The Accidental Minimalist: How I Learned to Stop Hoarding and Live with Less

Well, I hate to break this to you, but I used to be a hoarder. I might not be a manic one, but it used to be so hard to open my pull-out drawers because of the gazillion of stuff there. “Throw away all those examination papers from primary school! Donate the shirts you no longer wear so you have room for the new ones!” screamed my mom for the fiftieth time. As a natural minimalist, she didn’t consider the fact that I had developed this weird attachment to those stuff over the years. It might sound strange (and I’m okay with getting teased over this), but it would be much easier for me to buy brand new things for donation than handing out what I had had for so long.

So… what changed? If a main character in a book has this mind-blowing arc that alters the essential quality of their personality, I also have my share of this so-called unique path. I first started by buying fewer things to suppress the chance of getting attached. As expected, it didn’t solve the main problem. I still wasn’t able to throw away most of my childhood stuff. Realizing that the change should be made from within instead, I slowly shifted my viewpoint:

1. It’s not the object, it’s the memory. I looked at my childhood stuff and thought about all the memories I had had with them (not all astonishing, most were just decent). I still felt sentimental, but I realized that it was not my love for the object holding me back. It was the memory.
   
   
2. I didn’t even remember that I had them if not for the decluttering session. I think it was normal to suddenly feel this strong nostalgic emotion over something that I hadn’t even thought about in years. But was it still normal to keep those stuff for some more years, locked and forgotten, just to store them again once I decided that the memory was too valuable? I didn’t think so.
   
   
3. I wouldn’t miss the stuff when they were gone. The hardest part of all was perhaps convincing myself that I wouldn’t miss those stuff once I had thrown them away. While I knew deep down that I would have forgotten about them in no time, the comprehension took time.
   
   
   
4. I took pictures of the stuff before I got rid of them. When it was extremely hard to let go of something because of its past value, I took a picture of it for the sake of keeping the memory last. It might be a questionable step to some, but I found this move very helpful. I could easily throw something away physically after making sure that I had saved it digitally.
   
   Was it smart or stupid? I couldn't tell.
   
   
5. Stop collecting things just because they’re cute. Yup. Take it from someone who used to collect all things cute: stickers, erasers, new notebooks, used notebooks, agenda, stamps, enamel pins, you name it. Since I have decided to no longer be a collector, my life feels much more organized.

All those steps might have helped me, but breaking the ‘one step forward, two steps backward’ cycle was still a challenge in itself. Making it an overnight success was, without a doubt, impossible. For comparison, it took me years to get better.

If the main character has to face a major plot twist that leaves our mouth wide open, then I too. A few months ago when I was in the office, I opened a message from my sister that left a sour taste in my mouth. She told me that—please brace yourself for this—there was a baby mouse in our flat… I repeat: a freaking baby mouse in our flat…

A little bit of me died inside that day. I mean, I had started to get better at not hoarding, so why now?

Following the shocking news, my sister then told me that the flat’s guard had helped her capture the little pest. She sent me a video as proof. “Baby or not, a mouse is still a mouse!” I said frantically when my mom tried to shrug off the experience by calling it ‘only a baby mouse’. “Who knows if the baby and its mom have had a secret party here after invading our peace?”

Well, it turned out that I was only exaggerating. After some investigation, we reckoned that the baby mouse came in when our room was being cleaned in the morning since we had let our door open. The baby mouse must have thought that we were very welcoming. How charming.

Even when I had discovered the real reason behind the appearance of this uninvited guest, I didn’t feel relieved enough yet. I decided to go through all of our belongings in our flat. I decided to ‘come clean’. Irrelevant files that I had kept as a souvenir? Thrown away. Backpacks that I wouldn’t use again in the future? Donated. Some broken binders that I had kept just in case I might need them again someday (I wouldn't)? To the bin, they went.

The situation, if you would like to know, was more or less like this:

In conclusion, the last tip worked like magic to me:

• Beware of the pest if you hoard. Since my fear of living with pests was far greater than saying goodbye to an extreme amount of stuff, it was a great wake-up call that I needed.
  
  Should I thank the baby mouse for this, or would it assume that a thank you equals a welcome gesture?

Needless to say, I may not be the most minimalist person yet (I still love to shop), but I now find peace in living with less unnecessary stuff. I feel like this lifestyle is not only suitable for me but is much healthier too.

On a more serious note, I encourage you to contact your healthcare provider or a mental health professional if by any chance you feel hindered by a severe hoarding issue. Please remember that you're the one who gets to say when help is needed.