I’ve been a fan of Dana K. White’s decluttering strategies for years. She speaks to my ADD brain in a language it can actually hear and process. One of the main parts of her strategy involves asking yourself 2 decluttering questions as you hold each item you pick up:
- If I needed this item, where is the first place I would look for it?
- Go put it there now
- If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already own it?
- (If not, donate it now)
I’ve recently added a question of my own to this list:
If I didn’t have this item what could I do?
Some things – like keys – are easy to answer. I legitimately need these items and they need to have a place in my home. If I didn’t have them I would need to replace them. Some things are not so obvious -like a scrap of fabric.
I’m a creative person and my creativity runs overtime when I am decluttering. I can look at a scrap of fabric and imagine 47 projects I would definitely need that.exact.piece of fabric to complete. I couldn’t possibly get rid of it. I might even know the answer to Dana’s decluttering question 1: in the drawer of my craft dresser with the 389 other pieces of fabric.
Often when I’ve decluttered in the past, I’ve tried to turn off that creative feature in my brain. I tell it to stop imagining possibilities because I thought that’s what I needed to do in order to work the decluttering process.
Creatives tend to feel a lot of pushback on being creative.
{People with ADD are way more likely to receive negative feedback and more prone to store it longer in their brain and bodies.}
I have been mocked for my creativity.
And I have done a LOT of work to get to the point where I can say:
“I Like my creative brain. I LOVE my creative brain.”
When I approach the decluttering questions with the mindset that I need to shut down my creative brain, my inner ADD bristles and balks and remembers every time someone treated me like crap for being creative and suddenly I am working overtime on creating 47 projects I would definitely need that exact piece of fabric to complete.
Instead,
What if honoring my creativity is exactly what I need to help me declutter? What if I shift the question a bit?
I love repurposing items. I once created a business selling upcycled items.
I’ve made lamps out of flutes, flowers out of playbills, and I can make a planter out of almost anything.
I’ve typically used that creativity to look at an item and say, “What could I use this item for?”
Which leads to me keeping piles of suitcases filled with random “potential.”
Now I’ve started asking, “If I didn’t have this item, what could I do/use?”
For example:
If I was picking up an empty planter I could ask: If I didn’t have this planter, and I needed to plant a new plant, what could I use?
I’m very confident that my amazing creative brain could find something to turn into a planter and I probably don’t need this planter. And if not, I could likely find one in minutes by asking a neighbor or my Buy Nothing group on Facebook. (I also DEFINITELY do not need another plant to put in a planter, but that’s a post for a different day.)
When I clean out my kitchen cabinets, I used to say, “I need this serving tray because this is what I use for…..”
Now I ask, “If I didn’t have this, what would I use?”
Maybe I would pull the wood tray that’s under my coffee pot out for serving that dish, then put it back when I’m done.
Instead of telling my creative brain to sit down and shut up,
I’m inviting it to the process.
Honoring it.
Recognizing how important and amazing it is.
My ADD brain has been told to sit down and be quiet often enough. I’m excited to show I love it more.
Uncovering Real 