The first step is to get rid of the junk. If you have a lot of junk, you're probably not going to be able to find anything useful in it. One way to think about this is to consider someone who has just moved into a new house. Their stuff has been hauled from the moving van into the house, but they haven't got it all unpacked yet. So their house contains both things they've owned for years and things they've acquired only recently. But there's no way to tell which is which, because everything is covered with a layer of dust. Just as an unpacked box in your house might contain anything, so any object in your basement or garage might be anything -- or might be nothing at all, just filler. Skip bins Morphett Vale has a range of waste bins and mini skips of different sizes to choose from, most with rear opening doors
The way to get rid of junk is not to make a lot of extra stuff. The way to get rid of junk is to make less of it. One reason is that there are now more ways to make things. If you want something, you can probably buy it--or download instructions for making it--online. You don't have to make it yourself. Another reason is that if you have less junk, you have less temptation to buy more of it. If you have ten thousand books, Amazon will always have something new for you. If your shelves are empty, Amazon will offer you only what they think you might really want. A third reason is that if less stuff gets made, there will be fewer toxic chemicals released into the environment when the stuff breaks down. But by itself this doesn't solve the problem. The most dangerous kind of garbage isn't toxic waste or garbage dumps or plastic bags floating in the ocean; it's uselessness. It's the thing that could be useful that isn't being used for anything. That's why I don't like cell phones; people keep them next to their beds at night. (A friend told me he keeps his in the refrigerator, but if he does I'm not sure how he can talk on.
We've been taught that a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind. But having a cluttered desk doesn't actually make it harder to clean your desk. What makes it harder is not having a good place for each category of thing. If you want to clean your desk, you need to be able to sort papers into In Box, To Do, and Reference. Clean desks are possible because we have invented storage solutions that can hold things out of sight, or that can hold large amounts of stuff compactly. If your desk were always completely clear, you would have no way to keep up with the incoming flux of papers and books and stuff. And if you had to keep all those papers in a separate room, having a very clear desk would become an obstacle. The right level of junk depends on the scale of your life. At one extreme is the hoarder who can't throw anything away because every item might be useful sometime soon if only he could remember what it was for. At the other extreme is someone who throws everything away as soon as it has outlived its usefulness, so that she never has to deal with its being outlived. It's not enough to throw away things you don't need. The thing to be rid of is the idea that there is stuff you need. The whole concept of "need" is just something people came up with to make themselves miserable. Get rid of the idea that you need anything, and you can get rid of your stuff problem. Need is not an objective fact; it is an emotion. It is true that if you are naked, you need clothes; but once you have enough clothes to keep warm, nakedness becomes a matter of taste, not need.
If you're like most people, you probably have a lot of junk. And if you live in a typical house or apartment, all the junk is in the same place: your living room and bedroom. It's lying on the floor and cluttering up the tables and shelves. You don't really use any of it. But it's stuff you don't want to get rid of either, at least not right away. So it stays there, creating clutter. What should you do? I think about this every day because my wife and I are slowly getting rid of our own junk, and we're still in the process of learning how to do it.