This time of the year can be very overwhelming when planning for the holidays. Items can start to stack up, and the clutter (both physical and virtual) seems to be taking over your anxiety all of the sudden. Whether it be our calendars or our kitchen counters, any type of clutter gets to be overwhelming, but how do you tackle it? Understanding that the clutter didn’t appear overnight and it won’t disappear that way either is the first step. If you follow the steps below, you will be able to ease into decluttering, and eventually, you’ll grow into a master organizer. You can also use my step-by-step decluttering guide and watch my video to get you started.
1. Start Small
If you find decluttering to be overwhelming, the key is to start with a small project that can be tackled in a few hours by breaking it down into sections. A junk drawer is a great beginner’s project because it’s a small space, and you are able to empty everything out easily.
2. Set Goals
Like with any other learned habit, you must set goals. Whether it be running a marathon or wanting to lose weight, a person needs to train and have a change in mentality. A person who has never run before will need to start walking first or complete smaller runs around the block. A person who needs to lose 50 pounds certainly won’t drop the weight in a week. It takes a long time to see these changes, and the changes have to be sustainable. This is the same with organizing. We must retrain ourselves and our thinking in order to create better systems in our life.
Once you choose the project you’ll begin with, you need to decide how much time you can dedicate per day. Obviously you do not want to empty a huge space and be left with an even bigger problem than with what you started, but you can tackle it in increments over a span of a week or so. Writing your goal down makes it more final and attainable. You’ll also want to consider your budget for the project because you don’t want to be stuck with tackling a space only to realize you can’t finish it due to not being able to purchase storage products.
3. Clear Out the Whole Space
Once you’ve decided what project you’re tackling, how many minutes you’ll dedicate a day, and the project completion date, it’s time to get started. The first thing that you must do is clear everything out. EVERYTHING. This is the only way for you to see what you have, and I bet you’ll be blown away with how many duplicate items you collected because you knew you already had it but just couldn’t find it.
4. Sort Into Categories
As you’re clearing out your space, you will want to decide what category each item belongs in. The categories I find to be most sensible are
- Donate – Items you have not used for over 6 months but are in good condition
- Relocate – Items that you need but realize are not in the proper place
- Memorabilia – Items that you want to keep but need to be stored as a keepsake instead of in a main area of the home
- Trash – Expired or worn out items that no one would get any use out of
- Keep – Items that will be going back into the space you’ve just cleared
5. Product Purchasing
You do not always need to purchase products for your space, but it’s more than likely your area got cluttered because you didn’t have good systems in place to begin with. If you’re working on a drawer, you will definitely want to get organizers so you can create categories within it for items like pens, paperclips, scissors, etc. If you are working on larger products, baskets or bins would be more practical.
6. Celebrate Your Success When You Reach Your Goal
Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed your project, and doesn’t it feel amazing? Because you are just learning how to declutter and organize, you will want to celebrate your accomplishment of finishing a difficult task. This does not need to be a huge celebration, but perhaps you splurge on upgrading one of your belongings to a nicer model or you take a day off from organizing and watch a favorite show instead. By celebrating your success, you’ll want to tackle another project, and quite frankly, you deserve it because going out of your comfort zone is hard!
7. Raise the Bar
Now that you’ve experienced success with completing a project, it’s time to start the cycle over again, but this time, you are going to raise the bar by choosing a slightly bigger project. All of the steps will be the same, but you will either need to spend more time daily working on it or it will take a bit longer. Reflect on the last project you completed. Implement what worked, but make changes to improve your systems for this project.
The key to becoming a master organizer is knowing that you will be better at organizing some spaces than others because we all have our strengths and weaknesses; however, the more you practice, the better you will become. Remember the marathon runner? It takes dedication and discipline to develop consistency. Once you learn this consistency, it then becomes a habit and a part of your lifestyle.
Next time you feel overwhelmed by your clutter, remember these simple steps. The key is to start small and train yourself. The rest will eventually fall into place, and your anxieties will be nonexistent because so will your clutter.
