Nearly every blog or book on downsizing recommends some form of getting rid of the things you don’t ever use. It makes sense as having less stuff is kind of the entire idea behind minimalism. However, I think that the more important pillar of minimalism is living a more intentional life.

There are many items in our house that I do love and want to use, but never do. Things like cookbooks, or board games, or that guitar sitting in the corner getting dusty. Following the rules of a packing party or other methods of cleaning up would cause me to remove these things from my life. But maybe these things are not the clutter?

What if, instead, we remove the items we do use everyday, for large chunks of time, which are not making our lives more delectable? Cancel the cable subscription, sell the tablets strewn about the house, get rid of all the other mindless things that steal our time, our attention, our focus and prevent us from doing the things we truly desire to do like becoming better cooks, learning to play that dusty guitar. We keep these things because we use them for hours every single day, but they clutter our spaces, and our time with little lasting return.

We’ve been trying this. We got rid of cable which consumed a lot of our time. So far, we’ve used our new found free time to play board games, and read books, things we love but “never have time for”. The results have been wonderful. Life is already much more enjoyable after only a couple months without TV.

So while you’re decluttering your home, don’t just get rid of something you admire because you don’t use it. Instead, really consider the reason why you don’t use it. Maybe you have a time thief in your life that needs to go instead? Or maybe you just don’t enjoy that item as much as you thought and it needs to go? Anyways, my point is that sometimes the clutter are the items you use the most, not necessarily the items you use the least.