10 Tips to Take Action When Decluttering Feels Too Hard
Are you looking to make progress decluttering your home, but struggling to find the motivation to take action?
Decluttering your home can be very overwhelming; however, it doesn’t need to stop you from creating the peaceful home environment of your dreams…
In this post, we’ll go over 10 tips to help you take action when decluttering feels too hard!
Related Posts:
- 15 Items to Declutter For a Simple Home & Living Space
- How To Embrace Minimalism In Modern Society (6 Easy Tips)
- 6 Simple Ways To Begin Living A Minimalist Lifestyle
Why Decluttering is Hard
Naturally, any task that your minds deem complicated, overwhelming, and time-intensive, will seem hard or even too challenging…
This causes you to wait and is the primary reason for procrastination.
To combat this, you first need to understand the cause and then create an action plan to make practical progress little by little until your goal is complete.
As you read through this post, we’ll describe different ways that you can reduce the burden of decluttering and use our practical tips to make real progress.
Decluttering and Procrastination
The cause for procrastination when it comes to decluttering is due to the fact that it will take a lot of time and seems like a headache to go through all of your stuff!
Pro Tip: When you start decluttering, always start with the items you want to keep! This means that you’ll want to identify the most important items first. This way, you have your essentials picked out and can easily identify the clutter that needs to be removed going forward.
10 Tips to Take Action When Decluttering Feels Too Hard
1. Small Steps First
The reason decluttering feels hard and overwhelming is due to the fact that you have too much on your plate…
Stop and take a deep breath!
When it comes to difficult tasks, you need to embrace simplicity and take small steps first.
You don’t need to hit a home run and declutter your entire basement in one weekend…
No, no!
When starting out you need to break your tasks and projects into smaller pieces and develop a routine.
This consistency week in and week out with small efforts will allow you to accomplish more than just one large decluttering session, and then nothing for the rest of the month.
Tip: Set a timer for 5-15 minutes and pick a room or area to declutter each day. These small efforts will be big wins and will help you gain traction and see lasting results.
2. Find Your Motivation
One of the main ingredients in the decluttering equation is your motivation.
Nothing can get done if you don’t have your WHY and purpose for wanting this done. In other words, if your motivation is weak, so will your attitude, effort, and most importantly…your results!
Take time to think about the different reasons you want a decluttered home, a simple life, or a change in lifestyle…
Don’t just go surface level, what is it that will really light the fire under you to make progress…
Here are some examples:
- Keeping a decluttered home will save me time from cleaning and organizing. This extra time can be spent with my kids and other hobbies I’m interested in.
- Having less stuff will allow my spouse and me to travel more and have less worry about all the stuff we used to own.
- Decluttering will relieve mountains of stress and finally allow me to relax and enjoy my living space instead of feeling anxiety and procrastination
Whatever you’re motivated by, really focus on the end result that you want and hold firm that you will get there!
The more you believe in that result and want it to happen, the more excited you’ll feel and soon decluttering and simplifying will feel less like a chore and more like steps to living your best life!
3. Set Achievable Goals
Setting achievable goals is another vital piece to the puzzle when it comes to challenging tasks…
It’s so easy to get deflated and feel defeated when faced with overwhelming odds…
This is where setting the right expectations is key!
You can defeat yourself before even starting if your goals are unattainable…First, understand that decluttering and shifting your lifestyle won’t happen overnight.
Understand that this is an ongoing effort and takes months and years…
However, when making a lifestyle change, the expectation is that it is a lifelong effort, encouraging learning, embracing mindset shifts, and taking actions regularly.
Be sure to be realistic with yourself and as mentioned above, take small steps first.
4. Use a Timer
This is my favorite way to be productive and make a dent in my work…
I love setting timers because it’s like telling yourself this painful chore has a time limit; It’s not going to be ongoing and take up my whole day.
It’s only going to last as long as I decide it will.
My favorite advice to give when it comes to timers is the 5-minute timer trick…
Essentially, you set a timer for 5 minutes and declutter for that amount of time.
The magic in this method is that you’ll be telling yourself, “This is silly, I can do more than just this.”
It’s such a short amount of time that you’ll be telling yourself I should be doing more and you actually continue after the timer has passed!
The key hack here is tricking your mind into thinking what you’re doing is easy and helping you to JUST GET STARTED!
For some, this will help with procrastination, and for others, it may not initially work. Even if this doesn’t work for you, try variations and different lengths of time and see what works best for you.
5. Time Block
Time blocking is another powerful way to utilize time in your favor.
With time blocking, you’re setting intention for parts of your day and what tasks you’ll be working on during those specified times of day…
Example: You have Saturday from 11:00 to 11:30 blocked out on your calendar to audit your closet and remove clothes that don’t fit.
6. Schedule Decluttering Sessions on Your Calendar
In addition to time blocking, set specific dates on your calendar that you’ll be decluttering.
This will help you prepare and gear yourself up to make progress. Otherwise, you’ll be deciding the day of, and most likely choose not to try.
7. Decide What to Declutter The Day Before
In the same thought as scheduling your decluttering sessions, decide exactly what you plan to do the day before.
As stated above, this will mentally prepare you and give you a plan for what and how long you’ll be decluttering.
This is a much more strategic approach then just trying to declutter randomly with no intentionality.
8. Find The Best Time That Works For You
This is one of the most important things to consider!
It makes no sense to do hard tasks when you’re least productive…
If you’re most productive and have free time in the mornings on weekends for instance, utilize this time and block off 30 minutes to declutter.
Once you’re done, you can enjoy the rest of your day…
If the evenings are better, try small decluttering sessions later in the day or shortly before bed…
Consider what times you have available throughout the week and choose what works best for your schedule!
9. Merge Enjoyable With The Unenjoyable
Another one of my favorite decluttering tips revolves around combining unenjoyable tasks with things you enjoy…
What do I mean by this?
This means that you can make something less unbearable and feel like less of a chore if you add in an element of something you like in the background…
Most people associate this with the example of folding laundry while watching TV on the couch. You’re doing something tedious, but also entertained at the same time…
Here are some other examples:
- Listening to music
- Listening to podcast episodes
- YouTube videos playing in the background
All of these can be done while decluttering and will make it enjoyable, rather than painful and tedious.
10. Take Breaks
Lastly, you need to remember to take breaks.
This is often overlooked when it comes to being productive…
When it comes to physical tasks, we understand that our body needs rest; however, when it comes to thinking and mental work, we don’t give ourselves the same breaks…
Even though decluttering seems like it’s mostly physical, you can become drained mentally over time due to making a lot of decisions in a short amount of time…
Think about it, with each item comes a decision to keep, trash, sell, donate, etc.
Make sure that you take time during your decluttering sessions to step away, walk around, and give yourself some time to reflect and recharge!
Final Thoughts
I hope these tips have made decluttering feel much less challenging!
We all know that it’s hard…
But it’s your preparation and planning that will make it possible!
