The coming of spring has become synonymous with the opportunity to start anew, to let the sun peaking out of the clouds and the sight of growing flowers trigger you into freshening up your own life. Spring cleaning takes front stage in this renewal, literally scrubbing away the dirt and sadness of winter to start a happy and refreshed rest of your year. And yes, although cleaning is a very good physical manifestation of new intentions, I think true refreshment comes from more than mere mopping and dusting. Instead, I’m choosing to use my spring cleaning to declutter my life through minimalism. Although I’m not getting rid of 95% of my possessions and moving into a tiny room to live out the rest of my days, tiny steps in a minimalist direction can have big effects; 85% of studies have found a qualitative link between positive well-being and ‘voluntary simplicity’, meaning simply that when people decrease their consumption, they notice positive impacts to their overall happiness. The saying that money can’t buy happiness is popular for a reason, and I’m personally ready to start exploring how I can declutter my life in both a physical and mental sense, in order to live relatively minimally and reclaim some happiness.
Physically decluttering feels like its both an easy and good place to start. I wear the same rotation of outfits every week, yet my closet is packed to the brim with clothes to the extent that I’ve started to stuff clothing under my bed in random boxes and bags. I don’t even consider myself to be a massive shopper so I’m sure I’m not alone in this. But the fact that I’ve hidden half my closest away in unreachable spaces and have not felt the need once in the two years of living in my flat to go searching for an article of clothing I’ve hidden just goes to show how much I don’t need any of it anyway. The only reason that it all exists is just to take up space, as I’ve convinced myself I should keep it all on the off chance I need to wear something super specific. So basically, these clothes need to go. And it’s actually really simple to make them go, it just takes the proactivity and conviction to do it.
I’ve started by going through every article of clothing I own (and I mean every article of clothing) and truly thinking about when the last time I wore it was, how often I wear it, and whether or not I actually like it. It’s amazing how many clothes you discover you don’t actually need when you do this. And then it’s super simple to actually get rid of them; I’ve taken the route of setting up a Depop account for the more expensive things I’m letting go of and letting everything else have some impact by donating them to the charity shop. And I do get it, some things are hard to get rid of, either because of sentimental value, you have things you’ve received as gifts, or just some things feel too good to let go of even if you don’t use them. To tackle these items, rather than immediately getting rid of them, I’ve placed them once again in their unreachable space under my bed. If I still don’t return to them in a month’s time, I know they’ve got to go. It’s a long process and honestly can feel embarrassingly difficult, but once you realize that these things actually have zero impact on your happiness, you can make literal physical room for better things. Nothing beats having a refreshed, tidied space, and not being attacked by clothes that are coming out of the woodwork. It’s a good initial step into decluttering your space and thus your mind.
Although not necessarily physical, another space I spend a lot of time in other than my room is definitely my phone and social media, so this too can be decluttered. I think a lot of people can agree that endlessly scrolling on apps, whether that be Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok, takes up more time in our day than we would actually like. I’ll sit down for a second to look at my phone, and suddenly that quick second turns into 10 minutes during whichI had no idea what I was looking at or doing. Your phone just sucks you in, but most times, I’m not exactly sure what value I’ve gained from the experience. I personally feel that spaces like my Instagram are so cluttered with random people I’ve met once, celebrities, and content creators that I don’t particularly like or want to see anything from. So most of my time actually spent on my phone is spent scrolling for endless periods, taking in content I don’t care about and isn’t adding any value to my life, or honestly at its simplest level, making me happy even in that moment. Realistically, habits like scrolling on social media or taking time to spend on your phone are hard to unlearn quickly, so it feels like another space in which decluttering can happen to improve well-being, rather than letting it be a place for mindless intake of random content. I’ve started thinking quite critically about my feed; if someone comes up that I’ve never met and only have mutuals with, or if I come across a photo from someone I realize I don’t particularly know or care about (as harsh as that sounds), I’ve realized it probably isn’t worth having their photos on my social media feed. I don’t mean to say this in a rude way, but our phones are already full of information, so in order to get the best out of it, I want to narrow down the type of content I’m taking time out of my day to engage with. This technological decluttering isn’t exclusive to social media, but tasks such as unsubscribing to marketing emails are also another way I’ve been reducing and controlling what I’m engaging with. Even now that I’ve only just started doing these things, I feel like my phone is already less of an information overload than it was before.
To really make this spring cleaning declutter impactful, I’ve also been thinking about mindset changes I can implement to move towards a more minimalistic life in general past this transition into spring. In Fumios Sasaki’s book ‘Goodbye, Things: On Minimalist Living’, he defines minimalism as ‘doing away with excess so we can focus on the things that are truly important to us’. I feel as though that’s a perfect quote to sum up my efforts, that decluttering allows you to focus on the things you truly want to focus on without distractions or interruptions. I’ve started now thinking about my purchasing habits and how those reflect my priorities and what I see as important. Rather than purchasing something on the spot as an opportunity-buy, I’ve been trying to really think about if I need that certain thing and if it will make a difference to my life that nothing else can (whether that’s fulfilling a practical need or if I really like it enough to buy it). That way, I know that every purchase I’m making is genuinely important to me, and I can value everything that much more rather than get to a point where I have clothes stuffed everywhere in every corner of my room. I’m not kidding anyone by pretending to be a minimalist, but the value in decluttering your life in just these little ways is genuinely worthwhile. I recommend everyone try a little decluttering themselves this spring, and hopefully the positive well-being that comes along with it can be experienced by all.