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National Clutter Awareness Week ended yesterday.  Here’s what I learned during my six-month attempt at decluttering:  Form a clear intention and serendipitous situations arise to help you realize it.  Three examples:

Minutes before I scoot out the door for an out-of-town shopping trip, a friend phones.  “Grab some good used clothing,” she advises.  Somehow she’s discovered that the store I’m

Water’s been seeping from our bathroom sink faucet into the oak cabinet beneath it.  While addressing this problem, we ended up replacing the faucet, the sink, the toilet, and the faded linoleum flooring. Fortunately, our bathroom’s so tiny that these changes weren’t costly.  But they did entail yanking out the oak cabinet, which we didn’t replace, and plopping it down beside our living room

Scavenging impedes and facilitates clutter busting. 

Scavenging sentimental but extraneous stuff from my folks’ and in-laws’ homes magnified my normal household clutter into a paralyzing mess.

But other people’s scavenging instinct provides me with ongoing, guilt-free opportunities for jettisoning stuff.  Scavengers haunt estate and garage sales, thrift and consignment stores, and buycycle and

For the past eight weeks I’ve juggled various trial-and-error techniques in an attempt to achieve a clutter-light, or maybe even a clutter-free, life by March 21 - 28, 2010. (That’s National Clutter Awareness Week.) My family and I carted countless bags of linens, shoes, clothing, tools, and books to thrift stores. We surrendered significant parts of our beloved newspaper, magazine, cardboard