Your Clutter Eras Tour: A Midlife Decluttering Journey

I’ve spent the past week listening to Taylor Swift’s Life of A Showgirl album on repeat. The songs are like earworms – even in my sleep they are playing on a loop! All this Taylor excitement got me thinking about how successful her Eras Tour was and how effortlessly she told the story of her creative journey. Which then got me thinking about clutter eras!

For me, most trains of thought lead to clutter (it’s a blessing and a curse!) Mentally separating my clutter into eras helps me understand its origins and put it into the appropriate context. Which in turn enables me to identify and edit the things from each era that no longer matter.

It’s a super useful metaphor (Thank You Taylor!) if you are decluttering several decades’ worth of stuff. Let’s take a quick tour of your clutter eras so you can put them in perspective when it’s time to make editing decisions.

The Childhood Era

I define the childhood clutter era as the years from birth through high school. You may have things that your parents saved for you; a baby book, blankets, rattles, etc. Then there are possibly toys you played with among other treasures: a doll cradle, favorite stuffie, china trinkets. Once you get to high school there’s your prom dress, letters from friends (remember those?) and yearbooks. And don’t forget the sentimental mementos we used to keep like concert tickets, pins and even notes you passed in class!

We passed our childhood years in a pre-digital era, so there’s probably a lot of paper in your collection of memories. As you take a tour through this era, think about what is the most meaningful to keep going forward. Do you need to keep letters from people who are no longer in your life? Are your high school yearbooks worth the space they take up in your home? Maybe the picture of you in the prom dress is better to keep than the actual dress itself. Curate the important things you enjoy visiting from your childhood years and let the rest go.

The Early Adulthood Era

This clutter era – compared to the others – has way less volume. That’s because we were mobile in our twenties. Most of us moved around a fair amount and since we were early in our careers there wasn’t a lot of extra disposable income to spend on things. I have yet to meet someone who got sentimentally attached to their IKEA furniture. In fact, most of us upgraded from the stuff we bought in our 20’s as soon as we could!

Mostly what I see saved from this era with clients are their media collections; CDs, VHS tapes and DVDs. Even though most of us are streaming our music these days, we invested a lot of money on those collections and it feels somehow wrong to part with them. But you can part with them. They served you well for the time that you used them – and now it’s okay to say goodbye.

Raising Kids Era

The child-rearing years represent the most gnarly clutter era. OMG we buy so much stuff during this era! Let’s review: Clothing, sports equipment, toys, craft supplies, board games, video games, backpacks, dolls, souvenirs, and the list goes on!

A lot of this stuff is technically owned by your kids (even though it has lived in your house for decades!)  Some of it you purposefully saved for them. Some of it they purposefully saved for themselves. A lot of it you saved reflexively or it just never found its way out the door. It’s tucked away in your garage, your attic, your storage closet under the stairs. It’s lurking in closets, stuffed into bins or even hiding in plain sight. It has seeped into every crevice and drawer in your home – you just haven’t realized the scale of the era of clutter. Fifteen years after the last kid in my house played with a Nerf Gun I am still finding those foam bullets! This era also tends to be the most emotionally charged for lots of reasons. But remember, you are a curator. You can identify what’s important to keep around and what has lost its cache. Sure, get your kids to weigh in on what is important to them. But at the same time give them storage boundaries that will help them be curators as well. There is a lot from this era that can go!

Aging Parents Era

We in the sandwich generation often witness the collision of clutter eras – namely our parents aging and dying while our homes are still full of clutter from raising kids. Now is the time when countless pieces of furniture, collectables, framed photos, and other treasures from ago start making their way into our homes.

You can and should be selective about what you take in during this time. Don’t accept things that are just going to collect dust in your basement. You don’t have to say yes to everything! The aging parents era is a good time to clear out the deadwood from some of the other eras to make room for those of your parents’ things that you treasure. If everything is important then nothing is; to treasure something you need to have space to appreciate it. And that means being selective.

All of this to say you are entering a new era – your midlife era – your clutter-free era! Surround yourself with a curated collection of items from each of your eras, and let the rest go. After all – Taylor couldn’t put all of her songs on her Eras Tour set list – the concert would have been 9 hours long at least! Instead, she curated a set of songs that mattered most. She’s pretty smart, that one!