In Part 2, I wrote about Dana K. White’s concept of the “Clutter Threshold” from her book Decluttering at the Speed of Life 📚. Here’s another of her ideas that has been percolating in my mind: “Containers.” White suggests viewing the shelves, drawers, cubies, cabinets, and surfaces of your home as containers. The concept also applies to each room and to your home as a whole. White uses the word “container” in the sense of a thing that keeps its contents from spreading or expanding. Containers set limits. At first I didn’t find this particularly illuminating, but now that it has started to sink in, I can see the practical benefits, with my own home in mind. As I understand it, the idea can be used as a rule of thumb for determining how much stuff is too much stuff. It can help with otherwise difficult decisions of how much to keep and what to give up.

“Accept the limitations of the space you have,” as White puts it, “and declutter enough that your stuff fits comfortably in that space.” For example, when a shoe rack is seen as a Container, it limits the number of shoes you have. The maximum number of shoes you keep is determined by the number of shoes that fit nicely on the rack. In my house, our family’s shoe rack is definitely not Containing our shoes. We treat it more as an area to pile shoes on top of and around. If I were asked to solve our shoe clutter, I would be tempted to buy an additional shoe rack. But this would only exacerbate the problem. Our kitchen serves many functions for our family, including a place for cooking, eating and playing. Holding shoes is not one of the primary purposes of the room, and that is why our shoe rack needs to keep our shoes confined to a reasonable area.

This was definitely a helpful shift for me to start considering our home as not only a container for our belongings but also a space for our family to live and play. Of course, I knew that already in a sense, but I didn’t apply the concept directly to decluttering. Yes, we need some counter space in our kitchen to hold our toaster and dish rack. But we also need uncluttered counter space for preparing meals. I was reminded of the Container concept yesterday when our family was listening to some lovely Christmas music and we had an impromptu dance party in the living room! These joyful moments together are something we need as a family, not more toys and boxes crowding the floor and limiting our movement. In other words, our family can choose to limit and contain our belongings so that we have the freedom to take up more space. That means less irritation and more playing, dancing, and laughing together. If nothing else, that’s an idea that can motivate me through the decluttering journey ahead.