My story: how I stumbled upon the magic of living with less

didn’t grow up surrounded by clutter, quite the opposite in fact! But somehow, chaos sneaked up on me in my early thirties, right when I’d finally achieved what I’d always dreamed of: a home of my own. I’d imagined a cosy sanctuary, the kind of place where friends and family would gather. But instead, my new space quickly filled up with far more than I’d bargained for…

It was acceptable in the 80’s!

As a child of the eighties, I remember one of my favourite activities was leafing through the children’s section of the Argos catalogue (who can relate!?) with my brother and sister, coveting all the wonderful toys and games we’d seen in all the commercial breaks on TV. We didn’t have loads of money growing up, not that we were really aware of this to any great extent – other than the friends with their Tiny Tears dolls that cried real tears, Teddy Ruxbin (the talking bear), Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, Glow worms whose faces lit up when cuddled, Care Bears, Popples and countless other eighties favourites. But Mum did an amazing job of getting us what she could afford, even if it wasn’t quite the latest trend. And we loved them dearly. I still have my doll with the magic ‘appearing/disappearing’ make-up and the ‘hug me’ bear with the beating heart, to this day, sat looking over me from the top of my wardrobe.

My sister and I fondly remember, and still reference to this day, embarking on what Mum had coined a ‘Major Major’. This was essentially a big clear out she’d have every so often to declutter a cupboard or room of excess stuff. If Mum was having a ‘Major-Major’ we knew she meant business! This would often be followed up by a car boot sale to sell the decluttered items and make some extra money. I remember squeezing into a car stuffed with items, so that I could help Mum with the sale. I don’t specifically remember decluttering myself although we must have followed suit because I landed into adulthood without too much stuff…

AKA – Easy AF!

I moved out of my family home not long before my 25th birthday. I knew early on that I wanted to get on the property ladder as soon as I could. Despite all the odds – earning less that £10k per year in my first job after uni (yes, you read that right, that was after getting a degree!), and the housing market seeming so unattainable, this became a possibility with my boyfriend at the time.

I was good with money (Mum’s saving prowess had rubbed off on me) and despite being the significantly lower earner, I had my half of the deposit saved and was able to contribute 50/50 to the mortgage and all the bills. I remember the moving day well – mostly because we started at about 9am and were done by 10am! At the family home I’d shared a bedroom with my sister for most of my life, only getting my own small bedroom following a move at the age of 20. So it only took a couple of car journeys to ferry all my stuff over to our furniture-less flat, a couple of miles down the road.

A few years later when the relationship ended and I bought a new house with my brother, the move was only slightly more challenging. I’d accumulated a few more bits here and there, so this time I needed a transit van, mainly due to having a couple of items of furniture this time around. A dining table, chairs, and a TV shelving unit. Nothing crazy!

The sh*t hit the fan!

Moving back home around 5 years later was an entirely different story! My brother had married and moved out, leaving me to live in the house on my own for a couple of years. I’d never lived on my own before, or had any desire to do so, but circumstances meant it just happened. And I loved it! Apart from, that is, the creepiness at night (don’t think I had a decent night’s sleep in 2 years due to the spooky alleyways at both the front and back of the house!) But eventually my brother and sister-in-law had a baby on the way and it was time to sell up and end our financial ties. My plan was to move back ‘home’ for a short period until I could purchase a new place for myself.

The move back home did NOT go so smoothly! I had acquired more furniture of my own; a bed, dressing table, desk, clothing rail… and I knew this would need to go into storage while I secured a new property. I packed what I could, and in an effort to be well prepared, arranged to take most of my stuff to the storage unit a full week before the house sale completed. This left me with a few more bits to sort out before completion day. Super organised of me right?

I was hysterical – one minute I was laughing my head off at the chaos I was surrounded by, and the next moment I was in floods of tears, overwhelmed by the mountains of stuff, and the urgency to get it shifted.

Wrong!! I don’t know what happened…? The night before the house sold my family came to help move the last few bits. Despite gradually packing for around 2 months and getting lots into storage early, I had totally underestimated what was left to sort out. The night before moving out there were still piles and piles of unpacked paraphernalia. I was hysterical – one minute I was laughing my head off at the chaos I was surrounded by, and the next moment I was in floods of tears, overwhelmed by the mountains of stuff, and the urgency to get it shifted. Somehow, with only me to fill the space, my possessions had expanded into a 2 bed, 2 reception room house. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t stuffed to the brim or anything, but it was way more stuff than I needed. We manically filled cars with the piles of miscellaneous stuff. I wasn’t able to access my storage unit in the evenings so an unbelievable 7 carloads of additional ‘stuff’ (having supposedly moved most of it a week prior), was farmed off to my parents garage, sister’s hallway and so on. And that wasn’t the end of it.

