MINDSET RESET

You’ve gotta love the vibe of a good spring clean – but what if waste warrior Kate Fenwick told you you could enjoy feeling centred and sorted year round, without lifting a finger?

Every spring, we seem to collectively lose our minds. The sun comes out, we open those cupboards we’ve successfully ignored for years, and suddenly we’re standing in the hallway surrounded by three rubbish bags, an exercise machine nobody has ever exercised on and 17 reusable drink bottles. Welcome to the great spring clean.

I have a slightly controversial suggestion. What if we didn’t need one?

I’m not suggesting we live surrounded by dust. Clean your house – please. No, I’m talking about the other kind of spring cleaning – the annual purge that sees us remove stuff from our cupboards, congratulating ourselves on being wonderfully organised, then driving half of it to the op shop.

Somewhere along the way, decluttering has become almost as fashionable as consuming. We buy, we accumulate, we get overwhelmed by how much stuff we own, then we have a massive cleanout so we can feel lighter – and make room for some new stuff.

The problem isn’t really the spring clean. The problem began months or years prior, when the things came through the front door. If we consumed less in the first place, our homes might not need these seasonal evacuations.

Before you fill the boot and head triumphantly towards your local op shop, there’s another uncomfortable conversation we need to have.

Op shops aren’t free rubbish dumps with nicer signage. If your frying pan has lost half its coating, your jeans have an unidentifiable stain and your plastic container has been missing its lid for years, donating it doesn’t magically make it useful. Someone at the other end now has to deal with it – and that costs charities time and money.

Absolutely rehome good things; donate quality clothing, pass on furniture, sell things, give things away. But a pretty good rule is this: if you’d be disappointed to buy it, think carefully before you donate it.

Owning something comes with responsibility not just for the exciting bit when we swipe our card and take it home. When something has genuinely reached the end of its life, we have to pay to dispose of it properly.

Perhaps this spring, instead of focusing on what needs to leave your house, start watching what comes into it. Ask yourself if you need that new thing, and whether you’ll actually use it.

The most effective decluttering method I’ve ever discovered doesn’t involve labelled baskets or colour-coded wardrobes – it’s simply buying less stuff. The ultimate spring flex is opening the cupboard, looking inside and thinking, ‘Actually, we’re pretty good here’, then going outside to enjoy the sunshine instead. WASTEDKATE.CO.NZ