My girlfriend was looking for a new place to stay, but instead of having her rent a room, I convinced her to come stay with me (yeah I know, big life change right?). It meant I had to completely re-design my room, which was really set up for just one to stay and work, not two.

I had two main goals for the re-design, which informed everything:

1. It had to comfortably accommodate the living and working spaces for two.

2. It had to be as simple as possible, in form and function.

The Old Room

This is what my room looked like prior to the re-design.

The wardrobe and single bed were really set up for only one.

The main anchor of the room was this bookshelf which took up the most space and attention. Unfortunately, I realized from the beginning that it had to go, it was taking up way too much room and I couldn’t maneuver anything new around it.

I also realized that no matter how much I tried, the new room wasn’t going to fit everything I already had and still have space left for hers. That meant I had to go through a heavy, nuclear-level de-clutter.

De-cluttering my books took the longest time. I pared down my collection to the ones I absolutely wanted to keep, and these were transferred to a temporary shelf in the living room (it was interesting how few books were really essential and how obvious which ones they were).

The books I chose to let go totaled up to four large bags, which brought me to a dilemma: for a book-lover like me, throwing books away is a heart-breaking waste. Luckily for me I read about a book swap going on in the papers. My girlfriend gamely helped me truck down the heavy bags to the swap, and since the goal was to de-clutter not re-clutter, I didn’t bother getting any new books in return.

The New Room

This is what the new room looks like now.

It’s a pretty big change, isn’t it?

My girlfriend and I looked into doing minor tweaks to the room at first, like simply adding a new single mattress, but we realized early on that approach wasn’t going to work. To make the room work for the both of us was going to require a major overhaul.

Our favorite bit of the new room is this open space in front of the desk where nothing exists but a carpet and a bean bag. I was hesitant to leave this space empty when planning out the new look, but when the furniture came and I actually experienced it, I fell in love with it instantly.

The entrance to the room is a little cramp, and there’s something refreshing about going through a tight space into a wide, empty opening. It makes me feel free, light and relaxed – I didn’t know it at the time, but my girlfriend and I had created a physical pause, a space for us to sit, relax, do nothing, do something, wait, be still, reflect. She’s done some handicraft there, we’ve both read there, and have already enjoyed some movies on the iMac while lounging on the bean bag. The empty space invites us to fill whatever it is we need to fill into it, or to fill nothing into it. And that’s as Zen as I’m going to get now.

Lessons Learned

Setting out the design goals right from the start proved invaluable when making decisions, as was focusing on the essential big pieces first and weaving other choices around them.

I knew that the wardrobe and bed were the two most important pieces for the both of us to live comfortably together, and so we fit them in first. That meant much less space for my books and the work table, but those were compromises that just had to be made.

Even though I de-clutter at least once a year, it was still quite surprising how much stuff I kept that I didn’t need anymore, and how much I could actually live without when forced to make a choice. The 3 De-Cluttering Boxes strategy still proved useful, and Peter Walsh’s quote was a big help whenever I had to decide between keeping something or not (and I had to not keep a lot of things during this re-design):

It’s not about the stuff – it’s about the life you wish to live…It’s important to remember that what you own and where and how you live is a reflection of the person you are. A clutter-free, organized life is about living in a way that helps create your best possible life – happy, stress-free, creative, motivated and enriching. Happiness can’t be found in the quantity of stuff we own, it’s in the quality of relationships that we form. What we own should foster that life, not be a hurdle to it.

1. The Benefits of Low-Fi Holidays
2. The Digital Clutter
3. The 3 Decluttering Boxes

Whenever I come back from overseas, I like how much clarity I gain about what’s important and what’s not. I pack light, so sometimes all I have is a book to entertain me – sometimes not even that, so I’m forced to watch and listen to what’s around me, be present and to think.

I also make it a point to check and respond to email minimally if it’s a work trip, and to not use the internet at all if it’s a holiday. It’s refreshing how all the information that clamors for my attention, which seems so essential back home, just fades away into the background without consequence.

It makes me wonder again, how much of my digital clutter is really essential. I’ve become more keenly aware that there’s a real line between consuming and creating, and while I’m doing one I can’t be doing the other.

