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Downsizing without tears: a how-to guide

27th March 2017. Filed Under: Clutter, Declutter, Downsizing, Home, Moving

Downsizing the family home for something smaller? That means decluttering on a grand scale. I spoke to Sunday Mail journalist Hannah McDonald about how to downsize without tears.

Downsizing is a retirement rite of passage. When the time comes to sell the family home and move into a retirement villa or unit, a major decluttering session is the order of the day. But just how do you decide on the household and personal items you need for the next phase of your life — and which items must go?

Nicki Kenvyn, owner of professional decluttering and home organising service Uncluttered Living understands that downsizing can be a daunting task. “All those years, all those memories, all that stuff! Deciding to move into a smaller home or retirement village can be emotional, and you need to make mindful decisions about what you love and what you don’t.”

“Downsizing means letting go of what is not serving you. If you haven’t used it in ages, if it doesn’t fit your new home and life, or if you don’t still love it, make a conscious choice to let it go.”

Nicki says there is no right or wrong way to downsize and declutter the home. “It’s about finding a way that works for you. Start with baby steps and enjoy the satisfaction that comes from decluttering even the smallest space. Start where the task is simplest and the time required is least, like a single bathroom or kitchen drawer or even your car glove box.

“You might also decide to start where the impact is greatest and you see the clutter frequently, such as the kitchen bench or a space that vexes you every day, like your wardrobe.”

Sometimes poor health or circumstances mean people have to move in a hurry, so it’s not always easy or even possible to declutter in a methodical way. But Nicki points out that it’s a job that is best not rushed.

“Start as soon as you can. Doing a good job takes time and physical and mental energy; don’t put yourself under stress by having to downsize in a hurry.”

“Start well before your moving date, do a bit every day or weekend and set yourself achievable mini goals. Consider the contents of every cupboard, drawer and box. It takes time, but you will be so grateful you made this investment in your future when it comes to unpacking in your new home.”

Nicki also says it’s essential to consider large items like beds and sofas, dressers and fridges. “There’s no point keeping what won’t fit into your new space. Don’t guess; grab a tape measure and make sure ahead of time. Remember, take only what will work in your new home.

“And don’t forget to ask for help if it’s too difficult. Family, friends, neighbours or professional support can help to share the load and make the downsizing task less stressful.”

While it’s no easy feat sorting through a lifetime of possessions, Nicki reminds seniors that downsizing and decluttering is liberating once the hard work has been done. “In a smaller home each item has to earn its place, so you find yourself surrounded only by those things you use and love,” she says.

“Less cleaning also means more time to do the things that excite you, and living with less clutter makes it mentally easier to relax. Make a conscious choice not to let your possessions own you or take up space in your home or your head.”

Click here to view the full Courier Mail Downsizing Feature, “Downsizing made simple”, by Hannah McDonald, published in the Sunday Mail on Sunday 19 March 2017.

Don’t declutter the Gnorm … why passion & values matter

4th May 2015. Filed Under: Clutter, Declutter, Home, Possessions

People are fascinated when I tell them what I do for a living. “You mean you go into people’s homes and chuck all their stuff out?” Well, no. A big NO actually. You see, it’s not so much about the throwing out … though usually one of the outcomes of decluttering is that certain things do get moved on … as it is about working through a process of questioning old habits and old assumptions in the face of changing circumstances.

Professional decluttering isn’t about me coming in and imposing my values and my judgments on you. It actually doesn’t matter what I think. I have my own home, and I organise that in a way that works for me. But this is all about you. You and your possessions – your “stuff” – and whether that stuff continues to serve you. So how do you know? How can you tell when something that you used to love – after all, it was probably you who brought it into your home in the first place – has outlived its place in your heart and therefore your home?

Essentially, the process comes down to passion and values. No, not “value”; not how much something cost. Strangely, the cost of things is rarely a factor when I work with clients to help them decide what and how much to declutter — though it may have influenced why it hasn’t been decluttered long ago. No, what I’m talking about are “values”; those invisible signposts in your head helping direct you to what is really, truly significant to how you choose to live your life RIGHT NOW.

Let’s say that your children have grown up and moved out of home and you want to reclaim their old rumpus room as your study space and retreat. But you can’t help feel that you should store the boxes of old Lego, just in case you ever have grandchildren. Listen to your values, your inner voice telling you that you deserve this space; you’ve waited a long time for it, and you don’t have to compromise it for the sake of possessions which are no longer meaningful to you. There are always options for letting things go; many of which can be quite uplifting to the soul. Donate the Lego to a refugee centre in your community. Offer it as a raffle prize at your local primary school fete. List it on Givit, or Gumtree, or eBay. Or just leave it outside on the verge with a sign saying “Free to a happy home”. The point is, it’s not your priority any more and you don’t have to compromise your own vision and values to accommodate it.

