Lighten Up

ADVICE

Less clutter, less stress.

Lighten Up

A new decluttering strategy marries design and mindfulness.

BY EMILY ALHADEFF

A SCROLL THROUGH Pinterest or Instagram shows a plethora of airy, neutral living spaces adorned with bare coffee tables and just a few wellplaced objects. From the sensational success of Marie Kondo’s radical tidiness to the morbid liberation of Swedish Death Cleaning, Americans—disillusioned by the quality of cheap products and tired of tripping over the flock of shoes that keeps migrating to the entryway—are embracing purging principles.

Stepping into this zeitgeist are Cary Telander Fortin and Kyle Louise Quilici, who consult and run decluttering sessions out of their home bases in San Francisco and Boise, respectively. Their Zen-like decluttering strategy, detailed in their book, New Minimalism (2018, Sasquatch Books), strives to strike a balance between consumerism and the austerity of traditional minimalism.

For Quilici, whose background is in interior design, organizational behavior, and sustainable design, and Fortin, who holds a degree in psychology, decluttering is as much a technique as a mindfulness practice. In working with clients, the duo noticed four distinct archetypes, each with its own virtues—as well as mental stumbling blocks that make it hard to clean house.

Have a table piling with partially finished projects that you’ll get to once your social calendar frees up? Do your friends commend your superhuman energy—or have you ever wondered if you might have ADHD? You might be an Energetic type—and your challenge is saying “no.” Frugal types, on the other hand, fear scarcity and have a hard time

Keep the essentials within reach.

relinquishing items they don’t use out of concern that they may need them someday. Why would you want to have to pay for that again at some point? Why not leave it stashed in the back of the cabinet, just in case?

Similarly, Practical types hang on to things that have outlived their use, like orphaned cords and phone chargers. It’s not about the value, but the possibility that one day in the not-too-distantfuture you will find that jack it goes with. If you’ve squirreled away stacks of postcards and ticket stubs, you might be a Connected type, and sentimentality is your Achilles’ heel. Quilici faced this challenge recently when she decided to unload a jacket that had belonged to her grandmother. When the consignment shop didn’t want it, she had to overcome her resistance to dropping it off in a pile of anonymous items at a donation center. Then she remembered to take her own advice. “I decided to donate it, and it felt amazing,” she says.

New Minimalism provides practical tools for each archetype to resist and overcome the urges conspiring to sabotage the purge. But at the end of the day, the philosophy comes down to separating

your identity from your things. Decluttering “shifts your story about yourself,” Quilici says. “People move, they have kids, they decide they want to live abroad. They become unburdened.” While clearing out the stretched-out sweaters you haven’t worn since college doesn’t translate directly to better relationships and a promotion, the process of taking stock and releasing material items “removes a layer of stuff and mental baggage.”

Once you’ve identified your mental hurdles, it’s time to spring into action. Quilici and Fortin believe an effective decluttering session involves some prep work. You’re going to need a staging area, an assistant (an honest but supportive friend), water breaks, and a plan for lunch and dinner before your blood sugar crashes.

So how do you know when your work is done? The authors emphasize that minimalism means different things to different people. The end result isn’t necessarily a row of three utilitarian Mason jars on a sparse white shelf. “Minimalism isn’t a goal or destination, it’s a tool,” Quilici says. “With every item in every room, [ask,] is this in alignment with the life I want to create?”

KELLY ISHIKAWA (2)