Happiness Expert Gretchen Rubin on Why Decluttering Makes You Feel So Much Better

Gretchen Rubin has been studying happiness (and habits and personality types) ever since writing her best-selling book, The Happiness Project, a decade ago. In her continuing search to find what makes us truly happy, and with the debut of her book, Outer Order, Inner Calm: Declutter & Organize To Make Room for Happiness, she’s confirmed something many of us have suspected all along: less is more.

“When you get rid of all that stuff that you don’t need, don’t use or don’t love, what people actually experience is that they feel like they have more,” she says.

Rubin recently talked to Parade.comabout when, why and how to part with things we don’t need and truly get our calm on.

Partly due to the popularity of Marie Kondo’s KonMari method and her Netflix show, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, people are embracing decluttering and organizing in a huge way. What do you think of her approach?

When I wrote the book, I did not know that her show was going to be happening. So that was a surprise. But of course I'm obsessed with it. It's fascinating. I find people's relationships with their possessions fascinating.

People can be very emotional when it comes to getting rid of their stuff.

There’s something supercharged about the subject. It sounds like a trivial thing, but it matters how cluttered your coat closet is. Get a handle on that and you feel great. Outer order contributes to inner calm.

What do you tell someone who is reluctant to part with a “perfectly good” item, something that still works but that she never uses?

The thing is to go ahead and acknowledge it. I just went through this with my brother-in-law and his fax machine. I said, "I don't think you need a fax machine." He said, "But sometimes people want to send a fax." And I said, "When was the last time someone sent you a fax?"

Sure, the thing still works. And those CDs are still good, so for some people it is hard to let go of something. Or to admit, Oh, I have this beautiful camera and I had so much fun with this camera. I took this camera on all these vacations. But the fact is I don't use a camera anymore; I just use my phone.

But we have to go that step and then let go of those things. Even though they are often still "good." They're still useful; they still serve their purpose. We just don't need them anymore.

Related: Happiness Expert Gretchen Rubin Wants to Help You Break Bad Habits

What’s one thing you have—and don’t want to get rid of—that you don’t technically need anymore?

I still have a dictionary, because I literally cannot conceive of not having a dictionary in my house. Even though the fact is I never use a dictionary; I just look up words online. But it's important to me for symbolic reasons and it's a nice dictionary. If it were just a paperback Merriam-Webster, I wouldn’t need to keep it.

What’s your best tip for whether something in your closet should stay or go?

“If you can’t decide whether to keep an item of clothing, ask yourself, ‘If I ran into my ex on the street, would I be happy if I were wearing this?’”

Most of us think of clutter as stuff. But you suggest that tasks—specifically tasks that are never started—can be clutter as well.

Yes! They're so draining. I think one of the best ways to finish a project is just to abandon it. You can just say, I'm not going to finish needle-pointing this pillow. Or I'm not going to learn how to play guitar. Or I'm not going to pretend like I'm going to use hand weights every morning. Just let it go. There’s so much crowding your closets and your shelves, but there are also things crowding your mind. It's weighing on your conscience.

The easiest thing is just to say, you know, I'm just not going to do that. Then it's done.

Your book 2017 book, The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too), helped people understand how they relate to the world courtesy of their personality type. How do the four tendencies—obliger, upholder, rebel and questioner—play into how we approach creating order?

Well, if you’re an obliger, you need outer accountability. So what works great is to have people come for the weekend so you have to clean up the guest room and the kitchen.

For questioners, they’ll often say things like, “Why would I make my bed every day if I'm just going to unmake it at night.” I say, “Fine, if you don't want to make your bed, you don't have to.” There's no magic to making your bed. For a lot of people, making the bed really helps them start the day right, makes them feel in control of themselves. But if you just bristle at it, then don't make your bed.

Related: Happiness Expert Gretchen Rubin on the Four Tendencies and How They Shape Us 

With rebels, they don’t do something because they're supposed to or because other people want them to or because they said they would. They do it because that's what they want. So, if you're a rebel yourself or you're dealing with a rebel, it's a matter of,  this is how you want it. You've got this whole room. It's full of junk. But you know what? You've been thinking you want a meditation room. You want a room that's clean and spare when you can go in there and do yoga and meditate every morning. So you're going to clean it out because you want a meditation room. Or this is just bugging you; you want to clean it up.

But here's the thing about rebels: let them do it whenever they want. If it's 2 a.m. and they say I want to clean out the garage now, it's like, that's great. For upholders, if they want to do it, they'll just do it.

So, there’s no one right way.

Right. There is no magic one-size-fits-all solution. You have to recognize what’s a good use of your time and energy. For example, the idea that you're going to alphabetize your spices. I mean, maybe you should and maybe that's a good use of your time and energy. But maybe you think, I don't live the kind of life where I need to alphabetize my spices, or where they would stay alphabetized for more than a day, so why would I bother?

Back to Marie Kondo, one of her key principles is you take everything out and put it in one giant heap to sort of force yourself to acknowledge this is how many books I have, this is how much clothes I have. And I see the logic of it, and it clearly works very well for some people. But I think some people would have nervous collapse.

And it could work for you; it's one way. But it's not the only way. If you want to just do one shelf in the medicine cabinet a day, that's fine too. If you need to just do little by little by little, over six months you will be amazed at how much you can do. So that's just another approach. You can just do it in a way that works for you, that feels right for you.

Is there one thing that can motivate everyone, regardless of their personality type/tendency? Except maybe a hard core rebel?

The average American spends 55 minutes a day looking for lost items. If I can find everything easily in my house, that's an hour I can spend reading every night. Or an hour I could spend catching up on Game of Thrones.

Related: Take Gretchen Rubin's Quiz to Find Out Your Personality Type

What makes you feel truly calm?

I really don't like not knowing where something is. I don't like having to look for something. For me, that’s very important so I don't just put things down, I put them away. Everything has a place that it goes. The advantage of that is that even if I don't remember where I put something, I can usually figure out where I would have put it.

I know everything that's in our apartment. So that's one thing that makes me feel very calm. I like knowing where things are. And what we have. Also, I don't like a lot of stuff. I'm a simplicity lover, so I like a lot of bare surfaces. That keeps me calm.