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The secret of a clutterfree home and life: A clutterfree mind.

The solution to our clutter problems looks easy. But is it really easy?

From the outside, the solution to the clutter problems in our homes looks simple and easy:

Getting rid of the ‘too much stuff’, all the belongings that we don’t need, love, use (any longer) will immediately create sufficient space for the things we want to keep.

As soon as the house is clean and clear, it will be fun to organise everything nicely, and then we can lean back and relax and enjoy our home and life.

We all know, however, that in real life it’s not that simple and easy.

Instead of making decisions and taking action, we so often procrastinate and postpone our decluttering projects, and over time we are even adding new things to the clutter instead of sorting it out.

Why your brain loves the clutter in your life and wants to keep it.

It’s not your fault if you don’t do what you promised yourself to do.

You are not a weak or bad person because you procrastinate and postpone tasks and projects.

There is nothing wrong with you if you struggle to clear up the messy areas in your life.

If anyone is to blame, it’s not you. It’s your brain.

As humans, we all have a human brain. Our brain is extraordinary and amazing. Powerful and efficient. It’s really something special:

    • Having a human brain is wonderful at least half of the time – because the newer parts of our brain enable us to plan deliberately and consciously, to structure and organise, and to realise the ideas and goals that are important to us in our life.
    • Having a human brain, however, can be frustrating the other half of the time. That’s because the older parts of our brain are not at all interested in our personal development and in the realisation of our goals.

Our primitive brain is 100% focused on our survival.

And yes, that’s great – we all want to survive. However, we not only want to survive, but we also want to create, and grow, and enjoy our life.

So how can we motivate our primitive brain to partner up with us and help us achieve our goals and do the things we want to do, like getting rid of the clutter in our home?

We need to understand our human brain and what it does to keep us alive.

Our brain’s job is to ensure our survival.

These are the main parts of its ‘job description’:

    • It wants to help us save energy – That’s why it’s trying its best to make us efficient and to avoid hard work. That’s why it prefers to rinse and repeat our thoughts, feelings, and actions instead of doing anything new or challenging.
    • It wants to protect us from feeling any pain or discomfort – That’s why it wants us to seek pleasure and run away from anything that might cause us even temporary pain or discomfort.
    • It wants to keep us safe and away from any potential risks – That’s why it tells us that we can’t do new things, that we should hide ourselves where we are, that we are unable to change anything.

We need to understand and accept that our brain is programmed to protest whenever we make challenging plans and choose new goals, whenever we decide that we want to change ourselves or our lives.

The purpose and the effects of our negative and limiting thoughts.

The main strategy of our brain in doing its job as our ‘survival manager’ is to offer us negative thoughts.

It permanently tells us that we are not capable to do it, that we don’t need to do it, that we don’t know how to do it, that it’s too hard, that we will fail and feel terrible.

That our brain is coming up with these kinds of thoughts is actually not the problem. It’s just what human brains are supposed to do.

The problem is that most of these thoughts that our brain produces on default are unconscious thoughts – and that we don’t realise that they are just thoughts, not facts.

All these thoughts that are supposed to keep us from getting started, from doing what we want to do, are just sentences in our mind – they are not the truth.

The good news is that we can solve this problem.

We have a brain, but we are not our brain. We can decide to deliberately manage our mind and take control of our thoughts, those sentences in our mind.

The solution is just one thought away.

All we need is awareness and decisiveness.

We need to become aware of what we are currently thinking because what we are thinking determines what we are feeling and doing. Or not doing.

And then we can decide to declutter any limiting or useless thoughts and replace them with new powerful thoughts – thoughts that allow us to get started and help us get things done.

As soon as we get used to thinking differently, we are going to feel and act differently. We are going to start and finish what we want to do, we get things done.


How we can help our brain believe that we can take action and create results

We now know why our brain doesn’t want us to create change in our life and why it’s so determined to make it as difficult as possible for us to do new or challenging things.

We appreciate its intention (to keep us safe and comfortable) but we no longer want to follow its suggestions (because they keep us stuck).

