Ask Dumb Questions, Get Life Changing Results
I’ve mentioned before that the bulk of the work I do as a professional organizer is helping people declutter. It’s easily 50-70% of the time we spend on most organizing projects.
Decluttering can be really challenging, especially at first, and clients often look to me for advice on what they should keep and what they should get rid of.
I never, and I do mean never, make decluttering decisions for my clients! I’ve trained my team to ask about everything, even if it looks like it might be plain old trash, because you just never know what scrap of paper has some really important information on it.
That said, I do have a strategy that I use with clients to help them declutter: I ask really simple questions. Questions so simple that sometimes the clients give me a funny look as if they’re considering the possibility that I might be very dumb indeed.
These are my five dumb questions that get life changing decluttering results:
What is this for?
I told you these were dumb questions! But you would be amazed by the number of times I pick something up to show my client and they have no idea what it is, where it came from, or what it’s for. If you can’t answer this very simple question, you don’t need to keep that item. You’re literally never going to look for it!
Just in case of what?
So many people keep a lot of things just in case. So I like to get specific. What is the situation you’re thinking of in which you’re going to need this thing? If you can’t think of one, guess what, you don’t need to keep that item.
How likely is that scenario?
A lot of people have an idea about a just in case scenario… but what they’re missing is the tradeoff between the likelihood that it will actually happen and the costs of keeping the thing they think they’ll need for it. If the scenario is extremely unlikely, and the item is bulky, heavy, or requires maintenance, you’ll really want to think twice about keeping it.
What’s your Plan B?
When most people have a problem, the first solution they look for is to buy something. That’s how we we end up with so much stuff! But what if your first solution wasn’t to order something up or pull out that one screw you’ve been saving for 20 years in anticipation of this moment, but to think creatively about how you might solve that problem with the stuff you already have on hand? If there’s an acceptable Plan B, you don’t need to keep the item in question.
If this disappeared, would you replace it?
Most of us are lucky enough that we have never needed to walk away from all of our posessions and start from scratch. But considering this possibility can be extremely illuminating. If you wouldn’t spend money to replace an item, do you really even want it at all, or are you just used to having it around?
There is one question I don’t ask as often as you might think, and that is: when did you last use this? The reason is that timelines are very different from object to object. if you wear a t-shirt every day and the last time you wore a particular t-shirt was five years ago, I think that’s a good indicator that you don’t need to keep it. But if you have one black tie outfit that you’ve busted out three times in your life, but you love the way it looks and you’d wear it again if you have the chance, I’ll absolutely tell you to keep it! Context really matters when we’re thinking about frequency of use.
Try asking yourself these questions as you declutter, and let me know how it goes!
LMW