Living by your passion and values works both ways, of course. One of my greatest (but most rewarding) challenges is to get clients to articulate which possessions in their home are truly important to them, and why. The answers often surprise me, and usually in a happy way.

My husband is a passionate Richmond AFL supporter. He’s backed the Tiges through thick and thin (more thin than thick, to be honest) since their glory days of the late ‘70s. Last year he won a big footy tipping competition with a curious prize. The winner won the “Gnorm” for a year; a two-foot high plaster gnome painted in the team colours of your choice. He was beyond excited. Frankly, “Richmond” and “trophy” are two words which rarely go hand in hand. The big day came. “Gnorm” arrived by courier to our home, where he would live for the forthcoming year. How can I say this? Gnorm isn’t really my cup of tea. He’s kinda quirky, and the shiny black & yellow Richmond Tigers paint job doesn’t really match my décor. If I could, I’d have decluttered him straight out the door. But my husband loves the shiny little fella and all he embodies. In the spirit of marital compromise I suggested that Gnorm take pride of place upstairs for a week, and then retire to the downstairs family room for the rest of his stay. Well, seven months on and the little guy is still commanding prime real estate in our lounge room. He’s grown on me … and I’ve come to understand that when it comes to your possessions, it’s the passion and the values behind them which should drive what goes and what stays. We’re into a new AFL season now, and my husband is sitting close to the top of the tipping competition. I’ve become quite fond of Gnorm …but truthfully? I’m kinda hoping for a late run from a dark horse tipster. After all, I’ve got passions and values too!

Downsizing…and how to survive it

29th October 2014. Filed Under: Clutter, Declutter, Downsizing, Home, Moving, Possessions

All our life we strive to acquire. As children we spend our hard-earned pocket money on Lego, on computer games, on skateboards and cricket bats, on Polly Pocket and Barbie dolls. The cash from our teenage holiday jobs goes towards our first old bomb car, so we can experience the freedom of having our own wheels. We leave school or graduate from Uni, and the big save is on as we scrape together the deposit on our first home or investment property. And then we want to fill it: with furniture, with clothes and shoes and handbags, with toys, with collectibles, with all the stuff that makes up a life. And that’s where the trouble starts…

I spend lots of time with clients in the post-acquisition phase of their lives. Men and women who, like the rest of us, have striven their whole lives to own a home, raise a family, and surround themselves with possessions. But now, as they age and their bodies become frailer, they are moving; downsizing from substantial family homes into smaller apartments or retirement villas, and the weight of a lifetime of possessions suddenly becomes overwhelming, more of a burden than a blessing.

How do you decide which possessions—all accrued over a lifetime of living and loving, raising children and making memories—will make the cut? What has to be boxed up and shipped off to Vinnies or, with the help of a tech-savvy grandchild, put up on Gumtree or eBay?

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules about how to make these sometimes gut-wrenching decisions. Every client is different and every downsizing decision must be taken in light of individual experience and circumstance. But I have distilled some questions which I have found useful in helping my clients make difficult downsizing choices.

Do you, or could you, use it every day?

The precious bone china dinner set Grandma left you is exquisite. So drag it out from its box in the back of the sideboard and use it. Move on your own boring, chipped, utilitarian white plates and bowls, and glory at every meal in the beauty and elegance of Grandma’s beautiful pieces. As the commercial says, you’re worth it.

Do you need that many of them?

Your Irish bed linen is superb…all 15 sets crammed into the linen cupboard. But space is limited now, and you have only one bed. Could you pick your two favourite sets—one on the bed; one in the wash—and gift the remaining sets to your granddaughters?

Could someone else benefit from it?

It’s hard to part with possessions that have been important to you, especially when they are still in good order. Could someone else benefit from your generosity? There are many people in our community for whom a donation of furniture or bedding, clothing or toys, can ease their financial burden. Professional organisers are often linked into effective ways to give within their communities.

Is it occupying prime storage real estate in your home?

Storage space is always at a premium, whether in a four bedroom home or a one-bedroom retirement villa, so the items you use every day should be front and centre. Only use the large beach towels in summer? Relocate them from the linen cupboard into vacuum storage bags under the bed over the cooler months. Don’t pull the slow cooker out til wintertime? Take it out of the coffee cup cupboard and slide it to the bottom of the pantry. Sewing machine gathering dust in your wardrobe? Move it into the spare room or even the garage.

Do you need to own it to remember it?

A difficult and poignant one, this. So many clients struggle to part with possessions because of their sentimental value. Maybe it was a handmade trinket made with love by a young grandchild, or a gift or memento from a long-dead, much-loved partner. Firstly, we take a moment to acknowledge the emotional gravitas of the item and the relationship that made it special. And then I encourage my clients to recognise that people are not their things; that memories will live on in the heart and the mind, even if the item is no longer with them. Sometimes we take a photo, and upload it to a laptop or a phone. I also encourage clients to consider the essence of the person and select one or a few small pieces which call to mind their spirit. Perhaps a colourful scarf, a single tea cup or a letter addressed in their handwriting. Shadow boxes and memory boards or books are wonderful ways to retain the essence of a person, place or memory.