We are willing to make some bold decisions and let go of thought errors and replace them with powerful new thoughts.

However, we can’t expect our thought work to be 100% successful from day one.

We need to expect our brain to come up with resistance.

It will fight our new ideas and it will try to prove to us that the old way of thinking about us and our abilities is the best way and that we should give up and declare defeat.

Our brain is easier to persuade if it can see some evidence that we are on the right track.

The best way to get our brain on board is to offer it some early success stories. 

And we are absolutely able to create these success stories, even when our new thoughts are not yet 100% grounded in and accepted by our brain.

We do so by committing ourselves to do some practical physical work, just a little bit, a few tiny steps – to get started and to deliver first visible and believable results.

This will help our brain to change its mind and become a supporter of our decluttering projects.


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How to choose your next decuttering project – Some ideas.

What’s your next decluttering project?

Every home is different, and every place has its own challenges, of course.

And we ‘declutterers’ are all unique, we all have our special requirements and preferences and our personal ideas about how our home should look like.

Only you can decide which areas in your home or which categories of belongings need some decluttering, and in which order you wish to organise the work.

If you are not sure where to begin, you could first do a little awareness-exercise:

Walk through your home and create a list of all those areas you don’t feel happy about because they look cluttered or disorganised. 

And then – don’t overthink it – you choose the problem area you wish to tackle first.

Areas to declutter – Some suggestions

Focus on the very personal stuff

You may decide to concentrate on the very personal areas in your home first. This will let you experience the benefits of your decluttering work immediately and personally.

Examples:

    • the content of your briefcase/handbag (click here for some inspiration);
    • the top of your dresser;
    • the drawer with your underwear;
    • your email inbox;
    • the make-up drawer;
    • etc.

Focus on open areas

It’s a good idea to focus on open areas in the beginning because you’ll very quickly see positive results of your work. This will keep your motivation up.

Examples of open areas:

    • the top of the dresser;
    • the top of the kitchen counter;
    • the dinner table;
    • the window sills;
    • the stuff in and around the shower and the bath tub;
    • etc.

Focus on one room

As soon as the open areas are clear and clean you could choose one room to declutter, step-by-step, over the course of a couple of days.

Divide the room into several smaller areas. During each decluttering session you work on just one area until it’s completely decluttered and re-organised.

Example – the kitchen: the fridge, the freezer, one or several drawers or boxes in the pantry, the cabinet under the sink; the pet supplies/toys, one or several drawers or cupboards with the pots and pans, the cutlery, the dishes, glasses, flatware, the drawer with the herbs and spices; etc.

Focus on one category

It is also possible to work on one category or sub-category of belongings at a time.

Examples:

    • gardening tools/equipment/supplies;
    • medicine, vitamins, and supplements;
    • linen and towels;
    • shoes;
    • the boxes/bags with the holiday decorations;
    • photo albums and lose photos;
    • hobby/craft supplies;
    • sports equipment;
    • the files and folders on the computer;
    • etc.

Have you got some ideas for your next project? 

Pick up your calendar and schedule the first decluttering session. And then stick to that appointment with yourself.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed now?

What if you feel like freaking out now because your list of projects seems to be overwhelming? Not doable? Exhausting?

Take a deep breath and calm down.

Remind yourself that you don’t have to do your decluttering projects in one go.

You can decide to take the small-steps decluttering approach.

Click here to learn how you can get all the work done, step-by-step.

Preventing the influx of new clutter – A shopping ban can bring surprising insights. About you. And your stuff.

The purpose of daily-life experimentation

Creating and conducting experiments in our daily life is a playful way to develop greater self-awareness and to try out new ways of behaviour or testing the effects of new ways to solve problems.

Shopping bans – Experimenting with buying less

Shopping bans, for example, are a way of temporarily experimenting with drastically changed shopping behaviours.

Do you have any experience with shopping bans?

Some time ago I imposed a 3-months-shopping-ban on myself – no spending on books and clothes for 3 months.

