A cluttered home environment can leave you feeling stuck and overwhelmed. Here are tips to declutter as you approach home organizing projects that have raised your anxiety and led to avoidance. In the following article, I offer a few tips to declutter to help you know how to begin. Congratulations on taking the first step toward minimizing cluttering stress!
Decluttering your living space is a quick and effective way to get your energy moving!
Disorganization of your living space increases stress and can make it difficult to think clearly and feel good about yourself. Often your inner world, bouts of depression, or times of heightened anxiety lead to disorganization. Regardless of where it stems from, the outer disorganization always dampens energy and compromises mental health. Thankfully, even small attempts to improve your surroundings can shift your energy and make bigger projects seem more manageable!
Clearing spaces quickly transforms them.
I am using the word clear as opposed to clean for several reasons. First, although cleaning is often part of this process, dirt and dust alone are not the primary blocks to experiencing ‘good energy.’ Secondly, clearing requires more deliberate attention, some focus, and awareness. It’s hard to know what is blocking you when you’re just cleaning around it. Once you begin to eliminate clutter, a new perspective may emerge, helping to minimize indecisiveness and procrastination. There will likely be many emotional bumps along the way, but ultimately a renewed look and feel about your home environment will help you experience more optimism and less stress.
Here are (10) Tips to Declutter that will help get you started.
- Start small. Designate an area and resist beginning multiple project areas at once.
- Have what you need to start. Select boxes, bags, or other containers and label: Trash, Re-cycling, Donations, Re-locate. You may decide to add additional receptacles for other purposes. Keep in mind too many extra items in a small area may impede your progress. Having a pad of paper, pen, marker, labels, and post-it pad will be beneficial. Additionally, disposable gloves are also a good item to have handy!
- Think of some easily achievable general goals for the space, such as removing the trash or large items in your way. Get a sense of the manageable sequence of tasks. Writing that down will help. Make a plan ahead of time to relocate items. Depending on the size of the project, you may need to recruit help and explore all your resources. In general, keep the cleaning for last!
- Break the process down into stages. Some areas may have a multitude of tasks within tasks. If you discover a place within an area that needs timely attention to sort, write down this task on your pad of paper. Consider putting these things (files, letters, artwork, mail, etc.) into one container marked for sorting. Do your best not to get lost in the details.
- Stay Present! Adopt a compassionate, non-judgmental approach to what gets stirred up within you as your attention focuses on your physical environment. Often we don’t ‘see’ what is right in front of us until we slow down enough to really see it. This process will spark new awareness within you, and energy shifts may feel uncomfortable at first. There can be much healing through the clearing!
- Avoid making forced decisions. What is of value is a very personal assessment. When it comes to items with sentimental value, getting rid of even mundane things that once belonged to a loved one may feel difficult. If you struggle with deciding, put it aside or label a box “keep for now.” After my grandmother passed, my mom kept her electric teapot in her closet for ten years. When I asked her why she hadn’t gotten rid of the appliance she’d never used, she said, “it was my mother’s.” When she finally allowed herself to accept that the teapot was different than her mother’s necklace or her recipes in honoring her memory, then it was easier to let it go.
- If you discover many items fall into a category and don’t have a designated location, decide to collect all items, organize, and identify their “home.” Write this task down, put items in a labeled box and complete the job later. You don’t want to be running around collecting things, as you may not make it back to your project area too soon!
- Be flexible. Identify rigid thinking and try to entertain “what if” scenarios. What if that closet was empty or that large painting was moved from the wall, or the bed was turned around?? Our brains have mapped out our surroundings so much that entertaining new ways of using space can be challenging to explore. Open yourself up to imagine new scenarios.
- You should purge items associated with traumatic memories and those that are broken, damaged, and overly soiled. Fear of lack is one of the primary reasons we hold onto things. However, the heavy energy from these items will affect your mood and health. Their removal will invite fresh energy and prime you for receiving more abundance. (see more: How to Clear items and When to Burn!)
- Imagine yourself surrounded by things you love. When clearing a space, pay particular attention to how you feel in response to specific things. Let this be your primary guide when deciding to keep or purge an object. Keep in mind, cost is irrelevant! A high priced item mass produced may elicit few happy vibes. In contrast an original piece of artwork, your favorite mismatched chair or stones you collected may be the items that feel most comforting, meaningful or valuable. The key is in the selection.
By keeping these tips to declutter in mind, you’ll be better prepared to move through this process with ease. As you progress, be sure to notice shifts in your energy and within your space. New awareness gained from these activities equips you with information about yourself, your living space, and how you can continue to intentionally approach your home environment for a better quality of life.
If you’re interested in additional tips to declutter or supportive services to assist you with your decluttering projects, please visit me here: Estelle Bonaceto. For other reading, check out: Benefits of Focused Attention; here, you may find information to further assist you with tackling your projects. Wishing you much success and less stress with clearing spaces closest to you!
