Questioning Clutter

Clutter can be a dirty word, cloaked in shame and secrecy.  More importantly, it can sap your energy and you can become paralyzed in your efforts to gain control over your stuff.  Urgent circumstances and major home renovations sent most of our belongings into storage over a year ago. Now that an end to many big life changes is in sight, I've been making daily trips to storage to retrieve things that we've lived without for quite some time.  The process is at times exciting and at times overwhelming.

There are moments when I am tempted to take the guideline "if you haven't used it for a year..." literally and just toss everything out to start fresh, but it's not that simple.  While there are several things that I pick up and ask myself, "What were you thinking saving this?" there are also many things I unwrap and feel like I've discovered treasure--things that will again make my house a home.  How do I sort out what is worth keeping and what to send on to a new life?

I love the feel and smell of books and I have a lot of them.  I got a Kindle for Christmas, so I'm  beginning to lessen my impact on the environment and my home.  But lots of the books I've decided to keep, move after move through the years, are those I still return to or have not been ready to read yet.  I have a lot of materials for creative projects--many of them things I long to do when our new life arrangement really settles down.  I keep special cards and letters I have received and enjoy going through them every several years.  What is too much? 

I pull two books out of one of the boxes: Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James and a book on getting rid of clutter.  Is it irony that they are buried in my clutter or is it a sign that, of all my stuff, they've surfaced in a noticeable way?  I don't have time to read a book, so I instead return to a guideline that I've heard or read along the way but for which I cannot remember the source.  This makes sense to me and reminds me to give value to my time and space.  Ask yourself, "Has this object earned the right to take up my valuable space?"  Interestingly, you could use the same idea with people clutter, thought clutter, commitment clutter, etc., and replace space with time where appropriate.

How do you manage clutter in your life?  What rules or guidelines have worked for you?