This is what my shopping-ban exercise taught me:

    • I appreciate more what I have and I use it with more care and attention if – for a while – nothing new is coming in.
    • A lot of my buying behaviour is directed by spontaneous shopping decisions.
    • I can break this circle of ‘automatic’ money spending if I postpone the decision for some days.
    • Often, I no longer want to have the desired item and don’t buy it, without any regret.
    • And if I decide to buy it after some days of consideration, I appreciate it more consciously and gratefully.

How do you feel about experimenting with a shopping ban?

EXERCISE

Impose a shopping ban on yourself to understand your shopping decisions better or to change them.

    • Determine the duration of the shopping ban. (Two weeks? One months? Three?)
    • Transfer the start and finish dates of the ban into your calendar.
    • Decide what type of shopping is not covered by the ban (Groceries. One coffee-to-go per day? Eating out once a week?)
    • Start a little journal and keep notes of your experiences – Your thoughts and feelings and actions.
    • In situations where you didn’t stick to the ban. What did you think and feel while you were making the purchase? And after it?
    • In situations where you obeyed to your rules and didn’t buy something that you’d have bought without the ban. Was it difficult? Or easy? Why?
    • Start a list and take notes of the things you would like to buy. You can promise yourself to revisit this list and to purchase whatever you still desire to have after the end of the ban.

At the end of the ban, sit down and evaluate your experiences.

Summarize what the shopping-ban exercise taught you about yourself.

And your shopping behaviour.

And how you plan to make use of those learning-gains in the future.

How to separate the treasures from the clutter

What are your treasures?

We all own things we truly love, things that we cannot imagine parting with, even if sometimes other people can’t understand our attachment to those special things.

These are our treasures.

Their worth is not measured in money, but rather in the meaning and significance they hold for us. Often, they represent very special experiences of our life, and they reflect what is unique about us.

Treasures are the things that you for sure want to preserve from the past and take along with you into your future.

The following exercise will help you discover your personal treasures – and it will help you to constrain yourself to a limited number of treasures:

You want to be careful not to declare too many things as treasures because that would belittle the value of each of them.

EXERCISE

Step 1

Decide how many items you wish to declare treasures before you start to select them.

The smaller the number, the better.

You might want to constrain yourself to 10 treasures. Or 5? Or 15?

Decide now, and commit yourself to stick to that number.

Step 2

Think about which of your clutter-champion categories might hide some of your treasures.

For example, if books belong to your clutter champions, decide whether you wish to assign 3 or 5 (or whatever number you choose) of your favourite books the status of treasures.

If your kitchen appliances are clutter champions – you have too many of them or several duplicates -, decide to declare the 3 – for example – most used/loved ones as treasures.

Step 3

Imagine the house burnt down and you lost everything (Only the most important personal documents could be saved.)

Which belongings would you badly miss?

Which of them could not be replaced?

Step 4

Take all the items with ‘treasure’-potential out, hold them in your hands for a while, try to ‘feel’ how truly important they are to you, and then arrange them in a ‘treasure collection area’ or – if you don’t have the space for such an area – take photographs.

Spend some time with your treasure candidates and evaluate how much you treasure each of them.

You might want to ask yourself questions like these:

    • Is it something that reminds me of a happy memory?
    • Is it related to a special accomplishment?
    • Is it closely related to me, to the very special person I am?
    • Would I be very sad if it suddenly disappeared?
    • Does it refer to my values and to the vision that I defined for the next chapter of my life?

Step 5

Now make your final choice and compile a list of your personal treasures.

This list and the insights gained about your treasures will be very helpful whenever you have to or want to make decluttering decisions.

Why we need a clear mind to create a clear home

We think that the clutter in our home is the problem.

And that it’s hard to get this problem solved.

But these thoughts are not the truth. They are just thoughts.

The truth is that the activity of decluttering our physical belongings is actually quite easy.

We just need to take 3 simple but powerful steps:

    1. Taking everything out so that we get a clear idea of what we have (Gaining awareness)
    2. Deciding what no longer serves us and therefore has to go (Making decisions)
    3. Reorganising what’s left so that it’s accessible and usable (Taking action)

So why do we experience the decluttering process as difficult and hard to do?

