Decluttering My Room - Ramshankar Yadhunath

![](../assets/ram_room_tidy.jpg) My room is pretty much always cluttered. I have got - Way too many books, most of them never touched - Clothes strewn around my double bed, my shelf, my chair - Post it notes across my desk, with to do lists that were supposed to be done 6 months ago - Laptop and desktop monitor wires accumulating dust and wavering aimlessly - A bunch of empty water bottles that serve the purpose of adorning the base of my IKEA table instead of being filled with water - At times, dishes from the last meal give company to the bottles - Snacks on my book shelf - And a lot of miscellaneous items that I have no clue about For far too long, I have considered this "way of living" as my "process". But, screw that. Its no longer helping me create anything. In fact, it makes me feel "emotionally heavy". The truth is, I have too much stuff. Its time to tidy my room. Yup, I am looking at [KonMari](https://konmari.com/what-is-konmari-method/) now (well, the freely available material that is). ## The KonMari Method (interpreted in my own way) > “When you’re choosing what to keep, ask your heart; when you're choosing where to store something, ask your house!” - Don't make it a one day thing. Plan it. - Imagine your ideal lifestyle - Tidy by category - Clothes - Books - Papers - Komono (Misc items) - Sentimental items - Focus on What to Keep - Pick an item => Does it spark joy? => If yes, keep. Else, let go with gratitude. - Designate a place for everything That's that. No more reading up on the method, because I don't wanna spend too much time going down that rabbit hole. ## Why I don't want to go full blown KonMari? I don't want to "let go" of anything at the moment. Hear me out, I am not a hoarder 😂. To "let go of something in my room", there are a lot more questions I need to consider - Will I need this later? - Where do I throw / give this away to? - Can I re-purpose this object to something else? - Can I sell this and make some money? - Should I look for an app to make this "letting go process" easier? - Would this benefit one of my friends or family members? This is *precisely why* I do not want to let go of my things when I am de-cluttering. Most things I possess are things I use at least once a month if not once a week. So, I can't throw them away. And the things that can be thrown away, I might just keep tucked away neatly out of sight. And the things that I just do not need, will go into "storage", waiting to be given away systemically at another point in time (around 6 months down the line if I have never needed them in that period). I know this sounds like a hack. But it works. It's practical. I might try full KonMari at some point in my life, but its just not that time now 😝 ## My Decluttering Process Borrowing a bit from the KonMari method above, here is what my decluttering process looked like today. 1. Audit my needs - NA 1. What do I need in my room for living well? 2. Audit my room - RA 1. What sucks? 2. What is good? 3. Compare NA & RA 1. Do I have what I need? 2. The things I don't need, do they improve aesthetic or emotionally appeal to me? 3. Do I have space to tuck this away? 4. Positioning my things 1. Do I need to have all of this in my room or can I send it to another room? 2. If I don't need it, can I give it away? 3. Frequency of use 1. Do I use this everyday? 2. Do I use this rarely? More importantly, I might need to revisit this process again in a couple of weeks to ensure the room is maintained neatly. Let's see how I get along ... ## Update: Feb 11, 2024 Room is still sufficiently clean ;) But, not gonna lie, it is getting **progressively harder** to ensure I fold my clothes out after washing them, back into their designated, labelled spots in the wardrobe. I might need to induce a "weekly room cleanup" ritual into my schedule. However, induction of a ritual into my life hardly is a promise that I will stick to it 😂. Nevertheless, I will pop this into my mental calendar and hope it does not get lost in [[The Heavy Burden of the Mental Backlog]]. ## Update: Jun 23, 2024 Room has became a bit too much of a mess of late. I share my bed with the laundry and a bunch of academic books I had displaced from my shelf during one night of intense motivation to "learn" a lot. As usual, sticking to the plan was hard after the motivation was swept away by the tide of sleep. I also have a few plates and a couple of last week's lunchboxes perched under my work desk. Remember the "weekly room cleanup" ritual I was talking about on Feb 11, 2024 above? As I expected, that never did happen 🥲. The very fact that it has taken me four months to even write about this in here makes it clear that "cleaning my room" is not something I see as a priority. Do I care? Maybe. But, my "care for a neat and organised room" is nothing but me projecting onto myself the idea that I "need to do this" to fit into society. It's funny because I am the only one who even has access to my room. Nobody cares. Maybe that's the reason I find it hard to keep things tidy. Because, *I don't do this for myself*. I do this for an imaginary voice in my head who apparently is always judging me for the design and management of my private living space. **This is my first mistake**. I started this page of writing with a clear message that "I can't live like this and that I need to change". I devised a framework that looked cool and definitely made me feel a *lot smarter than I actually am* in my head. Hell, I even had a colleague who read my writing and appreciated me for my "thinking" on the matter. But four months down the line, the clutter has returned in spectacular fashion. I have a bunch of things lying around in places that are not designated for them. So, *when did I screw up?* The answer is *every day*. Every tiny second, there is something going on around in the space of my room. It could be something as unnoticeable as a piece of my hair detaching itself from my scalp and finding solace on my wooden floor, only to be later blown away in an obscure corner of my room. Or, it could be something as very noticeable as the dumping of my fresh-out-of-the-laundry clothes onto one part of my bed where they stay crumpled together as large ball of "mix and match" outfits that I need to frantically iron out every time I need to wear any of it. Before I realise, these isolated, "small" moments snowball into an immense ball of clutter. And once the clutter is realised, it becomes harder to fix it. *Small moments, large consequences.