Declutter Your Life, Find Your Peace

Do you feel like you are surrounded by a stack of clutter that creates serious overwhelm and makes you feel like your office or home is one big giant mess?

Well, I’m here to tell you that you are not alone. Millions of people around the world suffer from clutter overwhelm. Clutter is a severe problem that not only affect our lives but our planet as well.

Clutter in your home or office can be defined as anything that takes up your physical, mental, and emotional space, doesn’t bring you joy, and does the opposite.

Studies have shown that clutter can cause stress and anxiety, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and less productive.

Now let’s explore how we can declutter your life and create space for calm and serenity.

Assessing Your Clutter

Let’s start to declutter your life by assessing all the clutter. Here’s how we can get started:

Identify The Different Types of Clutter

There can be many different types of clutter that can cause havoc in our lives; some of these include:

1. Physical clutter, such as paper and excess possessions, we don’t need.
2. Digital clutter, such as unnecessary emails that you will never read, too many apps on your phone, and disorganized files and folders on your computer.
3. Emotional clutter, such as unresolved relationship issues, negative self-talk, and social commitments, is draining and sucks out all your energy.

The Reasons Behind Your Clutter

1. Fear of letting go of old possessions even though they no longer serve a purpose or bring you joy.
2. The difficulty of deciding what to let go of, for example, if you have old clothes but keep them accumulating in your closet because you “think” you might wear them one day even though you know you haven’t worn them in years.
3. Lack of organizational skills.

Conducting an Audit of Clutter in Your Home and Life

If you are ready and want to start getting rid of clutter, you have to start by taking an audit room by room, drawer by drawer, and relationship by relationship to get rid of all the things you don’t need.

You can do this by:

1. Go room by room in your house and start identifying what is disorganized and could use a clutter audit.
2. Make a list of all your possessions and stuff, and think about what you need and don’t.
3. Evaluate your digital apps and subscriptions that you are on and start deleting files and unsubscribing to things you don’t need. ( This is a great way to save money too)
4. Reevaluate your current relationships and commitments and make room for people and obligations that make sense and bring you joy. Get rid of energy vampires that suck the life and happiness out of you.

By identifying the things, stuff, and people that declutter your life, you can start understanding the reasoning behind all the clutter and begin making room for more of what you value and what truly makes you happy.

The Benefits of Decluttering

The benefits of decluttering can have a profound impact on our lives. The positive mental and emotional ramifications of decluttering can be live changing significantly if you have a lot of clutter. The less stuff I have, the more calm and free I feel. Plus, that means less cleaning for me as a mom.

Some critical benefits of decluttering your life are:

1. Reduced stress: Now, who doesn’t want to feel less stressed? If you start decluttering, I promise your home will feel more like a sanctuary than an overwhelming, chaotic place that you must constantly clean. It will feel like a home that has a sense of calm.
2. Your productivity and focus will increase: Reducing clutter in your office can significantly increase your focus and productivity when you are not distracted by all the pieces of paper and stuff.
3. Improved mental and emotional health: Decluttering has a wonderfully positive effect on our mental and emotional health. Think about how good you feel in a spa. It’s clean and has minimal stuff, so we go to spas to relax, so think about if you make your home into a spa-like environment. Having minimal stuff equals less cleaning, so it’s calmer; therefore, we feel more peaceful and relaxed.
4. More creativity: Clutter can make you feel uninspired and less creative. You feel anxious if mountains of stuff surround you. But if we declutter our space, we can make room for more creativity and inspiration.

How to Declutter Your Life

To start to declutter your life, start small. You can start by decluttering one drawer in your house. Start in the kitchen and move through the house step-by-step, and soon you will have a less cluttered home. If you want to keep track of your decluttering efforts, sign up for my email list and get a FREE home decluttering journal!

For now, here are some of my main tips for decluttering:

1. Start in one room and one small drawer. It’s much easier to start by emptying one drawer than to think about decluttering a whole house or apartment. So what I do is I start by opening one drawer; I take the drawer out and pour all the stuff on the floor and sit on the floor and go through each item one by one and create piles of ” I need this” vs ” Toss it out” this way you can only keep what truly matters. Then remember to clean the drawer before putting the items back in.
2. Use Boxes and storage drawers. These can make everything look neater and more organized instead of having a pile of stuff in a drawer. If you separate items in boxes and label them, you will have more clarity in what is where. Plus, it’s easier to find things this way.
3. Ask yourself does this bring me joy and happiness, or do I use this at all? Be honest here because we often have a bunch of stuff we don’t even use or need piling up in our closets.
4. Declutter your digital life: Unsubscribe from all unnecessary emails and apps. Go through your computer, organize files and folders, and delete everything you don’t need. Make sure to back up your files in case you accidentally delete something important.
5. Socially declutter: Delete Instagram friends that don’t bring joy into your life, reassess social commitments, and say yes to only people and things that make you happy. Of course, this can only be the case sometimes as we can work with people that don’t necessarily bring us joy, but I mean, do what you can and where you can.

Maintaining a Declutter Your Life Lifestyle

After we have started taking steps to declutter our lives, the real challenge begins when we have to maintain it. It might even feel exciting at first to start this decluttering journey. Still, when the excitement wears off, and the mundane day-to-day task to keep practicing organization and decluttering starts to feel tiring, and you want to cozy up on the couch watching Netflix, the real challenge begins.

Here are a few tips on how to maintain your newfound decluttering habits:

1. Create a creating routine: Set aside every day or every week a day to clean and declutter. This can be 10min or an hour. I like to do a full house cleaning on Saturday mornings after breakfast. This takes me a few hours, and I get a workout in simultaneously. Vacuuming and organizing can burn a ton of calories! So then I have a clean house, and I’ve gotten my daily workout done. Win-Win. 🤩
2. Keep surfaces clean – Start by emptying surfaces, wiping them clean, and habitually having less stuff on countertops.
3. Practice the “new item in, old item out” rule. When you buy something new or bring something new into the house, get rid of something old, either donate it or get rid of it. This way, you will reduce the amount of stuff you have at home.

Remember, this is a process that never ends. We will constantly be cleaning and decluttering, but the nice thing is when we have less stuff in general, the less we have to clean and declutter.

Conclusion

Decluttering can have beautiful effects on our lives, positively affecting our well-being and relationships. By removing physical and mental clutter, we can start reaping the benefits of living a more intentional life, thus having more clarity and inspiration. 

This article inspired you to start decluttering your life by taking small steps. By embracing a minimalistic mindset, you can find more calmness and peace in your life; less stuff means less stress.