    • Why do we struggle to get started and do the things we want to do?
    • And when we finally get active – why do we easily get stuck, feeling unable to make let-go decisions?
    • Why do we give up in the middle of the process?
    • Or, if we manage to finish it, why does the clutter come back?

The real problem is the clutter in our mind.

The clutter in our mind – all the limiting beliefs and unhelpful thoughts – makes us feel weak, confused, stressed, overwhelmed, stuck.

Typical clutter-thoughts that cause the clutter in our homes are:

    • This is too hard!
    • It’s too much work.
    • I can’t do this.
    • I never could do things like this.
    • I don’t know how to do it.
    • I don’t have the time.

Thinking these thoughts makes us feel powerless.

And if we feel powerless, we, of course, feel unable to take powerful action.

So, nothing changes:

The physical clutter stays where it is, our mind keeps its harmful thoughts, our feelings keep us stuck and inactive.

We continue to believe that the clutter in our home is the problem, and we feel unable to find a solution to the problem.

The real solution to our (clutter) problems is a mind that’s free of limiting clutter-thoughts.

We must focus our attention and work on the clutter in our mind first.

And we can apply the same 3-step process that’s the foundation of any successful physical decluttering project:

    1. We first gain awareness: We have a closer look at what’s happening up there in our mind. We start to understand better how our thinking determines how we are feeling, and what we do or don’t do. It becomes clear to us why we don’t have the results we want to have.
    2. We then make decisions: We decide which thoughts no longer serve us and have to go. We also decide what we want to be thinking instead. Our new powerful thoughts give us access to feelings like confidence, trust, energy, determination.
    3. Finally we are ready to take action: Feeling powerful enables us to take control of what’s happening in our home and life. We are ready to get it done – we get it all cleared up and the clutter out of our house and life.

What is your most dominant clutter-thought?

What are you thinking on a regular basis about yourself, and the stuff in your home?

Can you see how this mind-clutter keeps you from seeking and finding solutions for your home-clutter problem?

 


HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier. 

Check out how I can help you.

Do you know your ‘clutter champions’? – Is it time to knock them off their pedestal?

Our ‘clutter champions’ are those areas of our home and those categories of belongings that contain a very high accumulation of things that don’t serve us.

It’s usually obvious that we don’t need our clutter champions and that we don’t want them:

    • We often hide them (push them under the bed, into a hidden corner in the garage),
    • we don’t take good care of them (let them collect dush or get rusty),
    • we try to ignore them (don’t look at them, move around them),
    • and we never use them.

Typical examples of clutter champions:

    • areas of our home that are no longer usable because they are overcrowded with stuff, such as a garage that leaves no room for the car,
    • furniture not (or no longer) used, such as an inherited armchair nobody sits on,
    • books we are no longer interested in, or recipe books we never opened,
    • piles of papers we never touch but grow by continuously adding new pieces,
    • papers from former phases of our life, e.g., materials from school years or a previous job,
    • kitchen appliances that don’t fit our current cooking habits,
    • a dresser drawer we never open because it contains out-of-fashion tops,
    • a wardrobe full of clothing that no longer fits, that we hope ‘may come back in style’, that we don’t wear but keep because it was expensive,
    • a 24-piece cutlery set never unpacked but kept because it was a wedding present from our aunt.

Clutter champions are champions because we let them win.

We allow them to occupy space without truly contributing to our life and well-being. They have become a burden to us, but we don’t admit it.

Clutter champions hold us back, they make us feel bad about ourselves because we feel that we should have done something about them a long time ago, that it’s our fault that they are ‘staring’ at us.

We can change the game and become the champions!

If we take the time to intentionally acknowledge and really get to know our clutter champions, we become the winners.

While we take a closer look at them, we also learn more about ourselves, and we better understand why we tend to collect and keep certain categories of things, and why certain areas in our home get so easily overcrowded.

Our increased self-awareness then helps us make long overdue decisions with intention, confidence, and determination.

Making decisions allows us to take actions, actions that create the clutterfree results we want in our life:

Letting go of all or some of our clutter champions not only creates more space in our home, but it also creates more space in our mind. And it makes us feel good about ourselves and capable.

