically, why do I have so many truckloads of things I don't need lying around my house?

I will confess to you that I did not like what I found when I began to ask myself this question. I began to realize some unhealthy impulses in me, such as jealousy and envy, the desire to impress others, a mentality based on fear, and simply living without a goal.

It was difficult to discover these facts about myself and I am still learning more, but it was useful to know these things at that moment if I had only relied on organization. It was not alone in revealing these things to me; just putting things in a box and organizing them doesn't lead to profound questions and transforming lives as reducing holdings.

4. Just reorganizing your stuff may free up some physical space for a while

Or making your home comfortable for the time being, but won't lead to major changes in your life.

In conclusion

If you are suffering from clutter in your home and life, the first step I recommend is to get rid of some belongings, and when you do that, you will have an empty space forever, help others, and give yourself an opportunity for amazing self-reflection as well as life change.

Your view of your home and your belongings will change. Organizing will become easier for you because there will be fewer items that need to be stored.