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The Raccoon Rule

Donna Joy

I was reminded of why I declutter through an unexpected visitor this week.

A very unexpected visitor.

Early one morning, I woke to some commotion in the kitchen. Assuming it was a child, I went to check it out  but instead of a child, I  found our living room window screen pushed in and several items from the counter between the kitchen and living room scattered across the floor.

After catching my breath and calling my husband out, we discovered the cutest little bandit I’ve ever seen had broken in, stolen a scone off the counter, and was now sitting on the deck, happily unwrapping and eating her bounty.

Meet Buttercup:
(Bonus points if you know the reference to the Queen of Refuse, the Queen of Garbage.)

Our Raccoon Bandit

Once we made sure there were no more critters hiding in the house and re-secured the window, I looked at the chaos Buttercup had left behind. I was grateful the mess wasn’t worse. Keeping my house from getting out of control definitely helps make unexpected situations like these easier to deal with!

But there was still a mess to deal with. A tray she knocked to the floor had held our HomePod speaker and a few sentimental keepsakes: a set of ceramic ducks from my grandmother, who passed away last year, and George, a clay monkey my daughter made in school years ago.

Two of the three ducks were shattered. George had lost multiple limbs.

As I stood there with broken pieces in my hands, I paused. 

You may have heard of the “poop rule” when it comes to decluttering:
“Do you like this item enough that you’d clean poop off of it to keep it?”

Well, I now had a new version: The Raccoon Rule.
Would I clean, fix, and keep something a raccoon got her paws on?

It was tempting to toss them out. They were damaged. The mess was inconvenient. But these weren’t just random knick knacks – they were items I had chosen to keep.

And that’s the heart of decluttering for me.

My decluttering isn’t really about getting rid of stuff.
It’s not about what I’m losing.
It’s about what I’m keeping.
And what I’m gaining, including the joy from seeing our memories displayed around us. 

I had kept those items because they are filled with happy memories — sweet treasures that make me smile when I see them.

So I picked up the pieces, sanitized them, and plan to glue them back together.

Decluttering, to me, has never been about living with nothing.
It’s about living with intention.
It’s about creating a space that is manageable, and it is also about creating space for what matters – and having room to appreciate the joy in what stays: 

Like a one-armed clay monkey named George, who now has a few scars and a great story to tell.

Inviting my ADD to the Process

Donna Joy

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:

  1. If I needed this item, where is the first place I would look for it?
    1. Go put it there now
  2. If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already own it?
    1. (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.

Side Quests and Signal Flares

Donna Joy

When I feel stressed I like to reorganize my closets.

Especially my master bedroom closet.

Weird? Maybe. Pointless? definitely not.

It can be a helpful process.

I can feel accomplished at the end. Like a good painting project, I can look at my room at the end and say, “I did that.”

But in order to say “I did that” – it needs to actually get done. 

I have a tendency to embark on projects with uncontained enthusiasm. I start strong, either motivated by a goal (“Today’s the day I get this basement ‘organized’”) or motivated by an emotion (any stress or rage cleaners out here?)

Orrrr

I start on a project because in the moment it seems like an absolutely necessary side quest from the path I’m on. Like, I’m getting dressed but can only find one of this earring set? Why wouldn’t I dump out every piece of jewelry I own and start reorganizing the whole system until I am sitting on the floor half dressed, surrounded by 30 carefully sorted piles of jewelry, completely out of energy, and 17 searches deep on the Best Jewelry Storage Systems on TikTok and Amazon?

Actually, that’s the path most of my projects tend to take. Big energy start, a swirl through overthinking and distraction, then an overwhelming crash that leaves me with a bigger mess than I started with.

Not exactly a remedy for stress and uncertainty. 

And when I’m stressed, I like to reorganize my closets. Notice a pattern?

Stress leads to action, which feels productive – until it spirals. I want to feel in control, so I dive into something I can control. But then the thing I thought would soothe me ends up adding to the chaos.

I’m learning the urge to reorganize is a flag – a signal that something inside me is asking for attention, for care, for clarity.

Lately, I’ve been trying to pause when I feel this signal flare. Instead of pushing through, I’ll ask myself: “What did I really need when I started this?” 

Sometimes it’s control. Sometimes it’s rest. Sometimes it’s just a sense of forward motion.

And sometimes it’s a better system for managing my bedroom closet. And that’s ok, too.

(check out pictures of my latest bedroom closet side quest on Instagram)