We now know that we can do this and decluttering other areas in our home and life becomes so much easier.

Use the following exercise to clear up your relationship with your clutter champions.

EXERCISE

Step 1 – Walk around your home. Open the door to each room and look around.

Ask yourself:

    • Any clutter champions around here?
    • Any stuff that doesn’t serve me at all?
    • Anything I feel shame or frustration about?

Don’t allow yourself to look away! Bend down and look under the bed. Open cupboards and boxes. Drawers and bags. Shine a light in the dark corners. Take photos if that helps you to get a clearer picture.

Step 2 – Create a list of all the clutter champions.

These are my clutter champions:

    • …….
    • …….
    • ……..
    • …….

Step 3 – Now sit down and spend some more time with your clutter champions.

You want to deeply understand what’s going on here.

Ask yourself questions like:

    1. What do I think about my clutter champions?
    2. What’s the story of each clutter champion? How did they get into my home? Has there been a time when they did serve me because I needed and used them? When and why did that change?
    3. Why did I allow them to stay with me after they had lost their usefulness?
    4. How do I feel about still having them?
    5. How would I feel if they were gone?
    6. Am I ready to let them go? Now?

Step 4 – Make a decision:

This is the clutter champion that I am going to clear up first:

    • …….

Step 5Take action

Make an assumption about the amount of time you will need to sort out clutter champion #1, and schedule one or several decluttering sessions in your calendar.

Then stick to your appointment(s) with yourself – and do the work: create some space by letting go of what no longer serves you.

Decluttering & organising your life – Do you know what’s in your handbag? Really?

Decluttering and organising – whether it’s our home or any other area in our life – can feel overwhelming.

We often postpone certain tasks because we believe that it’s too hard, that it takes too much time, that we don’t know how to do it, that it wouldn’t make a big difference anyway, etc.

However, we can decide to start small.

We can create some small wins first. And some confidence. And move on from there more easily.

Starting and finishing an decluttering & organising project – no matter how small it is – is a first win – and an important step of our journey into a simply organised life.

It’s proof that making changes is possible and that we can achieve visible and valuable results even if we invest only a few minutes at a time.

Our first little successes increase our confidence (‘Yes, I can do this!’) and can help us get inspired and motivated to plan bigger projects. Or to create a new habit, applying the ‘little-step-by-little-step’ approach consistently – which will create huge progress over time.

A powerful little exercise: Declutter and re-organise your handbag

This little project will help you get a better understanding of the simply organising process in general.

You will directly experience how the 3 steps of any decluttering/organising project work together to create positive results: More space and clarity and lightness. And positive feelings about yourself.

Choose a ‘space’ that you use regularly, a personal ‘container’ like your purse/handbag, your backpack or briefcase (We’ll call it ‘your bag’ here.)

The condition of your chosen bag can be seen as a reflection of who you are and how you treat yourself.

    • If this space is cluttered and unorganised it sends the message to its owner (you!), ‘I am a bit messy/disorganised’.

Each time you grapple with trying to find what you need, or you suffer from the heavy useless stuff you carry around in your bag, you experience frustration which reinforces the message ‘I am so disorganised’ and the feeling of frustration.

    • However, if the bag is clutterfree and well sorted, you send yourself the opposite message, ‘I am organised’.

You have positive feelings when you open your bag, and you feel in control because you know what’s in there and where you can find it.

As soon as you have successfully cleared up and organised a formerly cluttered and messy space that you access multiple times during the day – like in this case your bag -, you will repeatedly get reminded that you are able to do successfully whatever you want to do.

You will also have clear proof that you can overcome the overwhelm that in the past kept you from getting certain tasks done.

You will enjoy the benefits of organised spaces – every time you use the decluttered item.

The 3 steps of the decluttering process

Step 1 – Get a clear picture of what’s in there

    • Dump all the contents of your chosen bag on a flat clean surface.
    • Sort everything into categories, such as personal care items, personal documents, paperwork/books, snacks, etc.
    • Notice what thoughts and feelings are coming up while you look at the categories of things. Any surprises? Any items you had forgotten about? Anything you haven’t used for ages? Or not at all?

