how i learned to stop worrying and love decluttering

I've moved across the eastern half of the country a couple of times now. When I was 18, I left North Carolina for Texas to attend college. Six years later, I moved from Louisiana to DC for graduate school. When I finished with my Master's in 2010, I trekked back to Texas for work, and then back east a few months later when my contract was up and I was yet again job hunting. Each time I've crossed multiple state lines in the pursuit of a life, I've learned to leave behind items when I go.

If you ask my boyfriend how I feel about items (italics necessary for the purpose of expressing disdain), he'll quickly tell you I detest them. On Friday at work, we cleaned out our conference room's closets, and I had to be forcibly stopped from discarding things that others found useful. However, as recently as my last apartment would've found me in possession of a lot of extra stuff - learning to reject clutter was a process sped along by necessity.

I spent the early autumn of 2010 driving from Louisiana to DC, DC to New Jersey, and back and forth between the last two until I found stable and gainful employment. I'd recently taken ownership of my grandmother's old Crown Vic and therefore the largest trunk in existence, and packed it as full as I could. However, because my daily location depended on where I might have a job interview, and because I was staying with friends in a number of neighborhoods along the "how likely my car will be robbed" spectrum, I wasn't terribly comfortable leaving my belongings sitting in the backseat of my car. This meant that everything I owned needed to fit in the trunk. However large it may be, it still left space a premium.

Leaving my books at my mother's house for the duration and my furniture in storage in a friend's basement (and grateful for the storage space in both locations), I filled that car's trunk with kitchen supplies, boxes of files, the binders cataloging my graduate work, musical instruments, and clothes. And when I finally came into a great job and turned my attention to the housing search, I realized my apartment wouldn't be much larger than my car's trunk. So a temporary necessity turned into a lifestyle, and I embraced decluttering. My apartment currently exists at approximately 99.7% capacity.

Knowing decluttering isn't my default mentality, I've developed a number of guidelines that I follow when maintaining my item ownership. I follow these guidelines - and this is very important - all the time. Seriously. One hundred percent. When the only storage space you own is the small studio apartment where you sleep, sentimentality takes on a different form. Here's how I keep my possessions simple:

1. I only keep things I use. If a thing isn't serving a specific purpose, out it goes. File cabinet? Unnecessary, when I could buy a file box and store it up high on a shelf, considering I don't access my files very frequently. One might note upon entering my apartment that two of my walls are covered by bookshelves filled with books. Naturally, I don't read every book every day (or even every year). But I do reference them with enough frequency that it's important to my every day function that they're accessible.
2. When possible, I buy multi-duty items. Said bookshelves also have a number of catch-all baskets where I throw items that I need (scotch tape, wrist brace, laundry detergent) but that don't have a specific place to live. My bathroom shelves have a towel rack beneath. My rice cooker steams veggies and my hand mixer also blends. It's also very useful to buy multi-purpose cleaning supplies, as spray bottles and tubs tend to take up precious storage space.
3. When I buy a new item, I make sure to get rid of any old versions of it that I already have. New pair of running shoes? The old ones go to Goodwill. New [wall-hanging] spice rack? The old [counter] version goes on the "free stuff" pile in our building's basement. Chances are, by age 28 you're not buying a lot of new home items - you're replacing lower-quality ones that you already have. If you have two items that serve the same purpose, what you really have is one item that serves that purpose and another that serves no purpose. As such, pls. refer to #1.
4. I ascertain the value of the item - monetary and sentimental. This, of course, is the part that tends to keep people from successfully decluttering their lives. Sentimental attachment is a heavy, heavy thing, and so often we assign items such an unattainable value that we are buried under the guilt of even thinking of getting rid of them. This is dangerous. It is okay to have a few things of solely sentimental value (for instance, I will never be okay getting rid of the little gold elephant pin my dad gave me), but when you hold on to everything that reminds you of a happy moment in your life - not only will you eventually drown in stuff, but you run the risk of dwelling within it. Memories, it turns out, are incredibly vivid. Allow those to be the things to which you hold on, and let the physical stuff go. Sometimes this applies to things of great monetary value as well, but there tends to be a more practical reason to hold onto those items.
5. I am mindful of the way a cluttered home presents to other people. When you are invited into someone's home, you are invited to understand them in a very intimate way. Tchotchkes and clutter in every direction implies, whether or not it's intended, that the owner allows circumstances to be in charge of her, rather than the other way around. A clean and clutter-free home demonstrates a person who is not only in control of her dwelling, but also of her life. This is the person I want people to see when they visit my home.

In learning to declutter, I've also learned an incredibly important lesson: once you've done it the first time, the second time gets much, much easier. It's immensely frightening to get rid of items that you've held onto for ages - but when you do, and you realize that life continues and you're completely okay without the items that so cluttered your view (and, by extension, your life), you find yourself suddenly eager for the next decluttering session.