Declutter Your Home

Declutter Your Home

So, you’ve made the big and brave decision to declutter your home and, most naturally, you’re experiencing a mix of thoughts and emotions. And not to overlook or undermine this wonderful commitment (the most critical step in the decluttering process), but where do you go from here? How do you even make a start?

It’s not surprising that overwhelm is one of the most common emotions we feel in relation to decluttering, especially when faced with the prospect of the many different living spaces and item types. As you declutter your house there is such a great deal of decisions to be made.

How to declutter your home and make it count

I know sometimes we get general recommendations about working through certain rooms in a particular order, for example starting with the kitchen and moving to the living room, or, in terms of home items, starting with books and moving to CD’s, for example, and so forth. The only space I ever really recommend doing first is the wardrobe, especially if we understand the effect that doing it with the right information and mindset has on our self-image, in turn positively impacting every aspect and layer of our being.

These general recommendations on where to start, from what I’ve seen with clients and students, usually don’t get the results they promise. This is because they are typically based on more practical aspects as opposed to the one single gamechanger in declutter your home. Which is how you feel.

I could share so many practical tips on putting a plan of action in place, being realistic about what you’ll achieve, breaking the process into manageable steps, preparing the home for physical decluttering, and so forth. But I believe the key to working out a successful strategy to declutter your house lies in the combined analysis of following questions.

  • In which rooms or spaces do you spend most of your time?
  • How bad does each room or space make you feel on a scale of 1 to 10?
  • What specific emotions come up for you in each room or space?

Although these may seem like obvious questions on how to declutter your home in one sense, I find that, over time, so many of us become consciously immune to what’s always around us. So, mostly, we’re not even aware of how we truly feel in a space. I see this with my clients all the time – this is why I’ve developed a number of tools over the years to help them get the clarity they require to make the right decisions so they don’t waste time and energy on systems or processes that won’t reap rewards.

On a number of levels, it’s actually really important to give yourself permission to feel any of those emotions in the trust that they’ll help you prioritise what you really need to move forward as you declutter your home. In getting to grips with how to declutter house and home, focusing on the rooms or spaces where you’ll get most relief and enjoy the best feelings on successful completion will ensure your decluttering becomes progressively easier, more efficient, and dare I say, more enjoyable with each new room or space.

The myth of the perfect home

Our homes are always in transition. The individual ages, lifestyle requirements and even inhabitants are always changing. And that’s not even accounting for our personal tastes – we don’t always like what we bought last year, not to mind ten years ago, and that’s OK. This right to change our mind is part of the natural flow of life, and it’s important we learn the tools to help us overcome any unnecessary guilt around this as we declutter house and all within.

There will always be something to be decluttered, organised, repaired, redesigned or redecorated. So, buying into the notion of “the perfect home” doesn’t get us far, and let me tell you that it just doesn’t exist. So many people associate the word “decluttering” with throwing everything out in a mindless or frenzied fashion, and I find this somewhat amusing! My approach to decluttering is one that recommends a whole-life, healthy, achievable balance that works for the individual’s preferences, home and life. And let’s not forget that minimalism is only one style of interior design!

Would you be surprised to hear that some of my clients have come for help because they’ve been throwing everything out and they would like to overcome the related thinking, feelings and behaviours that they feel are no longer serving them?

Declutter house, create home

It’s critical for me to end with this point. You can declutter your home all you like but if you don’t take the time to gently become aware of and competently overcome any of your decluttering blocks before you start you’re unfortunately just feeding into that vicious cycle of feeling like a bigger and bigger failure every time you try to declutter and don’t succeed.

If you are done with disappointment, confusion and overwhelm I would love to empower you so you can learn how to declutter house, home and beyond, put the heart back into your living space and transform your life in the process! Find out more about The Declutter Academy, my very special professional organizer certification training.