Time to declutter?

I HAVE spent much of our rather tepid August so far sitting on the floor of my little house sifting through the contents of wardrobes, cupboards, drawers and boxes trying to decide which items I love, which I am unsure about, and which I never want to see again.

This huge and much-needed process of decluttering is already starting to make me feel better. I can see more of my floor, windows and tables which before were obscured from view by boxes of homeless and neglected items, many untouched for years and simply carried from house to house as I have moved.

Anyone who has ever tried to have a big clear-out will know that you have to be ruthless and detach yourself emotionally from pretty much everything – not an easy task for me.

I am very good at looking after things, which tends to mean I keep them for a long time and I really don’t want to let them go. Paying no attention to what things originally cost or how much time you have invested in them is a key skill to develop in cutting out the items that are no longer ‘mission critical’ – things that no longer serve you. If it has to go, it has to go; you must commit to the process and keep going.

I can now see the things I have chosen to keep more clearly, and they have gone back to serving a useful purpose – even if that purpose is just making me smile – rather than just being in the way, crowded out by irrelevant junk.

While I am not surprised by the sense of relief and, more importantly, calm and control that I feel having let go of so many things I won’t miss, I am surprised by the clarity of thought and positive knock-on effects on the rest of my life. I was not expecting this to have a wider impact.

I am eating better, swimming more and feeling really rather good about myself. I have more mental capacity for the work I enjoy and the activities and people I treasure. I am more focused on who I want to be.

In summary, decluttering is not just a physical process of clearing space, it also clears space in your brain too, which means you can continue the good work. In my case there is much more of it to come. Unloved non-essential items are now someone else’s core staples too, such is the extra bonus of giving things away to our many fabulous charity shops. As my aunt very neatly put it recently, the state of your home is the only thing you can really control in life so why not make it as fit for your life purpose as it can be?

Decluttering is, dare I say it, empowering.

Now this might be the most tangential of my links to date,

I shall leave that to you to judge, but it seems to me that it would serve our States of Deliberation well to also take advantage of the lacklustre summer weather and do its own decluttering and reprioritising now before the next Assembly turns up with rubber gloves and black bags to sweep everything away and off to Longue Houge.

As anyone who has cleared away the possessions of a loved one after they have gone will testify, most of our belongings only matter to us. The better order we have left things in, the less pain and distress for those sorting through the memories and the more likely they are to notice the things we really want them to treasure. There are usually only a handful of meaningful items that make the cull and serve to reinforce the memory of those we have lost or form part of the homes and lives of future generations.

It is time to determine which items on this term’s agenda will stand the test of time and be of use or significance to future generations and which will be forgotten forever after 2025.

Deputies embarking on the States decluttering exercise might choose to follow the legendary Marie Kondo’s approach. A self-proclaimed tidying expert, Kondo ‘helps people around the world to transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration’. Sounds good, right?

Kondo’s famous approach is not one of deciding what to get rid of but rather she asks that you choose items which ‘spark joy’, thus ensuring you are surrounded by the things and people that inspire you at all times. The idea is to start with the things that inspire you the most and take it from there, building around those items and keeping things focused.

This approach is entirely at odds with the current cost-cutting vs tax-raising debate and shifts the focus instead to what would make us truly happy, what ‘sparks joy’ for us as an island, so we can see what it is we are trying to raise money for.

Determining where we want to go, and why, will help us easily work out what we need and what this might cost. The key is the inspiration as that is what will motivate us to generate the money and resources to pay for it.

We are spending way too much time at the moment worrying about whether to keep the old, tattered jacket that is two sizes too small or to save the space for the worn-out shoes we never wear instead of opting for the suit we know we look fabulous in but are not sure we can pull off. We are afraid of opting for the thing that excites and challenges us the most, that would force us to strive to be better. We are missing the point of life entirely.

Truly inspirational change agents and creative thinkers do not worry about how they are going to get there before they have decided where they want to go and why they want to go there. It is madness to remain tangled up in debates about how to raise or save money when we don’t really know what we are raising or saving it for. We will be amazed at how the money appears when we have a plan that inspires everyone as we will all be incentivised to do our bit.

Saving or even raising money by itself does not spark joy unless it’s leading you somewhere exciting.

I wrote months ago about how we need to be more ambitious, prouder of who we are and more confident in what we can achieve. Since then, we have proved my point by delivering an exemplary Island Games. This was a fine example of an event that sparked joy in so many ways and should remind us of the feeling we are looking for when sorting through those boxes.