Downsizing your home can be a difficult and emotional process, but as we live longer and in better health, more and more of us will need to go on this journey. Sometimes, the support of a compassionate and experienced professional organiser can ease the physical and emotional burden.

Life on the verge…Council pick-up time

6th February 2014. Filed Under: Clutter, Declutter, Home, Moving, Organisation, Possessions

It’s Council pick-up time out our way right now. You know, that precious once-a-year opportunity to have a REALLY good declutter of the garage, the shed, the pool house, the Harry Potter cupboard under the stairs, and all those other dark and scary spaces where only the brave dare go.

As I walk our faithful pooch around the leafy streets of my neighbourhood at this time of year I marvel at the piles which crown the nature strips outside every home. It gladdens my decluttering heart to see so many households take advantage of the opportunity to get rid of stuff that no longer serves them. And I muse, as I wander, on the pick-up patterns which seem to emerge year after year. Last year, every other home had at least one CRT television sprawled ungainly on its verge. You know, the pre-digital, pre-flatscreen models that now seem so clunky and old-fashioned? And this year (I wonder why?) there were nests of suitcases discarded in street upon street. Is it the falling Aussie dollar that’s making people stay at home and shed their trusty swivel-wheeled travel companions? Or have they just, in their mid-life luggage crises, cast off their long-suffering but chunky and travel-scarred Paklite partners, and upgraded to a set of sleek, sexy flexi-shell models? And, oh the mattresses! Those most personal and intimate of discarded items loom uncertainly above everything else on their grassy pile; some so stained and misshapen that I have to avert my eyes from the evidence of a stranger’s private life now displayed so publicly and unforgivingly.

Where do people keep it all, this stuff that ends up on the streets? Do they suffer it in their homes until they can afford something sexier, more comfortable, more functional? Do they sacrifice their precious storage space to these unloved and unused pariahs? Or do they banish it to the musty, dusty dark reaches under their houses, there to moulder away unwanted and unremembered until the Council sends its annual reminder?

It’s a poignant time too, Council pick-up time. There’s always children’s toys and outgrown bikes, once so treasured but now, like Woody and Buzz, discarded in the headlong rush to adolescence. I rejoice when the little bikes and pink plastic Princess castles are there one day and gone the next. Some other, younger, more innocent and accepting eyes have spied a treasure-in-the-making and picked them up or wheeled them home, beaming at their cleverness and luck at being in the right place at the right time.

The pile outside our home this year was modest. After many years practising my decluttering philosophy, most everything in our home is both well-loved and frequently-used. My old old bike, bought with love but little money for my husband on our first wedding anniversary 24 years ago, now so rusted that the pedals no longer turn. And the car booster seat, used by our first and then our second son long after he needed it. The view, he maintained, was so much better from on high, and he was reluctant to let it go. Both, I was thrilled to see, were swiftly rescued from their roadside fate by new owners with an eye for an opportunity and a finely developed sense of possibility.

Decluttering…a matter of honour

15th October 2013. Filed Under: Clutter, Declutter, Home, Organisation, Possessions

Professional decluttering and home organising isn’t, contrary to some beliefs, about a stranger coming into your home and throwing out all the things you love! It IS about working with you to understand how you live and what your values are. Then I can encourage and support you to mindfully consider what items are important to you, and we can respond to those items accordingly. If you don’t love or use the item, let it go. But if you do love it, honour it.

Many decluttering clients say to me they can’t part with something because it belonged to a family member who has died, or it was given to them by an old friend. It has “sentimental value” for them. And yet it’s stuck outside in the garage, unused and unappreciated; face-down in the dust between a bag of potting mix and a rotting pile of footy socks. If this item IS important to you, then celebrate it. Use it. Honour it.

By decluttering, you can breathe life back into unused treasures. If your mother left you her fine bone china tea set, use it. Set aside ten minutes every evening after dinner for a tea ceremony. Make a proper pot of tea, pour it into your mother’s beautiful and delicate cup and saucer, and put your feet up as you sip your tea and honour the memory of your mother in a stylish and beautiful way.

A friend of mine had a lovely idea. Her father was known for his stylish dress sense and flamboyant ties. After he died, she asked her family if she could have all his ties. She plans to create a box-framed artwork using the brightly coloured and textured ties. Every time her eyes glance up to this distinctive and highly personal creation, she’ll smile and remember her dad with affection.

