2017 is almost here, and if you’re like most of us, you’re still hanging on to things you swore to get rid of in 2016. I’ve tried decluttering with Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but the konomari method was overwhelming, not to mention embarrassing. After telling my old Guess jean jacket that it had been a good friend, I kept the jacket but abandoned the project.
I’ve also tried A Year to Clear with Daily Om, which has some inspiring feel-good moments but is maybe a little too feel-good. Stephanie Bennett Vogt wants you to go really slowly. She recommends things like lovingly parting with one time a day, journaling, and examining your feelings. It seems like a cross between Est and Scientology, which is fun for five minutes until it starts to creep you out.
So I’ve devised my own plan for the last week of December, which I’m calling the 5x5x5 Declutter Plan.
How the 5x5x5 Declutter Plan Works
Every day for five days (I recommend the last five days of December), get rid of five things in five categories. You can use the same categories every day, or you can switch it up. For me, it will look like this:
- 5 items of clothing
- 5 things from the kitchen
- 5 books
- 5 paper items (Because most of us have houses and home office full of paperwork, a piece of junk mail or an old bill doesn’t count for a complete paper item. You have to get rid of 5 significant paper items–like an entire file of useless recipe clippings, a notebook or binder, a stash of magazines, a large cardboard box, etc.)
- 5 items from The Junk Closet. This closet is the bane of my existence. It’s a long, narrow walk-in closet near the bottom of the stairs that contains a little something of everything, from old lamps and unaccompanied lampshades to boxes of course syllabi, coats, candelabras, boxes of toys, computers, and kitchen equipment. Every few months, we clear a path through the chaos, which quickly becomes clogged again as soon as we have people coming over and have to make things disappear or put away the Christmas ornaments.
Maybe you have a junk drawer instead of a junk closet (stop bragging); that can be one of your categories. Or maybe your clothes closet is in good shape but you have unused hockey sticks and volleyball nets lying around; make sports equipment one of your categories. You can have a category for electronics or toys or furniture.
I encourage you to have one category that includes LARGE things; for me, this is the junk closet. Removing a lamp, an ottoman, a bookshelf, a breadmaker, and a set of golf clubs from the house will have a greater visual (and spacial) impact on the decluttering process than 5 books. Of course, you have to get rid of the books too, but purging books and clothes isn’t enough.
Of course, it’s totally possible that this system already exists under some other name, in which case, kudos to the totally brilliant person who thought it up. But as they say, it’s not who does it first, but who does it second that really counts! (That’s what my husband tells me every time he tells the exact same joke I just told, like, yesterday, but he gets the bigger laugh.)
So, that’s it: 25 items a day for 5 days. At the end of the week, you’ll be 125 items lighter. If the process wasn’t too painful, and if you still have a lot of stuff you don’t need or want, try it again the first week of January. If you’re ambitious, you could make it 5x5x5x5 and do it five weeks in a row, thus disposing of 625 items. Or perhaps once a month for five months.
But don’t worry about that for now. Just commit to 5 items in five categories for five days, and begin 2017 on a lighter note.
Print the free 5x5x5 Decluttering Worksheets and get started!