Three old receipts, two lipsticks, a coupon that ran out in the spring, and no keys.
That’s what I found in my purse one Sunday morning, standing at the front door in my good shoes. My husband was already out in the car, waiting to drive us to church.
I dug some more. My shoulder started to ache from holding that heavy bag up with one arm. (My back doesn’t like heavy purses.)
Then I looked down. My keys were sitting in the basket by the front door, right where they belong. They had been there the whole time.
I laughed a little. But standing there, I saw something I hadn’t seen before.
My house wasn’t one big mess. It was a lot of little things that got in my way every single day.
So I started to pay attention.
In the weeks after that, I fixed five small things that had bugged me for years. If you’re wondering what things to declutter in your 60s, let me walk you through my day. These little things made the biggest difference.
It Was Never One Big Mess
When I think about clutter, I picture a stuffed closet or a garage full of boxes. That kind of clutter is easy to see.
The little things are harder to spot.
It’s the ten seconds you spend looking for your glasses. It’s the purse that pulls on your shoulder. It’s the key ring you have to flip through three times to find the right key.
None of that seems worth fixing. It’s just a few seconds here and there.
But those seconds happen over and over, every day. And at our age, they don’t just cost time. They cost energy and patience too.
I’ve lived in this house for more than 30 years. After that long, you stop seeing what’s right in front of you.
I wrote about why we stop seeing the clutter in a house we’ve lived in for years. These small things are a big part of it.
This is