I got new glasses.

It’s been a few years since I got a new pair of glasses. In fact, it’s been three and a half years, as my kind optometrist reminded me. (Local-ish friends who need an eye doctor, I highly recommend Dr. Cecil Wong in Maple Shade, near the Moorestown Mall.)

I can see clearly now, which is lovely. It includes me being able to read things on my laptop more easily, among other things. Turns out my left eye managed to get a bit less near-sighted for the first time in 46 years, so that was a pleasant surprise, but also explained why things were so blurry for a bit.

Of course, now I am getting used to my new prescription. I can literally feeling my left eye working to figure this new pair of glasses out, and it’s not entirely pleasant.

It occurs to me that this is how it is with life, right?

We go on for quite a while sometimes, not realizing that something is out of whack, and then even when it gets adjusted or repaired or fixed, there’s some discomfort in the process.

It’s like that with elections (can’t imagine why I thought of that), and it’s like that with decluttering, too.

We go on in our lives with clutter quietly piling up in our homes, and even if we tackle it, we sometimes feel untethered or unmoored afterwards.

Take my desk. It used to have a big open cabinet to the right that was intended to hold the CPU tower of a desktop computer. Of course, now desktops don’t always (or even usually) have towers. Moreover, I use a laptop, not a desktop, at least for now. So around the start of this year, Morris made me a shelf inside my desk, and I added two baskets as “drawers” that hold things like business cards for both of my business (I have a small art business called Kelly Ramsdell: Art & Words), greeting cards, a postal scale, and some tea lights for use in the rose quartz holder on my desk.

It was a massive improvement that allowed me better access to the things I’d been shoving in there all along. It also displaced a few things that I’d shoved in there because I had no idea what to do with them. So my delight with my new shelf and how the baskets worked out perfectly and so forth was decidedly tempered by the unpleasantness of having to figure out what to do with the other stuff.

Some of it was shredded. Some of it was tossed. Some of it found new places to land. And then I had to get used to it all: where is it, again? Is it still in my desk? Which basket?

I’m not alone in this. Last week, I asked a few friends to share their issues when it comes to decluttering. One of them wrote that her top three concerns about it are:

1. If I get rid of that thing, I'm going to need it immediately.
2. If I put that thing away, I won't ever remember I have it.
3. Is it worth spending time decluttering when I know I'm just going to clutter it up again?

How about you?

What are your top three concerns when you think about decluttering? They could be the reasons that keep you from starting in the first place, things that you find difficult or annoying during the process, or stuff that comes up for you once you’re done.

I would love to know, and I hope you will comment here and tell me!