Step 2 – Decide what you want to discard

    • Start making let-go decisions by assigning things that are damaged or have become useless to a rubbish pile (e.g., crumpled tissues, old receipts, empty water bottle, dried up lipsticks).
    • Sort out what you never use, and let go of all the duplicates, e.g., the additional comb, the second and third pen, another roll of peppermint drops.
    • Now ask yourself: What do I really need and use regularly?
    • Decide and put aside what you are no longer willing to carry around every day. (Reserve the umbrella for rainy days, the sun cream for summer, the novel for times when you use public transport, etc.)
    • Have a look at the remaining items.
    • Appreciate all the things that are helpful and important to you and decide that you are going to take good care of them in future.

Step 3 – Take action and re-organise

    • Throw the rubbish pile into the bin.
    • Find easy-to-access storage options in your house for the things that you only need/use from time to time (e.g., umbrella, sun cream).
    • Re-pack your bag deliberately.
    • Use any compartments that your bag provides to separate categories of things, or find little extra bags to containerise like items (like makeup products, or pens and post-its, or receipts).

Congratulations – You have proven to yourself that you are a capable organiser! Well done!

Now you can feel certain that you’ll enjoy your clutterfree and organised bag – every day.

Notice what else you are feeling at the end of this little project.

Do you feel relief? Satisfaction? Clarity? Pride? Something else?

How could you ‘store’ any positive feelings you have right now and ‘re-use’ them in the next project that you don’t feel too excited about?

Your future identity depends on what you choose to think today

What’s your future identity? – Who are you becoming?

When we decide to make bigger changes in our lives or when we start to move towards achieving new goals, we are not only starting to do something differently.

Before we can start to act differently, we need to learn to think and feel differently.

Imagine someone who’s retiring after 40 years in the corporate world. This person is not only going to change daily their lifestyle and activities but also in the process of switching identities – a process that’s often not easy to go through.

Because we can’t click just a button and say, ‘Yesterday I was a manager, and today I am a retiree.’ 

Becoming someone different, and building a new identity usually takes some time, effort – and thought work.

Thus, let’s not focus so much on what we are going to do differently, let’s instead focus on intentionally choosing how we are going to think and feel differently.

Let’s actively define and create our new identity.

We can ask ourselves questions like these:

    • ‘Who am I becoming? How will my new identity look like?’
    • ‘How does that person – the new me – make decisions?’
    • ‘What does that person think?’
    • ‘How does that person feel?’
    • ‘How does that person act?
    • What’s important to that person? And what’s not?

LITTLE EXERCISE

You can’t change your past but you can choose how you want to experience the future – because you can choose your future identity.

Play around with the questions above and find your unique answers – so that you can build a close relationship with your future you.

Focusing your thinking on your future identity will help you think, feel, and act like the person you want to become.

Step 1: Define your new identity

These are just a few examples of new-identity ideas:

    • ‘I am becoming someone who is really good at time management.’
    • ‘I am becoming a mindful person,’
    • ‘I am learning to be a conscious shopper.’
    • ‘I am determined to become the organiser of my mind, my home, and my life.’

Step 2: Describe how you will think, feel, and act differently.

Example:

My future identity: I am becoming a successful ‘declutterer’

What I will think: As an expert declutterer, I make sure that there is no clutter in my mind and no clutter in my home. I only ‘own’ thoughts and belongings that serve me. My mind and my home are clutterfree and organised.

How I will feel: I feel competent and confident.

What I will do: I practice mind-decluttering every day, and I create useful habits and routines that help me to keep my home clear and clean.’

Now it’s your turn!

Who are you going to be? And what will that person – your future identiy – think, feel, and do?

 


HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Are you tired?

Tired of trying to (re)organise the various areas of your life entirely on your own?

Tired of investing vast amounts of time and energy in finding a way to create a better organised = better life?

Tired of feeling overwhelmed, confused, frustrated, stressed, disappointed, exhausted, …?

