How to Declutter Effortlessly and Become Richer Without Even Trying..

Decluttering is a busy buzz word that many people throw around in their New Year's resolution lists. You find yourself with a houseful of crap that doesn't put itself away, and causes you to trip over and not be able to find that important piece of paper, and you get rather cross with yourself, and so you take a deep breath and spend an entire week putting everything away, throwing away a third of all your stuff, and popping down to the closest big box store to buy $300 worth of tubs and baskets to artfully encapsulate the contents of your life.

Then a year later you find yourself doing exactly the same thing. It's like we are helpless babes and stuff just appears in our houses ON PURPOSE to annoy us. Oh, whoops, yes, it actually does. And who brings that annoying stuff into our houses? Oh, that's right, we do, straight from that big box store to our front door, and thence onto our bedroom floors and the dining room table because there is no more room in all the cupboards.

The whole decluttering problem of the entire Western world can be fixed right now, today, by never going shopping again. We all have so much stuff that we could try using what we have, substituting something already in our cupboards for what we think we need so badly until we forget we needed it in the first place. Maybe, eventually, we will discover that we really, really can't live a full and happy life without that particular doodad, but by then it will be a truly considered purchase, and we will at least have planned a place to put it before we go shopping. But beware, going out to the shops is a trap and a snare. Best take your scariest friend along who will not let you buy a single other doodad that is jumping up and down in the shop window yelling, 'BUY ME!' (I am available for all such shopping expeditions)

Perhaps we could train ourselves to ignore the blandishments of pervasive consumerism by waking up each morning and greeting the world by saying, 'I have SO MUCH. I do not need any more.' Maybe, eventually, it will sink in.

Now, by not buying anything ever again, eventually, the piles of things in your house will naturally diminish. If you cancel the newspaper, those piles of old newspapers in the garage will disappear over time, as they are used as firelighters and budgie cage liners. The best dinner set that sits in the cupboard will need to be brought out as your old dinner plates break and chip. The three extra cutlery sets that were such a bargain in the sales and still in their boxes, because who needs three sets of cutlery, ever? will be wrapped up for wedding gifts for all your nieces. See? No annoying trips to the charity shops required, none of this tiresome tossing things into boxes and sorting and making painful decisions about whether we really may need this or that in the future.

So stop buying, and one day, three years from now, your house will be looking quite elegantly minimal, there will be room in the cupboards for everything you need, and your bank balance will be magnificent! Effortless, and suddenly you have loads of time to do all those hobbies, the raw materials for which fill all those crates, because now you never have to go shopping.

Free yourself from the manacles of stuff, become a creator and conserver instead of a consumer, and let your house declutter itself.