"We have the space" is no reason to keep something

We all have our triggers, and this is mine.

Everyone has something that ignites the fire inside them, unleashes a bee in their bonnet, gets their undies in a bunch. Sometimes we can’t even explain why.

Mine is this phrase. I’ve had a hard time articulating exactly why, so I’m going to attempt to work it out in this post.

Here’s the phrase: “We have space for it, why not keep it?”

This phrase might enter your purview after you’ve found some successes with decluttering. Once you’ve achieved blissful empty space, people start coming for it. Husbands innocently suggest using said empty space to end a debate about whether or not to keep something. Family members start asking you to store things for them (Just Say No).

Now, I’m a huge fan of using your space as a limiting factor. If you don’t have room for X, then you simply can’t hang onto X. I go on about that here:

Organizing devices are actually clutter

But the opposite idea—using your space as a reason to keep something—is anathema to me. I feel its wrongness deep in my bones.

Here’s an example. We have a Victorian home which isn’t Painted-Lady-intricate, but it has a lot of different paint colors going on, both inside and out. Between that and a rental property, there are a lot of paint colors to keep track of. We’ve generally kept leftover paint to use for touchups and such. Normal stuff.

Not my house. Photo by Michael Kahn on Unsplash

…until it got out of hand. Before I knew it, we were storing dozens of paint cans in a handful of different places around the house. If we wanted to find a color, we’d have to look at least 3 different places and slide several cans out of the way.

I finally tackled this issue last week, bringing all the cans to one spot to sort through once and for all and get rid of what we didn’t need. We determined we needed to keep about 20 cans. This led to a literal trunkful of cans destined for the recycling place (hot tip: paint stores often accept leftover paint for recycling).

Shoutout to Rodda Paint in SE Portland and the kind employee who cleaned up the full gallon of paint I accidentally spilled in the parking lot (d’oh!)

I wish I could say this was the first time I’d done a paint can purge, but no. I’ve probably disposed of an equal number of cans over the past 3 years, so we started with double this problem.

Some of the cans I recycled bore handwritten notes like “wrong color” and “don’t use.” WHY were we keeping these?

…because we had the space!

🤯

To wrap this up, I lay before you the bottom line. Here’s why this reasoning gets my goat:

1. Letting your space tell you whether to keep something is the opposite of intentional living. Though I do support letting your space tell you to get rid of something — I’m no stranger to contradictions.

2. The more things you have, the harder it is to find the things you have. It was a huge effort to locate whatever paint can we were seeking each and every time.

3. Eventually you have to pay the piper. Should we ever move, downsize, or remodel, we will ultimately have to sort through the paint cans. The longer we put it off, the bigger the job will be.

Now You

Can anyone else relate to my hottest of hot button issues? If not, what’s yours?

More Decluttering Inspiration