When my beloved grandmother died, I inherited her crystal trifle bowls and silver serving spoons. My childhood memories of Christmas always included the excitement of a bowl full of Ollie’s trifle, with candlelight gleaming off the cut crystal and the bowls’ polished silver rims. So every Christmas now my family and I have a ritual to honour my grandmother. First, we very carefully hang her oh-so-fragile antique glass baubles high on the Christmas tree. Then, I pour myself a glass of sherry—her tipple of choice—and sit down with my white gloves on to clean my grandmother’s silver. It never fails to make me cry, but they’re happy tears, and they’re all about honouring a special woman and her special possessions.

Why clutter matters to people and decluttering can be difficult

11th September 2013. Filed Under: Choices, Declutter, Home, Organisation

Clutter matters. It matters because it takes up space — not just in your surroundings, but in your head. Of the two, the psychological effect of clutter is the most important. When we clear the clutter out of a space, people breathe a sigh of relief. The mood changes instantly. People feel lighter, more serene, more focus. The effect is profound, even when people say they don’t notice it.

Blogger Amanda Enayati considers why clutter matters to people and decluttering can be difficult. http://homes.yahoo.com/blogs/spaces/why-clutter-matters-decluttering-difficult-232127340.html

Home is…

8th September 2013. Filed Under: Choices, Home

Home is the people you love, and love travels in your heart. That’s why I flew to Sydney yesterday to spend the day in an airport lounge. My mum—my wonderful, 73-year old mum—was departing on a solo trip to the UK that afternoon, and I needed to spend time with her before she left; to say goodbye properly, with hugs and tears. Ten years ago I accompanied her on the same journey. We shared three and a half weeks of laughter and golden memories as we navigated a white-knuckle path in a frighteningly small car around the scary motorways and rich green byways of the land of our birth. But this time I couldn’t go. The ties that held me to Australia—family, the boys’ school schedules, my work—bound tighter than before, and so my Mum decided to go alone, to see her cousins and their families one last time. It has been 40 years since our family emigrated to Australia as Ten Pound Poms, but the connections of family, and blood, and memories remain strong. And so my gorgeous Mum will journey again to the dear, familiar places of her past. She will travel to the homes she once lived in, marvel at how small they seem today, and rest her eyes one last time on the lush green countryside and mellow stone houses where our relatives are blessed to live. She will travel to the lands of her ancestors and search back into history to find her deeper roots. And then, God willing, she will board that plane and fly half way back around the world, where our hearts are swelling with love and nervousness: waiting for her to come back to where she belongs. Home.

Just Start

5th September 2013. Filed Under: Choices, Declutter, Home, Organisation

Photography by Casa & Co

My bathroom drawer has been annoying me for days. Like most of you, my morning routine is quick and urgent. No time for mucking around, and certainly no time for scrabbling in drawers for things I can’t find. So last night I put into practice one of my most important decluttering maxims: “Just start”. Instead of worrying ineffectually about how messy and grimy the drawer and its contents had become, I put a towel on the bed, upended the contents of the drawer onto it, and decluttered the drawer. In total, including cleaning the inside of the drawer; checking, keeping or chucking every single item on the towel, and emptying the now-full bathroom bin down into the green bin outside, it took me 9 minutes. 9!! And I had agonised over that drawer for days. So if there’s a little decluttering job to do at your place—or even a big one—don’t wait. The time will never be quite right. Just start.

Introducing Uncluttered Living

1st September 2013. Filed Under: Declutter, Home, Organisation

I‘m very happy to welcome you to Uncluttered Living; a philosophy, a business, a website, a blog, and a better way to organise your home and your possessions. Uncluttered Living is a new decluttering and home organising service that can help you take back control of your house, your belongings, and your life.

I’m such a believer in the principles of uncluttered living that I want to share my passion and my organising skills with the world (or Brisbane, at least!) “Less is more”. “A place for everything and everything in its place”. “If you don’t love it, lose it”. Simple maxims, but applied sympathetically and systematically, they CAN transform the way your home looks and works. And that means you can save time, build certainty into your day, and have your possessions work for you and inspire you, not fight against you and drag you down.

So many clients tell me that they find their clutter overwhelming. They don’t know how or where to start…so they never do. Let me help! I’m at arm’s length from your personal items, so I can help you decide what’s important and what’s not. And my energy hasn’t been depleted by living in the midst of chaos and disorder, so we can work as a team to rebuild your home systems the way you always dreamed they could be.

I’m so passionate about decluttering and setting up systems that work for you….because they also work for me! I’ve used the same simple principles my whole adult life to buffer myself against a communications & media career built around uncertainty, deadlines and being able to respond to unpredictable opportunities. They kept me calm and allowed me to focus on the job at hand…and that made me better at my job, and a better partner and mother too.

I want to use this blog to share inspiring stories, offer you practical “how-to” decluttering tips, and suggest links to others who aspire, each in their own unique and precious ways, to live uncluttered lives. I’d love to hear your stories too.