I have a new hobby. It's called "decluttering" – the magic bullet that has saved me money, space and possibly my sanity. You see, prior to this, I was what you could call a pack-rat. I keep everything: books, CDs, clothes, gadgets, magazines, shoes... a lot of them old. So my desk at work and my apartment resembled a mildy classier version of Cash Converters, simply because I'm also a bit of an organised freak. I like knowing where everything is.

The breaking point happened two weekends ago. I was doing chores at home and I made a list of boxes, hooks and shelves I meant to get from IKEA to house the stuff I'd recently obtained. It then dawned on me: Why do I need more storage solutions? A lot of the stuff I had, I hadn't touched in as long as five years. Whatever nostalgia I clung to at the time I decided to make them keepsakes had since evaporated.

As for the newer things, I'm still fond of them but will, in time, feel nothing for them... like the handsome 1m-by-1m framed painting that was meant to go on the wall behind my bed (which I discovered couldn't because said wall was an impenetrable load-bearing structure when I tried to drill a hole through it). So I did myself a big favour that morning – I began to declutter, starting with my storeroom. I separated things into three groups: Keep, throw and give away. 

Once I detached myself emotionally, it was a speedy process to go through my things. I recalled a tip from a Kaizen Management seminar I attended. The lecturer had recommended tagging everything on our desks with a red dot. Anything you used, you remove the red dot. Anything left with a red dot after a month, simply remove from your desk as you're not likely to touch them again anyway.

I wasn't about to red dot anything. Most of the stuff in my storeroom had been untouched for years. After an hour, my storeroom had half the stuff it originally had. Half of what I pulled out, I meant to give away to family and friends and the rest would see the inside of a recycling bin or a rubbish chute. I was tired but relieved.

Over the next few weeks, I did the same with my closet, kitchen and desk at work. It's a lot of space to declutter and it's a continuous process. What I'm learning from it is that, I don't really need a lot of stuff. And letting go of stuff – literal and metaphoric – becomes abundantly easier. I ended up with more room in my life. My loved ones are also happy because I'm like an off-season Santa Claus. Everybody wins.