Steps to Declutter Your Space Without Overwhelm

Having a cluttered space, whether it’s your office desk or your home (or both) can feel overwhelming. If you have stuff everywhere and no idea of what you have, it can feel impossible to deal with and out of control. 

 

Here are some tips to help you take back control of your space and declutter.

 

Commit to a Goal

 

Part of the overwhelm is due to feeling you have to deal with all the stuff straightaway. You don’t. You just need a plan and a commitment to sort and throw away a reasonable amount of stuff every day. Once you’ve done your daily ration, you’ll feel so much better because you’re getting on with it in a systematic way.

 

Do a Clean Sweep

 

Take a box of garbage bags and do a walk-through your home and just pick up anything that’s garbage like circulars, newspapers, wrappers. With the trash out of the way, you can get on with the real decluttering. 

 

Do One Room or Area at a Time

 

Depending on how you’re feeling, this could be the worst room or the one that isn’t too bad.  If it’s your worst room, choose one area to declutter, maybe the dining table or the kitchen counter. Maybe even one closet. Just keep it manageable.

 

Have a Purge Box

 

A purge box or a donation station can be a cardboard box or bag where you can put things for charity and donate every week or so. Keep up the momentum of things leaving the house!

 

Set a Timer

 

You’re not trying to organize your entire home in one go, but perhaps even tackling one room or area might feel overwhelming. In that case get a kitchen timer, set it for 15 or 20 minutes, and work only for that long to keep things feeling manageable. You can face doing anything for 15 minutes.

 

Start Small

 

Start with the things that you won’t have any doubt about keeping. Anything broken or out-of-date can go straight into the trash. Clothes that are outgrown or never worn, that waffle machine or juicer you never use, ornaments you resent dusting – they can all go without a look back.

 

Don’t Feel Guilty

 

Permit yourself to declutter. It’s your space, and there’s no need to feel guilty about getting rid of stuff that’s no longer useful.  As you’re sorting, you can ask yourself some basic questions to see if the thing deserves a place in your life:

• Have I used or worn this in the last year? If not, get rid of it.

• Do I love it?

• Do I have the space to store it?

• Am I willing to throw something else out to make room for it?

• Can I see myself or anyone else in the family ever using it or loving it in the future? Really?

 

Simple Habits for Staying Organized

Getting organized is one thing, staying organized is another challenge altogether. If you want to stay in control of your life, you need to form a few simple habits to change the way you think about your ‘stuff.’

 

Here are seven easy ways to stay organized.

 

Make the Bed

 

Making your bed every day is a small but easily overlooked task that will make you feel instantly more organized and your bedroom look neat. Whatever else happens in your day, at least you’ve made your bed.

 

Clean Up the Kitchen and Straighten the House

 

Do the dishes, clean up the kitchen and do a quick tidy of the living areas of your home each evening, and you will finish the day with the right mindset for keeping the rest of your life organized.

 

Stay on Task

 

Finish one task before you start the next one. Multitasking is overrated and wastes your energy. By trying to do too much at once, you risk getting exhausted and never actually finishing anything. Focusing on one thing at a time will keep you calm, and soon you’ll have a bunch of checks on your to-do list. 

 

Use Your Downtime

 

Add up all those minutes of waiting during your day, and you have quite a lot of time when you just hang around. Whether it’s waiting for the coffee maker to brew or the washer to go on spin cycle, you can use this time to do little tasks like empty or load the dishwasher, wipe down the counters or sort through the mail.

 

Keep Synched

 

Make sure your family’s smartphones and devices talk to one another and that calendars are kept synced. You will not miss appointments, and everyone will know what’s happening and what’s coming up. 

 

Stay On Top of Emails

 

Schedule part of your day to deal with emails, so your inbox doesn’t get out of control. Aim for zero email by the end of the day by using filters and tagging, and don’t procrastinate, just respond to emails straight away. 

 

Stay On Top of Paperwork

 

Work out a system to deal with the tide of papers that come into your home and stick to it. Action, scan and file important papers, and throw away or recycle hard copies. Make dealing with paperwork part of your evening tidy up, and you will never have piles of unsorted papers again.

Schedule Your Worries for a Clutter-Free Mind

The odds are you deal with mental clutter every day. Even the most mentally calm and focused individual engages in clutter-gathering activities. Do you ever ...

 

... ruminate needlessly over some experience in your past or some unknown situation in your future?

... obsess over an interaction you had with someone, good or bad?

... worry and "what if?" yourself crazy about something out of your control?

... hold tightly to negative experiences, emotions, and feelings?

... constantly surround yourself with external distractions and a continual barrage of sensory input?

 

These create mental clutter. It wastes your brain-based energy and your valuable time. These and other mentally cluttering activities lead to disorganization and distractions, confusion and a lack of mental control, poor productivity, and can even cause physical fatigue. The more mental clutter you experience, the more negative emotions and feelings you have to deal with.

 

Stop Worrying All of the Time and Schedule It Instead

 

You wouldn't be human if you didn't worry about different aspects of your life. You want to be your best and create the best life experience. That means you're going to fret, worry and wonder over any number of topics from time to time.

 

Your worry comes about because of fears, expectations, concern over potential outcomes, and other reasons. Instead of engaging these worries when they pop up, schedule a time each day to deal with what's happening in your mind. When something worrisome enters your mind, you tell yourself you'll deal with it at a previously scheduled time.

 

Then consciously get your mind involved with something else. Do anything that requires your conscious devotion. This will push your worry to the back burner of your mental stove, which can be dealt with later. 

 

Stop spinning the wheels of your mental machinery. Your worries don't have to take over your mind and start cluttering your mental storage space. Deal with them by appointment, sometime in your schedule, where you can give them your undivided attention.

 

Schedule this worry-work at the same time each day and each week if possible. When you perform the same activity at the same time, eventually, your mind will notice. It begins to expect you to handle your worries at a designated time. You'll discover you start to worry less because your mind is used to ignoring these thoughts when they are off schedule. This can limit the worrisome thoughts you have to deal with throughout your day.