* **This is my second mistake.** What can I do about these mistakes? Well, for starters maybe not make them. But, who am I kidding? There is a huge chance that I will just default to making these again 🥲. Nevertheless, I am going to once again attempt to declutter my room and reset. As I pick up my room decluttering once again today after a long gap, I am revisiting my four step process I had written about earlier. | Category | Do I need (Needs Audit) | Current state (Room Audit) | Thoughts or Plan of action | | ---------- | ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Clothes | ✅ | Sucks - Clutter on the bed Good - Decent variety | - Pack away winter clothes - Give away old clothes - Fold laundry and place into wardrobe - Use wardrobe organisers | | Books | ✅ | Sucks - Disorganised shelf, clutter on the bed Good - Easy access to anything I fancy reading | - Organise back into the shelf - Send books I have already completed into my living room shelf - If I lose interest in a book, put it back into the shelf. No "wishful thinking" that I will read it again soon | | Stationery | ⛔️ | Sucks - Have too much crap lying around. Don't even use most. Too many notebooks. Too many faulty pens. Good - Have access to anything (if I need it) | - Pack away everything except a couple of notebooks and pens - If I have not touched it in a month, tuck it away / throw it away - Prevent "death by sticky notes" | | Medicine | ✅ | Sucks - Forget to take my tablets. Empty pens of insulin lying around. Good - Some are partially organised in a wardrobe. | - Move the medicines to a space where I always can see them - Throw away all the empty stuff - Have a medicine schedule P.S: I am a T1 diabetic, so organising my medicine is pretty important for me | | Utensils | ❌ | Sucks - Having these in the room Good - Nothing about this is good! No utensils should be in the room! | - Realistically, I am going to always have a plate or two lying in my room. I can only be mindful to not let it all clutter - Lunchbox = Wash on the same day - Morning routine : Wake up, wash utensils - Limit having food in the bedroom. There is a dining table / living room for a reason | | Snacks | ❌ | Sucks - Forgetting about snacks in the bedroom Good - Nothing about this. | - No snacks in the bedroom - If I need it, I should go down to the kitchen and have it | > 👀 If you are probably wondering that I should have started de-cluttering my room instead of analysing and writing about this right now, you are not wrong to think so. But, I like to think and have a clear understanding of the job at hand before going about to solutionise. After two hours of organisation, my clothes are all neatly organised. - Wardrobe neatly organised using organisers - Relegated winter clothes to a suitcase - Tucked away clothes I would be giving away in a nice little Waitrose bag - Relieved my chair of the burden of having to bear the weight of 3 jackets, a trench coat, a sweatshirt, 2 chinos and a pair of jeans I have got very little bandwidth for anything else for the day. So, closing out my cleaning marathon after dealing with clothes. Tomorrow, might give a shot at organising my books and stationery. ## Update: Aug 23, 2024 Yoohoo, me again. I am not cleaning my room today. To be honest, it has been quite organised for the last week or so, the result of a nice, long 3-hour deep clean last month. Of course, the books continue to pile up around me, however they also do find their way back into the shelves by the end of the day. Am I finally starting to "adult" well? Heck, I sure hope so! ## Update: Dec 14, 2024 My room has been clean for weeks now! Absolutely love the weekly / bi-weekly cleaning ritual. Books all neatly organised, some dishes lying around throughout the day, but by the end of the day they are all washed. Clothes all organised neatly. ## Update: Dec 25, 2024 It's Christmas day! In the 11 days since my last update, my room has gone through at least a couple of "ah crap what is this mess" vs "ah lovely, its so clean!" cycles. At my worst, I had washed and dried clothes sharing my bed with me along with a copy of "Doing Good Better" by William Macaskill. Funnily enough, Macaskill's book is about how we should do good for society in the most effective way. It's funny because I am reading a book on helping society while I am *not* helping myself! However, at my best the room was quite clean with all clothes folded into the tiny, glass paned red cupboard. Apart from a few stray books, and some minor adjustments here and there, my bookshelf is still pretty neatly organised from the last time I wrote. So hey, that's something to be very very optimistic about! For Christmas, the room was especially cleaned by me last night and I loved me for it this morning! Merry Christmas! ## Update: Jan 4, 2025 Wow, its been over a year since I last logged something on here. I have changed 2 houses in that period. If I were to summarise my life last year, I have spent more days and nights in a clean, organised room than one that breaks my spirit. Dishes have rarely been left under my table and in the kitchen sink. The clothes that have gone through the laundry cycle were folded up and tucked away into the wardrobes within 2 days, at least 50% of the times. And the times they were not, they probably were really small pieces of clothing like socks or my shorts that I would anyways wear the next day haha. I am really proud of this log that I began to write about 2 years ago because I just could not take the clutter anymore. I am sure nobody is ever going to read this weird log written by an adult who was self-parenting himself as he could not wrap his head around the idea of keeping a clean room. But, I love this piece. Probably one of my favourites. Writing this helped me process myself. Though to an external mind, this note might read as "WTF?", to me this reads as "Wow, way to go Ram!"