1. Photographing Tokyo, Autumn: Part 1
2. The Writer’s Ego

I’ve always thought of myself as a devout declutterer; I regularly prune away old books and clothes, I throw junk away the moment I get it and I like to keep my desks empty and clean. I even tend to err too much on the side of decluttering by throwing away stuff that I regret later.

But I realized something about myself today. While I may be a physical declutter bug, I’m a hoarder in another realm, the one with ones and zeroes. Just a quick glance at my iTunes library tells me that I have a grand total of 2765 songs, most of which have not been listened to, and which iTunes helpfully tells me will take 9.3 days of non-stop 24-hour listening to finish.

That doesn’t include the other media I have, like podcasts (306 unwatched TED talks), ebooks (that I bought even!) and the articles (Instapaper Pro rocks!) I saved on my iPhone.

And you know what the best part is? The collection keeps growing.

Good God.

Why this incessant need to keep collecting media? There’s no way that I could ever consume all of it. And while the illusion is that digital media is free (yea right, tell that to the $300 external HDD I just bought), it consumes the only nonrefundable resource of all: time.

We’re smart animals right? We’ve solved the Information Age. Now we need to get to the Information Management Age and make sense of all this info-junk. I’d declutter it all but then I’d get really recursive; spending extra time managing stuff that consumes my time so I’d spend less time on it.

I could delete it all, but strangely enough, while throwing away old clothes is easy for me, throwing away old media is not. What the frak is up with this double-standard?

1. The 3 Decluttering Boxes
2. The Benefits of Low-Fi Holidays
3. Against the Voice of Should

We’re drawing closer to Chinese New Year, and I’ve been doing some early spring cleaning with some hardcore decluttering this year.

Now, I love me some decluttering, but how to go about doing it? After years of making both leanness and regret, I’ve found a quick and easy way is to divide your stuff into 3 boxes, and then decide how hardcore you want to get.

(These don’t have to be actual physical boxes, but boxes you categorize your stuff into in your mind.)

The 3 Boxes of Decluttering

The Keep Box

This is easy. The stuff that you absolutely know you want to keep goes into the Keep Box. This includes things like the clothes you always wear, the books you love and the stuff you use everyday that keeps you happy and healthy.

The Throw Box

Stuff that is definitely going out goes into the Throw Box. This includes stuff that don’t fit your present life anymore and have no place in the vision of your future. If you haven’t used or seen it in a while, chances are that it’s good to go.

The Maybe Box

The Maybe Box is where stuff you’re not sure whether you want to keep goes into. When you’re sorting out your stuff, don’t stop your momentum with indecision. If you don’t know whether to keep or throw something, put it in the Maybe Box and decide later.

Deciding Threshold – How Hardcore are You?

The way to sort the Maybe Box is to decide how hardcore you want to go.

Nuclear Declutter

Everything in the Maybe Box goes. If you had to wonder about keeping something, you don’t really need it.

Tactical Declutter

Sort it out. Some of the stuff you’ll keep, and some of the stuff you’ll throw. Make the best decision you can.

Delay Declutter

Not sure? Seal the stuff you’re not sure about, stow it away somewhere and set a deadline for yourself. If say, after six months you don’t miss the things inside, they’re clear to go.

Wimp-Out Declutter

You throw everything in the Maybe Box into the Keep Box and rationalize to yourself that yes, you do need those old floppy disks after all.

Keep it Clean, Encourage the Vision

In your decluttering adventures, take care not to throw the baby out with the dishwater. It’s not throwing things out for the sake of throwing things out, it’s about keeping your environment true to the direction you want your life to be going. Quote Peter Walsh, author of It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, from an interview with Unclutterer;

It’s not about the stuff – it’s about the life you wish to live…It’s important to remember that what you own and where and how you live is a reflection of the person you are. A clutter-free, organized life is about living in a way that helps create your best possible life – happy, stress-free, creative, motivated and enriching. Happiness can’t be found in the quantity of stuff we own, it’s in the quality of relationships that we form. What we own should foster that life, not be a hurdle to it.

1. The Digital Clutter
2. A New Room
3. Looking Back: 21 Dragons’ 2009