50 Pounds of Mud

5There's this great moment from the 1978 Country Music Awards:

Dolly Parton has just won Entertainer of the Year. As she rises from her seat, her dress splits right down the front, and she walks onstage holding a fur coat over her midriff.

In typical Dolly style, she laughs and quips, "Anyway, my daddy said that's what I got for putting 50 pounds of mud in a five pound bag."

I love Dolly. And that down-home logic is hard to argue with.

Here's the thing. A lot of us are trying to fit a 7-bedroom mansion's worth of stuff into our suburban 3-bedroom ranch. Shockingly, it's not going so well. And while you probably won't suffer a malfunction as public as Dolly's, your home may be bursting at the seams.

Several months ago I gave a client the bad news:

"You're going to have to get rid of half of what you own or move into a bigger house."

Facts are facts, Kellyanne Conway notwithstanding. If you have more stuff than will comfortably fit in your house, there's no "storage solution" that's going to help.

Don't fret; I'd never point out a problem without giving you a way to fix it!?Here's what to do if you have way too much stuff and a larger house isn't on your horizon.

Decide how much you get to keep.

Traditionally, decluttering involves looking at your stuff, evaluating each item, and getting rid of the things that aren't serving you.

Instead, I want you to look at your home and decide what will fit.

Take your closet: how many hangers can you fit in there?

By which I mean how many pants and shirts and dresses can you hang up?while being able to see them all?and get at them easily. NOT how many loaded hangers can you possibly squeeze into that space.

You're going to work backwards from there.

If you can only COMFORTABLY fit 25 hangers and you've got 37, you're going to have to choose 12 things to get rid of. Better make it 17, because you know there's more in the laundry pile.

You'll start with the stuff you never wear. But you may uncover that dress you wore to your sister's wedding, the night you met the love of your life, and even though you never wear it you can't quite bear to get rid of it.

You might have to get rid of it.

Liking something isn't always a reason to keep it.

If you don't have room, you don't have room, and maybe you should hang a picture from your sister's wedding in your living room instead of keeping a dress you'll never wear.

Here's what I learned from my friend Heather. We met when I was five and she was four. This is a relationship with longevity! And trust me when I tell you that she is way cooler than you or I will ever be.

Anyway, I helped her downsize so she could rent her D.C. house and follow her love to Hawaii.

She had goals and she had discipline.

She'd point at three boxes of Burning Man costumes and say, "I'm going to get that down to two boxes." And then she'd do it!

She wanted to reduce her shoes by half. Half! That meant getting rid of some that she still liked, but guess what? She liked moving to Hawaii even more.

Each time we moved on to a new category she'd look at what she had and decide what she was willing to make space for. This is a terrific strategy.

Here's a simple exercise:

Decide how many short-sleeved t-shirts you think you should own. You can base this on available space or how often you do laundry; use whatever criteria makes sense to you. Then gather all your t-shirts and pick your favorites until you hit that number.

Then you're done! No more hemming and hawing over the almost-great, oddly-cut, or color-faded. No more "Well I MIGHT wear it, now that I remember I have it." You just get rid of the extras.

I'm not promising that you'll get to move to Hawaii with your new love, but you never know what might happen if you lighten your load.

Not sure where to start? Download the 100 Things to Toss pdf - it will give you, well, 100 places to start.

p.s. Here's?my all-time favorite Dolly Parton song.