I believe strongly that mindset is the key to leading an uncluttered life, and that knowing who you are and what you really want are the keys to figuring out what stays and what goes.
People ask about how they can make themselves let go of things they don’t want to let go of. They ask how they can decide which of the things they want to keep has to go. They ask how to make the decision about what stays and goes.
If you want to keep stuff, decluttering is hard. And unless you can look inside yourself at what you really want, and how you want to exist in your world, decluttering will always be about making tough decisions. It will always be an internal battle.
However, if you want to let go of things, you don’t need to force it. You don’t need to decide, you don’t need to make tough decisions. The decision is made for you. If you have already chosen what your life is meant to be, the things are just an aside. They either fit into that vision, that feeling, that existence, or they don’t. The decision is made by the item.
It’s not the ability to let go that really makes the difference, it’s knowing what your life needs and doesn’t need in order to be fulfilled that matters. So ultimately, the decision to declutter something is not the actual decision you need to make. The decision you need to make is “Who am I and what do I want from my life?”. And then the rest follows that.
Then decluttering becomes a leap of faith, an exercise in giving yourself permission to be the real you that you crave, and knowing that you can absolutely do it.