I was pretty upset to be leaving this house, more through circumstances than choice, so it was an emotional completion day. My Mum arrived to collect me the next day as the sale completion went through, and planned to cheer me up with a nice lunch out. But no – I still had another car load of stuff to desperately shove into her car, before the new owners arrived. I was in no mood for lunch – I just wanted to get the final car load emptied into their garage and then wallow in self pity about the state of my life!

You’d think this would have triggered the epiphany, but no, no – that was not the case at all! During my years away from the family home, my parents had moved to a new house, so I was not returning to ‘my’ old bedroom, but rather a small guest room. As most of my stuff was in storage, I didn’t have a huge amount with me, or much space. A section of a wardrobe, a couple of small drawers, and whatever I could fit under the bed. This wasn’t a problem as I wouldn’t be there for long… But after 3 purchases falling through, a few months soon turned into a couple of years. The mental chaos of all my stuff on that fateful moving day 2 years earlier had soon diminished – out of sight, out of mind. If anything, I missed all my things that were boxed away in the storage unit. My books, my ornaments, extra clothes, accessories and art supplies… There was no space for any of this at my parents, and I was looking forward to being reunited with everything when I finally secured a new home of my own.

Totally deluded?

Leaving home for the second time was certainly more work than the first time around. By now, I was nearly 35, 10 years on from that first time I’d ‘left home’ with only a car load or 2 of stuff. This time on moving day we hired the biggest transit available, and headed to the storage unit with trepidation. That said, I loaded it up with my Dad relatively quickly, and with help from my siblings at the other end, managed to unload the endless boxes and items of furniture into my new apartment, with relative ease.

By this stage in my ‘moving journey’, I had acquired some furniture, but I was by no means completely covered. At the very least, I needed a wardrobe, a sofa, a TV stand of some description, and storage for stuff like books and ornaments. I’d been manically pinning interior inspo’ on Pinterest for several years, with a whole host of different design styles and ideas taking my fancy. So I was relatively slow and deliberate about my new furniture acquisitions, partially paralysed by the choices I needed to make. Luckily, I found a lovely preloved wardrobe fairly easily, meaning that my bedroom was sorted pretty quickly. The living room however, was a different story. All I had was my dinging table and chairs, and then many, many boxes of miscellaneous items that needed unpacking, but had nowhere to be unpacked to. Gradually over the next 6 months, I chose a sofa, bookcases with cupboard doors on the lower half, and a chest of drawers to sit the TV on. I was at last able to unpack and house some of my treasured possessions that I’d not seen by this point in 2 and a half years.

Periodically I’d move the piles somewhere else, from the living room to the bedroom – down the other side of the bed. Then to the hallway, then back to the living room. There were piles of stuff in the bathroom and a pile of boxes at one end of the kitchen worktop.

But despite the new furnishings, I still had piles of unpacked boxes, bags and random bits of excess furniture like a set of nesting coffee tables, side tables, mirrors, a desk, garden table and chairs, a parasol, and various other items that had no home. They were just piled up in different corners. Periodically I’d move the piles somewhere else, from the living room to the bedroom – down the other side of the bed. Then to the hallway, then back to the living room. There were piles of stuff in the bathroom and a pile of boxes at one end of the kitchen worktop. There just wasn’t enough space to house it all. And it’s not surprising really. I’d gone from a house with several rooms and a garden, to a one-bedroom apartment. But worse than that, the piles kept growing. And growing. And growing!

As I said at the beginning, I am, and was, good with money. I wasn’t spending beyond my means, and I put money into savings every month. But I was still acquiring ‘stuff’. I loved interior design and décor, and kept buying more and more cute things to decorate my home with. The only problem was, I gave no real thought as to where any of it was going to go! Instead, I left things in bags and boxes until I could figure out where to put it all. And in the meantime, just lived amongst the chaos. I tried to sort it out here and there, to little avail. And as a result, I was too embarrassed to have anyone around to visit, and constantly felt stressed about the mess.

The power of the tower!

At some point, a year or so later, I remember a colleague mentioning a book she’d just been given. She’d not read it yet, but for some reason the title caught my attention. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying. It must have stayed somewhere at the back of my mind because at some point I bought the book and started reading it, 14 months after moving into the apartment. As soon as I started reading, the words on the page struck a chord, and I became inspired. I was only a few chapters in before I felt compelled to pull everything out of my wardrobe to create a tower of clothing on my bed. It was a pivotal moment, like a lightbulb went off in my mind and everything suddenly became clear. This sh*t had to go!

And so, my decluttering journey to a life of less, began…