De-clutter by putting yourself back at the moment of purchase

I stumbled upon a blog called “Clutter Busting with Brooks Palmer”.

One fabulous technique I got from this site was from the post “Hanging on to Something that Hurts.”

In a nutshell, this technique for de-cluttering is simply to pretend that you are at the store trying to decide whether to buy the thing you are looking at. Brooks uses the example of a pair of high heels. If you wouldn’t buy those high heels again now, you can let them go. I love this paragraph from the post:

I remember working with a client in her clothes closet. She was complaining about how certain of her shoes were painful to wear, at the same time she said she liked how good they looked on her. Rather than say she should just get rid of them, I asked her to try them on. She did. She put on a pair. She stood up. She grimaced. I said, "We're in a shoe store. Take a walk around and see if you'd like to buy them." I kept it neutral because I wanted her to be as open as she could be. She walked a few steps and said, "I can't wear these anymore." She did the same with the other shoes that hurt her and she let them go too.

The beauty of this technique is that it helps you realize that you still have the same power now over your stuff to accept it or reject it as you did when you first decided to buy it. It is as if you turn back the clock to the moment of purchase and make the decision again, knowing what you know now after having owned it for _____ years. It helps you realize that you can make different decisions.