by Alex Kent
Real Estate and spring cleaning… what do they have in common? Answer: Space.
There is only so much space on the planet, in your country, your town, your home...
I was through college and working in Toronto, Canada before I owned enough possessions to consider my first spring cleaning. Being sufficiently successful to move into ever larger living spaces as my pay increased, it was years before I noticed that things were taking over my home. I guess those around me thought that if I was so grown-up, come February/March, I must surely already know what to get rid of and what to keep.
But, no! I was under the naïve impression that spring cleaning was about cleaning – dusting, sweeping and scrubbing under the stuff that was to be returned to its rightful spot, once the suds were rinsed and dried. While the cleaning part is important, the items I didn’t use were secretly causing me stress, not unlike buyer remorse. I did some research and found it has a name: clutter.
Clutter is a disordered, confused state of being. If it were noise, it would be clatter, and living with a constant clatter would make many of us easily irritated, frustrated and unable to function comfortably - it takes effort to ignore irritating sounds. Visual clatter – clutter – can have the same effect on our psyche. I have a friend who disdainfully calls it ‘minutia’ – the small, hateful bits of inconsequential stuff that surrounds us at every turn.
We all experience it, in varying degrees, throughout our lives, from our toy-box to what we Will our descendants. We live, after all, in a material world and act on our feelings of desire to acquire. Don’t get me wrong – I love most of the items I choose to display. Things are good; but too much of anything can be overwhelming, and it can sneak up on you. I know I am not alone in this dilemma, because friends bring over items from their homes to see if I want them… they can’t bear to throw or give them away, and a visit to see me is a visit to their stored treasure – stored in my house. Here, however, there are no worries; I do the same to them : )
So, what is a homeowner to do? Throw away a tool because it’s worn, or keep it because it’s an antique? Hold onto 
Now is the time to learn how to use eBay (http://pages.ebay.com/education ), or have a garage sale. Sell that antique tool and those shoes; sell the books you will never read; sell the rug that never went with the sofa; sell the stuff that was expensive, but you have no more use for… replace your things with something of equal value – money.
Another trick I have learned is to take photographs of the things 
that ‘keepsake’ memories. Pictures can do just as good a job of ‘holding onto the visual’, and they take up less space; turning the photos into digital images and posting them in cyber space will free you up even more! Another friend even takes pictures of her shoes before she gets rid of them. This one was hard for me, as I still try on heels from my glory days, thinking “maybe this time they’ll fit”. Take a snapshot - Genius!
A word of warning about the Lego’s: first ask your kids if they want to keep them. If they do, storage is their responsibility. Attachments to things are attachments to emotions; don’t ruin a relationship just to clean out a closet.
Spring is a time for newness; and eliminating the old is a rewarding way to achieve personal freedom. Besides, once I have created more space with all my cleaning and selling, I can start collecting cool stuff again!
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Photo credits: Spring Cleaning Supplies – Nowsourcing; Hand wrench – the-funny-place.blogspot.com; Fin-heels – Global Warming Collection
