Do you need a new loom
Or some fresh blooms;
But, you have nowhere to put them?
You don’t have to fume
And feel so much gloom
I’m here-all you have to do is say “when”.
I’ll help you to groom
Everything in your room
So you can love it again!
(Click here to watch on YouTube if you can’t see the embedded player. Or watch the video at http://bit.ly/tcdroom.)
Transcript:
Hi. I’m Lorie Marrero, creator of the Clutter Diet book and on-line program, and today I want to tell you how to make room in your house for more stuff. Here’s the secret: You have to get rid of the things that you’re not using. So, how do you make that decision? Well, I have a whole video that has 20 questions you can ask when you’re trying to make this decision, but there are really two questions that stand out: “Do you use it?” and “Do you love it?” Ideally, you want to answer “yes” to both of those questions. There are things in your house that you use and don’t love, like your extension cord in your garage. Yes, you need it, it’s utilitarian, but it doesn’t give you a big thrill or anything. And there are things in your house that you love and don’t use, like your sentimental items, your mementos, but ideally you want to say “yes” to both of those.
The other day, I was using my dishtowels, and I was saying, “You know I’m using these, yes, but I don’t love them. They have holes in them. They’re very stained, and they’ve served me well, but it’s time for them to go.” So, you know, there’s always going to be an inflow of things in your house where you’re going to get mail everyday. Your kids are going to bring things home. You’re going to bring in things from work or from the grocery store. But there also needs to be an outflow, and these dishcloths need to go out. If you don’t have an outflow in your house, you have stagnation. And nobody wants stagnation. That word has the connotation of, you know, rotten pools of water with mosquitoes growing in them. That’s not what you want in your life. You don’t want your home to feel stagnant. So there needs to be a continual flow in and out. So, when you donate something like this holey dish towel to Goodwill, you make room for what I have now, which are the new dish towels that I both use and love. They’re not stained, they’re not holey, and they make me happy every time when I’m doing the dishes in my kitchen.
So you know a question I get a lot, because of my relationship with Goodwill, is, you know, “What if this dishtowel has a hole in it, do I still donate this to Goodwill? Do they want things with holes in it?” Well, it does depend on your particular local Goodwill agency. So, you do want to ask them, but I can tell you from touring many, many Goodwills across the country, most Goodwills are going to say, “Please give it to us, and let us make that decision,” because they often will do textile recycling. So, that’s going to keep this out of the landfill, they get to make money from the vendors that purchase the textile recycling, and that money goes toward the mission of helping people find work and providing job-related services and opportunities. And so they may, you know, sell it immediately to the recyclers, or they may actually try to sell this in their store or through their outlets, and if it doesn’t sell, then they recycle it. So either way, let them make this decision, but don’t put it in the landfill. You know, Goodwill, in 2013, they diverted over three billion pounds of items from our nations’ landfills. So that’s very significant, and that’s something that we should pay attention to and always remember when we’re thinking about the outflow of things from our home.
So, if you need help making these decisions, or thinking about how to store all these new items that you’re going to be bringing in because you’ve made room for them, you can ask for help from our team in our Member Message Boards. We’ve been helping people since 2006. You can come in, check us out, look us up at clutterdiet.com.
We’ll see you next time, and may you always be happy and grateful for having more than enough.
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