Last week I mentioned I wanted to talk a bit more about this wonderful English word for which I´m not able to find an elegant translation into Spanish: declutter.

The other day, in the article, I referred to it as "hacer limpia", but there´s another way to call it that I like a lot more, and I hope the academics and purists of the Spanish language can forgive me because this word doesn´t officially exist: decluterear.

Online dictionary WordReference translates the verb declutter as "ordenar" or "poner orden " (meaning to tidy up), but in my opinion, that translation omits a big portion of the original meaning. Because even though it´s true that the end result is a tidier space, the key question here is not the what as much as the how.

To me, tidying up is about classifying things and moving them around so that they´re arranged differently, in a more aesthetic and logical way. But at the end of it, you have the same bunch of things as before. In contrast, decluterear consists of freeing up space by removing things, eliminating what in English is called clutter (which is how the verb was formed; de-clutter, as in remove clutter), and that I usually translate as morralla (the dictionary seems to more or less agree with me on this, as one of the meanings for the word morralla is "garbage", "trash" or "rubbish"... In short, whatever is no longer useful.

So then, decluterear (decluttering) is the art of setting ourselves free from what we don´t want and/or is no longer useful to us, to leave space for what we do want and find helpful. And this morralla, or clutter, is very often physical, but it can also be mental or emotional; in fact, decluttering our physical space has a liberating and renovating effect that goes way beyond, because, as it´s often the case, what happens around us is a reflection of what happens inside of us.

As I already mentioned, this year at home, we´ve accepted the challenge to declutter step by step, dedicating some time to it every day (or at least every week). The dictionary defines clutter as "desorden", "desastre" or "lío" (in other words, a mess), and once again, yes but no. The mess is a consequence of having too many things, too many trinkets that end up generating more and more mental noise and distractions. And this reminds me of two very cool phrases on this topic that I´d like to share with you all.

The first one is a minimalist saying (I´ll write more about minimalism in a future post). I came across it in an article by Joshua Becker, author of becoming minimalist, but I´m sure he wasn´t the first one to say it, nor will he be the last: LESS STUFF, LESS STRESS. I think this is a genius quote, so simple and so true.

The second one goes back to my period of "fighting against chaos", not long after moving to Ireland, when I was trying to get organized with cleaning the house and minding my little daughter... That´s when I came across a web page and email distribution list called FlyLady, which I found extremely helpful (if you´re curious,, look it up, the website is so old it looks abandoned, but the lady who created it is active in YouTube, and also has some presence on Instagram). Her approach goes directly to the key to all this, and it says: YOU CAN´T ORGANIZE CLUTTER, YOU CAN ONLY GET RID OF IT!

So, what about you? Do you spend your days "tidying up", moving things from one place to another and rearranging them, not daring to throw anything away? That was me for many years... Come on, have a good decluttering session; you´ll be amazed at how good it feels.