How to Create Decluttering Habits in Your Life
All of us love to shop, save and keep things for use whenever that may be. At times the use for an article never comes to be!!!! We keep resetting the almirahs, kitchen cabinets, and the Chester’s and try our best to discard certain things but ALAS!!!! We tend to keep all the things back and close. So ultimately the things never go out but get accumulated which is known as cluttering.
Cluttering not only happens in our home, it happens in your fridge, handbag, phone, your laptop, everywhere cluttering can happen. We certainly have to clean and declutter all these places.
Have you decluttered your home or your mind only to find certain areas accumulating clutter again right away? Or perhaps you simplified what you owned only to have a lot more things find their way back into your home. Decluttering isn’t a one-and-done process, which is why you need decluttering habits.
How to create decluttering habits in your life
Now that we know why to create decluttering habits, now let’s look at how to create decluttering habits in your life.
1. Realize it’s a lifestyle change
Decluttering your entire home or your mind takes a lot of time and effort. You have to make tough decisions as you let go of the things you’ve been holding onto.
You get to experience all the benefits of decluttering your home and your mind and the next goal becomes keeping it that way.
With any kind of change in life, in order to maintain the results, requires ongoing effort.
If you were to start a new fitness plan, you don’t stop when you achieve your goal. Or if you had financial goals you were trying to achieve, you would need to keep up with them to continue to get where you want to go.
Realize that having a decluttered space is a lifestyle choice. It isn’t something that you simply go through and do once it is done forever.
Ongoing maintenance is needed by changing your habits and behaviors.
2. Remind yourself of your goals
One thing I recommend before even beginning the decluttering process is to get specific with your goals. Take the time to think it through and decide how you want your space to look, feel, and function.
The clearer you are on that end goal, the more likely you’ll be to end up there since you have a clear target.
This end goal is motivating during the decluttering process and afterward, it serves as a reminder of how you want to maintain the space.
If you ever begin to feel like you’re starting to get off track, look back at those goals. When you are considering bringing anything new into the home, decide if that item supports your purposes for your home.
3. Start the season off right
For most people, the process started with the person getting fed up with the clutter in their home, kitchen, handbag, laptop, and phone. Next, they went through the entire home doing a big declutter by sorting through their belongings and removing those things they’d been keeping for many years but not used for many years. For me when I was going through my almirah I found myself loaded with too many clothes, sarees, dresses, shirts, etc, etc. Then I took a conscious decision to stop buying and if I have to buy, I have to part with 3 things. So, the ratio set was 1:3. So I have been practicing for the last 5 years. There is no clutter being accumulated in my home now.
The same thing happens with your mobile, if you sort it out you will be surprised to see many groups that were never attended were never read or responded to. Delete them. Delete all the old messages, sort out all the photos and keep the good ones. You will find your phone way lighter. The same goes for your laptop too… delete, delete & delete.
Mental clutter is another big thing to deal with. We have too much baggage carried by us daily in the form of memories, hurts, feelings, rejections, etc which need to be removed and replaced with good ones. This is the most difficult part of decluttering.
Everyone goes at their own pace through this process. For some, it is quicker faster, and more immediate and for others, it’s slower and happens over a longer period of time.
Usher in the season by continuing to simplify as you focus on what you love most. Creating decluttering habits at the beginning of each season will help you to keep your stuff in check.
4. Create daily decluttering habits
One of the most important decluttering habits you can create are the ones you do daily.
Clutter accumulates in the home, in cyber, or in your minds for two reasons. One is too much stuff and the other is not putting things away.
Just as progress begets progress, clutter begets clutter.
That means that you’re more likely to not put items back if you see other items already sitting out. On the other hand, you’re more likely to put things away when the counter is cleared off.
Your daily habits don’t have to take a lot of time.
It is simple actions made consistently.
Create daily habits that work for your schedule and your life.
About 45% of what you do on a daily basis is driven by your habits. When you work diligently in changing those habits, you will find that over time those small changes lead to big results.
“I can predict the long-term outcome of your success if you show me your daily habits.” -John Maxwell
5. Set your own rules
Part of creating your decluttering habits is by creating your own simple rules and getting solutions. I personally don’t like rules imposed on me, which is why I am a bigger fan of creating my own simple solutions.
It’s also why I focus on simplicity and not minimalism.
I’ll give you some ideas of potential rules to create, but feel free to pick and choose what will work for you and alter them as needed.
Types of rules to create:
1. The 1-minute rule: If it takes less than a minute to put it away, do it immediately.
2. Replacement rule: If you buy or are gifted an item, immediately give away for charity 3 similar things before you keep the new one.
3. 15-minute clean-up rule: Schedule a time in the evening when you put away any misplaced items. Pay special attention to countertops, delete unwanted trash emails, forwarded messages, and any other clutter hot spots.
4. When you last used it rule: Decide an appropriate length of time to keep items that haven’t been used recently.
If you experience seasons where you live, don’t get rid of all the coats in summer. Wait until you’ve gone through cooler months and noticed what you did and didn’t wear.
For other types of items like tools and kitchen appliances, how long do you think it is appropriate to keep them if it’s not being used? Items can quickly become clutter if you are not using them.
5. Get it out rule: So, you’ve decided you’re not going to keep something, great! Now the goal is not to hang onto items waiting to be sold or donated for an extended period of time. They have to go out of your home, otherwise, the urge to again store them back can take over you.
6. Slow the flow
Another key aspect to maintaining your space is changing your habits of shopping and keeping a close eye on what is coming into your home.
The daily habits and rules you created will help you deal with the clutter created by not putting things away.
Shopping habits
An essential one of the decluttering habit involves looking at your shopping habits. Analyze your credit card statements and receipts to see where you are buying things that are contributing to the clutter in your home.
Often during the decluttering process, there are realizations of how certain shopping habits led to the clutter in the first place. Pay attention to what you learn there and remind yourself of it in the future.
Gifts
Sometimes the inflow of clutter in your home comes from gifts from other people. If you have young children this can be particularly challenging.
The way to slow the inflow with gifts is by having open conversations with family members. It also may mean rethinking your own gift-giving practices too.
Simplifying doesn’t mean you have to get rid of giving gifts, but you may want to consider alternate ideas like experiences, vouchers, or gift cards.
Traditions
Birthdays, Diwali, and Christmas traditions can lend themselves to additional clutter coming into the home too. Consider simplifying birthdays or opting for an experience instead of a party is possible.
A gift voucher, and movie tickets can be some examples. With family and cousins, we opted for a vacation together than buying gifts. The kids and all of us enjoyed the experience more than the gifts.
There are ways to reduce holiday clutter if you think outside the box.
7. Make it convenient
As you create decluttering habits, make sure that you make decluttering easy. Have a box, basket, or container similar to your laundry bag which is easily accessible for putting unwanted items.
As soon as you come across an item that is no longer serving you, put it there. Procrastination fuels clutter, so staying on top of things in your home and having a designated spot for what’s going out makes it easier.
Your last step is to get it from that box or basket to go out of your home and not just in your car trunk. You’ll better be able to enjoy your decluttered home by not keeping unwanted items for a lengthy period of time.
Are you ready to start your decluttering habits?
They will be the key to maintaining your beautifully decluttered space.
