Useful, beautiful, inherited, hopeful

Decluttering is easier when you let emotional items stay

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that when you are decluttering, it is fine
on the first pass to keep items that you find useful, beautiful, inherited,

(00:29):
or hopeful. Allowing for all of these categories may keep
you from getting derailed. Today's tip, like another this week,
comes from Emily Grovenor's book Find Yourself at Home, a
conscious approach to shaping your space and your life. Grovenor

(00:49):
says decluttering is all about making room for change and
new energies, while also simplifying and making life less stressful.
She proposes you beautiful, inherited, and hopeful as the categories
of objects you might want to keep. You can let
go of objects that don't fit in any of these categories.

(01:15):
Useful and beautiful are familiar screens. You are not going
to get rid of a blender if you use it
every morning to make your smoothie, and you won't give
away a painting hanging in your living room that you
find aesthetically pleasing. Unless your space is tight, items that
are useful or beautiful have a reason to be there.

(01:36):
I am reminded of the frequently quoted guidance of William Morris,
a designer from the Arts and Crafts movement. Have nothing
in your houses that you do not know to be
useful or believed to be beautiful. If you know something
is usefuler believe it's beautiful, then keep it. The additional categories, however,
are less talked about, but I think that if you

(01:57):
want to make progress decluttering, they are quite helpful For starters.
It just seems practical to let inherited be a category
of item you'll be slower to get rid of. You
are a lot less likely to get rid of something
with memories that are attached to it. It seems worth
acknowledging that to speed up the decluttering process. Now, maybe

(02:21):
if you live in a tiny apartment and you just
inherited a whole houseful of furniture, you'll need to rethink this.
But lots of people stop decluttering because they get to
Grandma's china. Everything gets emotional, and then their energy for
cleaning things just dissipates. What's left is piles of stuff,

(02:43):
including things that really could go, but they happen to
surface after the china, and so there they sit as
for hopeful. This isn't just about being over prepared. Plenty
of people keep you can openers even though they just
use the first one maybe once a week. If you

(03:05):
don't own any king sized beds, there isn't a whole
lot of use for king sized bedding. It's unlikely to
come up in a situation where you can't just figure
something else out. But hopeful is different. This is about
visions you have of your life that you hope will
come true, even if that is not your life right now.

(03:28):
Maybe you bought knitting needles and beautiful yarn the last
time you got together with a friend who is an
enthusiastic knitter, even if you are not knitting now but
would like to learn how keeping the knitting supplies could
be an act of hope. It might spark an effort
to find online videos or a local class where you

(03:51):
can learn a hobby that gives your friend so much joy.
Or you might call your friend whenever you see those
knitting needles and frankly, I think that would be a
win too. Or maybe you have a set of toy
blocks that you played with as a kid and you
would love to have your own kids play with Even

(04:13):
if you don't have kids now but want to in
the future, it can be okay to keep the blocks.
Hope matters, just like being useful or beautiful. The upside
of expanding the keep category to include the inherited and
the hopeful is that it removes a lot of the

(04:35):
emotional pressure from decluttering. Most people are fine with getting
rid of trash or broken things, or even everyday stuff
that doesn't get worn. It's the stuff with the memories
or the stuff that's a story you are trying to
tell about your life that is complicated, So take that

(04:56):
out of the equation for now. Maybe eventually you will
just that Grandma's china needs another home, but keeping it
for now means you can get rid of all the
other knickknacks you don't like in your dining room. And
if that is the case, then keeping it serves a
very useful, beautiful purpose. In the meantime, This is Laura,

(05:23):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

(05:50):
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