Decluttering and organising our home is a great way to make us feel better.
First, it’s an activity that produces direct and visible results and positive change in our home – more order and space around us.
And living in a clutterfree and organised home has additional positive effects on our daily life: We gain more time, more productivity, more peace of mind.
Second, decluttering and organising our home is a very practical way to prove to our mind that we are the ones who determine how our life looks like.
Making decisions about our physical belongings and actively getting our stuff sorted makes us feel powerful and in control – which in turn creates other strong positive feelings such as confidence and self-efficacy. (Read more: ‘How to take back control and feel more powerful in uncertain times’)
The small-steps decluttering approach
If we own a lot of stuff, if many areas of our home are cluttered with too many things, the solution could be to conduct a massive decluttering project, clearing up our home completely, in one go.
However, we don’t have to do it all in one go. We can instead decide to commit ourselves to do a series of shorter and smaller decluttering projects.
The benefits of the small-steps decluttering approach
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- The small-steps decluttering approach allows us to achieve fast results.
- It’s easy to integrate the decluttering sessions into our daily life because they are short and have a clearly defined duration.
- Scheduling the sessions as appointments in our calendar helps us to take them seriously and to develop a regular decluttering routine.
- Regular decluttering sessions have a similar effect as other regular exercises: we practice our decluttering skills and build up ‘I-can-do-it’ confidence.
How to conduct the small-steps decluttering sessions
As any new activity, small-steps decluttering, too, needs a bit of practice.
However, the process is not difficult, it’s very ‘organised’ and clearly structured: We get everything out, we sort and declutter, we organise. That’s it.
The first time we might need to have our instructions close by (CLICK HERE for a detailed description of the process) so they can guide us step-by-step.
Based on the first experience, we’ll start our second decluttering project with much more confidence and ease.
And soon the steps of the decluttering & organising process become so natural to us that we now struggle to understand why it took us so long to get started.