Can decluttering or minimalism in your home actually change your life? Here’s what the experts say

Kate Demolder speaks to professional organisers about the allure of minimalism

L-R: Kim + Lyn; Vera Keohane; Suzy Kell

The way I categorise my home is thus: If it hasn’t been worn in a year, it’s donated; if it collects dust, I give it away; if a new book doesn’t fit on a shelf, I choose one to be removed.

These understandings are laid out by the new rules of minimalism, stressful idioms that aim to prove a link between living with abundance and living with less; digitise your photos; give away what doesn’t spark joy; never buy anything on sale; think constantly about what will enable you to live the best life possible.

It’s inevitable that these practices are linked back to Marie Kondo, the celebrity decluttering guru, whose book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has sold more than ten million copies, and whose stance can seem twee but is rooted in Shinto tradition: an understanding that having fewer possessions allows us to care for them as if they had souls.

Wading through her course of study brings forth a variety of uncomfortable feelings, including a burning desire to untrap oneself from such unpleasantness raging within. Her KonMari method hit seemingly impenetrable nerves, causing an unprecedented uptick in charitable donations worldwide, as well as a self-satisfied movement of minimalist, hyper-organised living.

“She was definitely one of my bigger influencers,” decluttering coach Suzy Kell tells the Irish Examiner. “Towards the end of my college days, before she became well-known, a sort of wave of minimalists began writing blogs and sharing videos which I watched a lot of. I started getting into decluttering, then, a few years later.”

Some claim that Kondo’s approach to life is a direct response to the 2008 banking collapse, one which exposed the process of easy acquisition as both humiliating and destructive. Suddenly, it became newly necessary and desirable to learn to rely on less. This is a tempting thesis, one that fits the timeline neatly, but it seems that this cultural aftershock was less about acquiring less and more about the fluidity and ease at which one may acquire more.

Suzy Kell, decluttering coach

From 2009 on, minimalism became an increasingly aspirational and deluxe way of life; at the time of writing, the hashtag #minimalism pulled up more than twenty-seven million photos on Instagram, with many of the top posts depicting high-end interior spaces.

When Kim Kardashian West showed off her house — a stark, blank, white-waller mausoleum — to US Vogue in 2019, the words she used to describe it were two: “minimal monastery.” This is because, in a billionaire like Kardashian West’s case, less is more attractive when money isn’t limited, and minimalism is easily transformed from a philosophy of applied restraint into an aesthetic, luxurious language. Indeed, a self-centric intention that differs not from the acquisitive attitude that the belief system purports to reject.

Interestingly, this likeness is rarely acknowledged by its believers. Many of today’s minimalist cohort maintain that the practice is for everyone, no matter the income, but it still feels that the audience they target is undeniably implicitly affluent. (On Kondo’s online store, for example, the first product listed is an $80 tuning fork and rose-quartz set.)

Indeed, today’s minimalism, with its focus on self-improvement, feels oddly governed by a capitalist society. Less, it feels, is always more — more transfer of goods, more repeating of items, more freedom. However, it can be argued that true minimalism, which would involve the process of decluttering, would keep expenses low and purchases to a minimum — which, in turn, creates a life that is clear and more streamlined. 

This may not work for someone living on the breadline, but it might work for someone with a Marxist agenda, given that his 1848 work, The Communist Manifesto,which he wrote with Friedrich Engels, leads to the conclusion that there is not only too much stuff in your home but too much stuff in the world. In the manifesto’s unforgettable words: “A society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”

Today’s most popular minimalists do not align themselves with Marx. What they do align themselves with, however, is minimalism as self-improvement. This is the worst kind of minimalism argument, in this writer’s opinion — entrapping themselves within the boundaries of the system, rather than handing over the reins for self-validation at the hands of the individual. However, a profound kind of minimalism does exist, one which realises that stripping away excess (and, in turn, capitalism) is the realisation that the world is more troubled, more difficult, and also more wondrous than it seems. This is, in the end, the most convincing argument for minimalism: with less noise in our heads, and less clutter in our homes, we hear the world at its loudest.

Vera Keohane, a KonMari Certified Decluttering Consultant

Aligning herself with this is Cork woman and former nurse, Vera Keohane, who trained with Kondo in New York in 2018. Her clients span the “length and breadth of the country,” and, when asked whether the practice is ultimately reserved for the rich, she insisted that decluttering is entirely different to minimalism.

“Decluttering is not a movement or anything like that,” she says. “It’s just a really nice way to live.”

“I actually got into it when I was on the Camino, and observed one woman who was in a group with us pack everything she needed into one knapsack for the whole trip. She was just so present in the moment, while we were completely preoccupied with our possessions. I came home after that and was on a mission to simplify my life, and so I did.

“Our internal world and our external world are mirrors of each other. So if there’s chaos around you, there’s going to be chaos going on in your head as well.”

KIM + LYN from A Sorted Affair

Professional organisers Kim Fitzgerald and Lyn Luxford of A Sorted Affair concur.

“Scientific studies indicate that clutter is more than just a minor inconvenience. It can lead to anxiety, disturb sleep, and hinder our concentration. It also has a detrimental impact on our productivity.”

The pair, who have worked with the likes of Pippa O’Connor Ormond and Lottie Ryan, also refute the idea that minimalism is solely linked to the upper classes.

“The tendency to hold onto things “just in case” might stem from a time when things were hard to come by,” they acknowledge. “Back in the day, the elite might not have had this problem, explaining why minimalism feels kinda posh.”

But having worked in various homes (they first met while filming RTÉ home improvement show Home Rescue), the pair say they have found people from different backgrounds “all face similar challenges”.

Suzy Kell cpnsulting with a client 

Kell, says “a certain snobbery” does exist in the world of minimalism and the organisational porn we consume on TikTok and Instagram. The practice of essentialism, she suggests, might be a far greater and kinder way of moving forward.

“I’ve been on panels before where people have argued what is minimalist and what isn’t, and I’m like, who is making up these rules? When you look at it plainly, there is very little difference between being impoverished and being minimalist, but minimalism can feel so unapproachable.

“Helping people to get rid of stuff they really don’t need is just a form of life management,” she says.

And, “people have their own version of what the essentials are,” she says with a smile.

“Those things are good to know, and cannot be taken away.”

Five easy tips to start decluttering 

• Keep a charity donations bag somewhere handy to pop in things you want to get rid of anytime during your day 
• Only take out what you can declutter with the time and energy you have to avoid getting overwhelmed and not finishing it 
• If you feel anxious about starting, pick one category to focus on: like picking up all the rubbish you see, or only stationery, to keep your first steps manageable  
• If you can't bring yourself to decide, sort things into piles. E.g. put all your tops, trousers, and dresses into separate piles and come back to each one later.
• Trust yourself to solve problems - what would I do if I didn't have this thing? Re-buy it? Borrow it? Use something else? You are more resourceful than you think.