“Are we moving?” my husband asked.
He was standing in our dining room with a sandwich, because there was no place left to set it down. It was a few winters ago, and I had been decluttering for about a month.
The dining room table was covered with papers from my desk. There were coats piled on two of the chairs, because I had started on the hall closet. Our mugs were all out on the kitchen counter.
A laundry basket of old bottles sat by the bathroom door. And every night, I moved a stack of towels off our bed so we could go to sleep.
I had started five jobs, and I hadn’t finished one.
I felt worse than I did before I started. Before, the clutter had been behind closed doors. Now it was out where I could see it from every room in the house.
If your home looks like that today, please don’t feel bad. You didn’t fail five times. You started five times, and that part is already done.
So let me show you how to finish decluttering when you’ve got half-done piles all over the house. It’s a lot easier than it looks, and you don’t have to do any of it fast.
Why So Many of Us Stop Halfway
Starting is the fun part. You open a closet and pull things out, and you feel like you’re getting somewhere.
Then