5 Tips To Start Decluttering

I want to give you five tips about decluttering when you don’t know where to start. 

Many people are overwhelmed, and just can’t see the wood for the trees, and just don’t even know where to begin. So I’m going to tell you five very simple tips for you beginning your decluttering journey. 

The first thing is to sit and ponder.

Take some time, have a conversation if you live with somebody else (if there’s somebody else in your environment) about which are the problem areas? 

Which areas are the worst? 

Which is the place you need to start? 

Which hampers your daily life more than the others? 

It may be that it’s the kitchen that’s just chaos, it might be the living room, and you don’t feel like you can sit there you know. So which is the worst area? 

Talk about it, ponder it, take some time to really think about it. 

The second thing to do is to really visualise what you want that area to look like. 

What do you want it to look like? 

How do you want it to function? 

What are the things that aren’t working? 

Really think about those and what you do want them to work like, because it’s really important that we, as with any goal, need a goal of where to go to, but also know what we’re coming away from. I don’t want this because X and I want it to look like this because Y. 

Really connect with how you want that area to be. 

Thirdly, it’s about breaking it down into small manageable chunks. 

Don’t look at the thing as a big whole, because it’s too big and you can’t start. You don’t know where to begin.

Just break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. 

It might be I need to empty the bin, I need to sort that pile of papers out, I need to empty that drawer. 

But break it down into small manageable chunks. 

The next thing to do, is to actually diarise doing it. 

One of the things that a lot of people do is they think about things for a long time. But it’s the action that’s going to make the difference. So diarise the chunks. That means it’s not one big thing anymore, it’s lots of little things that you’re going to do. But diarise those things. 

And then the last thing is to actually do it. 

Which it sounds ridiculous, but you know, unless we do these things then nothing’s gonna change. If you’ve always do, what you’ve always always done, then you’ll always get, what you’ve always got. 

So you’ve got to do something differently and that’s about committing to it. 

So just to recap, decluttering when you don’t know where to start; 

1.  Discuss, ponder; What is that’s the problem? Which of the worst areas? Where do you need to focus first? 
2. Visualise what you want it to look like
3. Break it down into some small manageable tasks that aren’t going to be so overwhelming
4. Diarise it, so get it in the diary
5. Get on and do it. 

Break it down like this and see how you get on. 

I reckon you’ll be okay.