If you have a cluttered home, or cluttered spaces in your home, there are a few things that make it hard to break free. This short list will help you create a clutter-free home with more ease.
Creating a clutter-free home and life is a step by step adventure. It’s overwhelming to try and declutter everything all at once. Consistency will get you further than intensity. Start by decluttering for a few minutes a day or decluttering a few items a day. Progress may be slow at first but luckily slow progress is still progress!
The list below will help you with your cluttered home. From changing your mindset to giving you items to focus on, you’ll begin to create space. Clear countertops can lead to a desire less cluttered spaces in the rest of your home. It doesn’t matter where you start but if you aren’t sure, I recommend looking at your most stressful clutter. Where is it, and what will it take to get rid of it?
5 Relatable Things Keeping Your Home Cluttered
These things are relatable because we’ve all struggled with most (if not all) of them during one life stage or another. You can make small shifts to change each one of them and trade your cluttered home for more space, time, energy and joy.
1. No time to declutter.
You might be too busy to declutter. Perhaps you are overwhelmed with life’s demands and cannot find extra time to take care of your cluttered home. If this is what you struggle with, I recommend making it easier to declutter. Create a donation station in a common area of your home or by the door. Use the box or bag you set up as a reminder to drop a few things for donation every day. This tiny way to simplify your life only takes a few minutes and it will reduce the friction of letting go. Once the box or bag is full, donate it. Check out this ultimate guide of where to donate things.
Make decluttering a task and put it on your calendar. You can schedule decluttering sessions for yourself to keep it a priority. For more support and accountability, join me for the next Declutter Hour. You’ll be surprised at what you can let go of in an hour.
2. Lack of motivation to declutter.
If you feel unmotivated to declutter, it can be easy to overlook the cluttered space in your home. Unfortunately, those cluttered spaces will continue to attract clutter until you or someone else in your household says, “Enough.”
When it’s time to clear out excess clutter, you have to actually create the motivation to declutter your stuff, or create the circumstances to get started. Usually, because you are thinking about decluttering an entire home or your whole life, the project feels too big which makes it almost impossible to feel motivated about. While you may want to get all of the clutter out of the way, consider creating motivation to declutter a shelf, drawer or one corner of your home. That’s much more approachable. Try my 2-step formula to create motivation to declutter.
3. You think you can’t let go of your stuff.
The more I hear about struggles around letting go, the more I think letting go is not the problem. The problem is thinking about letting go. When we think about letting go our minds go crazy.
We think …
- I might need that someday.
- My children might want that.
- It’s a waste of money to let go.
- What will people think?
- I should save it just in case.
- It’s too late for change.
We convince ourselves that letting go is too hard. What if we changed our focus and started thinking about what’s on the other side of letting go? On the other side of letting go is …
- time
- space
- freedom
- peace
- possibility
- ease
- health
- happiness
Don’t those things sound better than holding on? If you struggle with letting go, ask yourself if letting go is really the issue, or if the issue is your thoughts about letting go, thoughts that might not be true.
4. Buying things you don’t need will keep your home cluttered.
Please stop buying things you don’t need. Before your next impulse purchase, reflect on how you feel about past impulse purchases. More stuff never made you a better person or even a happier one. It doesn’t make you feel happier (for long) and eventually you are struggling to declutter the thing you never really wanted in the first place.
Buying things isn’t bad or wrong, but shopping to feel a certain way, or to prove yourself to others or because you think something will make you feel happier or more successful doesn’t work (at least not in my experience).
5. It’s hard for you to say, “no” to yourself and others.
Sometimes your cluttered home is a response to always saying, “yes” and never pausing to consider that, “no” might be the better answer. It’s hard to say, “no.” It can feel uncomfortable. You might feel like you are letting people down. Even so, it’s one of the most important ways to create the space time you want for what matters most to you.
Once you identify what is keeping your home cluttered and have made a shift, try decluttering these 70 things from your life.
