Before now, I have never thought that clothes would be considered clutter. If I were to ask myself the usual questions that I use when decluttering, I would have said yes to all of them regarding clothes, therefore they stay in my home.
Do clothes bring value into my life? Yes. Do I use it? Yes. Do I need it? Yes. Does it bring joy into my life? Yes. I never once thought that clothes could be clutter because of the sole reason that it is necessary. Why it never dawned on me as a possibility before, I have no idea, because it does seem like that would be an obvious notion. Why would anything, even necessary items, be exempt from being clutter?
This revelation came to me only after I watched a YouTube video from Dana K White from “A Slob Comes Clean”. She made the following statements that completely changed the way I viewed clothes in my house.
“Clutter is anything that consistently gets out of control in my home. Clutter is anything that I have more of than I personally can handle. Clothing absolutely can be clutter when you look at clutter that way.”
Dana K White from “A Slob Comes Clean”
I have lived my life trying to keep up with our laundry crisis every week. On rare occasion, I would completely catch up where every piece of clothing, besides what we were wearing of course, was washed and put away neatly. It could not be sustainable for long though. By the next week, it would be out of control again where I would be trying to keep up with the abundance of clothes. Missing a few days of doing laundry could put me behind. More often than not, there would be a mountain of clothes to be washed in the laundry room, a mountain of clothes on the couch waiting to be put away, and all our closets still completely full that you would not have been able to tell any clothes were missing.
I would just use the excuse that because five people were living in our house was the reason why we had so much laundry. That was not the reason at all. It was not necessary that each person in our house owned more than one hundred articles of clothes.
Realizing that clothes can be considered clutter was a lightbulb moment for me. Knowing that anything in my house can be considered clutter when it gets to the point of being more than I can handle changed the way I viewed the items in my home, even the necessary items. Not everything needs to stay. Too much of anything in my home that causes an overwhelming feeling is just too much.