Fortunately, you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself.

We can do it together.

You can decide to get my support, advice, and guidance – and achieve the desired changes in your life so much faster and easier. 

Check out how I can help you.

The ‘Shoe Parade’ – Decluttering your shoes CAN be fun

Taking action is not always easy, especially if we feel worried about the size and complexity of a home decluttering project. It often helps to start small.

If we begin with one clearly defined decluttering project – and finish it successfully, in a short period of time, with tangible results – our self-confidence and motivation get a boost.

Give it a try, forget about your bigger decluttering projects for a short while. Instead, have some fun with the ‘Shoe Parade’.  

A word of caution:

If your love for shoes is your Achilles’ heel (you own lots and lots of pairs of shoes), the Shoe Parade can be an overwhelming experience.

In this case, it’s better to begin your decluttering journey with a different category of belongings (e.g., socks, books, shirts).

EXERCISE 

Step 1

Before you do anything, please answer the following two questions:

    • How many pairs of shoes do you have? Take a guess: ………
    • How many pairs of shoes do you regularly wear? Take a guess: ……….

Step 2

Now walk around your home and collect all your shoes.

Arrange a ‘shoe parade’ in your backyard or on the kitchen floor – wherever you have enough space to get them all together.

Any surprises?

    • How many pairs do you have?
    • How many do you actually wear?
    • Any shoes you had completely forgotten about?
    • Any really ugly ones?
    • Completely new and unworn shoes?
    • Other insights?

You might wish to take a photograph. And take some notes.

Step 3

Sort out any shoes that are beyond repair or missing their mate.

These shoes need a new home: the rubbish bin.

Step 4

Then divide you your pairs of shoes into three main groups:

    • In one area of the room arrange all your favourite pairs, the shoes you absolutely love and wear often. Celebrate them – they belong to your ‘keepers’.
    • In another area of the room, you arrange all those pairs of shoes that you don’t love but regularly need/wear. They also have the right to stay.
    • In a third area, you place all those pairs of shoes you have not worn in the past 6 months.

Do they still deserve space in your home? Would they be happier with a new owner?

Show them your respect by saying ‘Thank you’ and ‘Goodbye’ and drop them off at your local charity. Someone else will appreciate and use them.

Step 5

Finally, honour the shoes that you love or need to keep.

Clean them, and then organise them nicely and orderly in one place.

Step 6

WELL DONE! – Celebrate your first decluttering success!

You are now ready and well prepared to start working on your bigger decluttering projects.


Struggling with the clutter in your wardrobe? – ‘Talk’ to your clothes and ask them for help

‘Talking’ to our belongings can open a door to our unconscious mind

Asking our belongings for their feedback is a playful way to gain more awareness about the things we have accumulated over time. Questions like ’‘Why am I not using you?’ help us uncover what’s going on in our mind.

If we are willing to listen to the honest answers we get from our stuff, we begin to understand our subconscious attachment to things that no longer serve us, and we find it easier to make let-go decisions that are over-due.

Wardrobe clutter conversations – Your clothes know what’s going on in your closet

There are many ways to declutter and organise our wardrobe so that getting dressed in the morning becomes simple and enjoyable.

One way to understand the situation in our wardrobe better and to simplify the decluttering-decision process is to ‘talk’ to our clothes and ‘ask’ them for help.

EXERCISE

You start the ‘conversation’ by taking everything out of the wardrobe that you haven’t worn for a while.

Spread it out on your bed or another suitable flat surface.

Then take each piece of clothing in your hands and ask it,

‘Why am I not wearing you?’

All sorts of answers will come up and they will help you clarify your relationships with your clothes.

Making confident decluttering decisions gets easier if you hear (and accept) the truth.

Your clothes might give you answers such as

You’re not wearing me because

    • I have stains that you can’t get out’
    • you’ve never tried. Look here, I’ve still the price tag on’
    • you never liked me’
    • I am out of fashion’
    • you forgot about my existence’
    • you have so many clothes similar to me’
    • I don’t fit you’
    • we don’t fit to each other’
    • your lifestyle changed and you no longer need me’
    • you don’t look good when you put me on’
    • I give you negative emotional associations’
    • you don’t like my colour/style any longer’

If you are willing to listen to your clothes and trust their answers, you will find it easier to decide what you want to keep – and to say thank you and goodbye to those clothes that gave you honest and tough answers – because they no longer want to stay with you.


