Getting Rid of Bedroom Clutter

Last week I promised a look at my decluttering of another room: my bedroom. I used Peter Walsh’s techniques in It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff of deciding the purpose of a room, then removing everything that doesn’t fit that purpose.

Unlike my office, which I have been pretty good at keeping on track, my bedroom had become a mass of clutter. This is a shortened list of the actions I took to clean out the bedroom.

Defining the Purpose

I decided that the purpose of my bedroom was for four main things: Reading, meditation, dressing and sleeping. Anything that didn’t fit those purposes needed to go. In addition, I realized that each of the purposes actually had a pretty well-defined area of the room, so that made it even easier to declutter.

Decluttering Reading/Meditation

The section of my room devoted to reading consists of a nice chair, a good light, and my bookshelves. Also, next to the chair I had two wicker baskets, each topped with a lap desk. The first basket contained my travel neck pillow and the cords to portable CD player. The second basket had knitting yarn, needles and pattern books. In the bookshelves, besides books, I also had a shelf of sheet music, a collection of native flutes, some pictures, a candle and a sound-generating machine.

1. I removed the sheet music and put it downstairs in the music room, where the instruments reside.
2. The basket of flutes followed, but their final resting place will be decided later, when I tackle that room.
3. The knitting materials moved into the craft area.
4. The neck pillow moved to where the suitcases are stored.
5. The CD player cords went into the electronics bin.
6. The two now-empty wicker baskets were turned on their sides with the hope of storing current reading material, but a chance remark from my husband (”You need a nightstand there.”) had me exchange the guest room nightstand for the two baskets.
7. One now-empty shelf on my bookshelf now has the books I am reading, including my daily meditation readers.
8. The pictures were evaluated, and the pics of the grandparents were given to my daughter.
9. The candle was left as is.
10. The sound machine was given a place on the shelf in order to be easily accessible when I needed to block out household noises.

Results

I am surprised every time I set foot in my bedroom at how the atmosphere in there has changed. It is much easier to keep up with, because I now have contexts to know what belongs and what doesn’t. The whole process took me less than an hour, but gave me a room I enjoy being in.

I encourage you to start with a room that feels not optimal and try the experiment. It really works wonders!

Photo by jm3