Decluttering your wardrobe can make decluttering your life easier

If you plan to not only declutter your home but other areas in your life as well, getting your wardrobe sorted out is a great starting point.

Many of us feel emotionally attached to at least some of our clothes. This can be the reason why we postpone decluttering our wardrobe again and again.

As soon as we get curious and ask ourselves (and our clothes) questions about all the stuff in the closet, we start to come up with answers that help us clear up the emotional ballast – ballast that causes not only the clutter in our closet but also in other areas of our life.

3 questions that help us focus on creating more fun and excitement in our life

In a recent article of the Powerful Questions Series I discussed how defining our values and our purpose in life can give our mind and our soul structure, stability, and direction. We used a couple of questions to get a clearer idea of the priorities in our lives.

The following 3 little questions can also help us pay more attention to what’s important to us – this time the focus is on having fun and excitement in our life.

Ask yourself – and play around with the answers:

    • What am I currently excited about in my life?
    • What does it mean to me to have a full and rich life?
    • How could I have more fun and joy in my life?

You will probably not arrive at a final definition of your fun priorities and your idea of living more joyfully on purpose just by answering some questions.

But anything that helps us define our priorities in life will make it easier to move forward in a meaningful and intentional way.

Are you ready for some more fun, and excitement in your life?

A small step can change everything: Your home – your mind – your life.

Small steps matter.

They create change, step-by-step.

The first small step is the most powerful. Nothing happens without it.

Having a clear and organised home (or not) has to do with how successful we manage two different but closely related activities:

    • we have to be good at decluttering / organising physical stuff
    • and we have to be good at decluttering/organising our mind.

Our home and our possessions should reflect and support our lifestyle and our values, instead of making life more difficult and stressful.

However, when we are surrounded by belongings that we don’t use, like, need, we can’t relax and refuel our energy resources.

Instead, the mess sucks up our attention and energy. It clutters our mind, the physical clutter bombards our brain with excessive stimuli. We find it hard to focus on our daily lives – it’s all too much!

If we struggle to take action to declutter and organise our home and life, it’s often because the task seems to be so huge that we feel overwhelmed and end up with doing nothing.

We look at the mess and feel stuck, we feel incapable of getting active and making changes.

In this situation, it often helps to just get started – to take the first tiny step:

We choose one small area to focus our decluttering project on and forget about the big rest of the mess for now.

Instead of planning the clear up of the whole house, we decide, for example, to get one drawer in the kitchen sorted, or a little cupboard in the bed room, or our handbag. We set the timer for 20 or 30 minutes, and get the job done, from start to finish.

A small exercise like this, these 20 or 30 minutes, can change everything.

Choosing one small concrete project and tackling it successfully, creates not only new order and space in a little area of our home.

It also changes how we experience ourselves.

Decluttering and organising a small area delivers a visible real result. And this little success triggers a sense of ‘I can take action’, ‘I can organise’, ‘I can achieve results’.

It allows us to start believing in ourselves and our capacity to be(come) an organised person. 

Thus, even just a small successful experience like taking action and changing a cluttered drawer into a clear and organised drawer can have significant effects on our mind and our thinking. (Click Here to read about an example project: Decluttering and organising my office supplies’ drawer.)

It can have the power to set off a cascade of other changes in our life because our thoughts and beliefs are the cause of anything we experience in our life:

As soon as we start to believe that we can organise our stuff, that we can achieve results by taking action, we start to feel more powerful and confident, which frees us up to take further action, which delivers further results.

Which then reinforce and intensify our thoughts of being capable of changing our life and taking control. Which strengthens our feelings of strengths, which … .

A tiny small action creating small but real results can get the ball rolling, can trigger a circle of success. 

A small step can change everything. Give it a try.