Decluttering always sounds like a great idea until you actually start doing it, and then it suddenly feels like a much bigger task than you expected. You’ll probably open one drawer or cupboard and realise there’s a lot more in there than you thought, and instead of feeling motivated to get cracking, it’s easy to feel a bit stuck before you’ve even begun.
That feeling is going to make the idea (and process) of decluttering very stressful, which is unfortunate and ironic, considering that clutter is stressful in the first place, and decluttering is meant to make you feel better. So if there was a way to make it an easier task and reduce the stress element, would that be useful? We can say right now the answer is yes, and even better, there are a few ways to make that happen. With that in mind, keep reading to find out how to make decluttering less stressful.
Don’t Try To Do Everything At Once
One of the main reasons decluttering feels stressful is basically because people tend to treat it like one big job, meaning that every room, every cupboard, and everything hanging around the house has to be sorted in one go. That’s a lot to take on, so it’s not surprising that it can feel like it’s too much and just become stressful.
It tends to work better when it’s broken down into smaller areas, like one drawer, one shelf, or even just one corner of a room, for example. In other words, something you can definitely get finished so it’s not hanging over you and so it’s not going to take all day. And once that’s done, it’s a lot easier to move on to the next bit without feeling drained and under pressure to tick things off your list.
Start With The Easy Decisions
Not everything has to be a difficult choice – there’s always going to be things you know right away you don’t need, and starting with those is a great way to build some momentum so you can do more and make harder decisions later on.
The fact is that once you’ve made a few quick decisions, the process gets easier and feels less pressurised because you’re not stuck thinking about every single item and it’s easier to keep moving forward.
Give Yourself A Bit Of Time
Rushing through decluttering seems like a good idea – just get it done and move on to something more interesting… But the truth is that rushing generally means you’re making things harder, not easier, because you end up second guessing the decisions you’re making, or you might start to put things aside for later, and that usually means they just end up staying where they are.
When you think about it logically, you’ll see that taking your time is going to help you make better, clearer decisions, and you’ll stand a better chance of finishing what you started (after all, there’s something very stressful about running out of time, and working out when you’re actually going to come back to what you were doing).
Have A Simple System
It helps to have a basic way of sorting things as you go, and knowing what you want to keep, donate, throw away, sell, or store somewhere else can really help things move a lot faster, and because you’ll already have the system in place, it makes it less stressful at the same time.
The fact is that without a system, things just tend to get moved from place to place and nothing really happens, so even if you manage to declutter one area, another one just got filled up – you’re making a lot more work for yourself than you ever need to.
Have Storage That Actually Works
Decluttering isn’t just about getting rid of things (although there’s a lot of that, and it should be a big focus when you’re doing it) – you also need to make sure that the things you want to keep have a place to go, otherwise you’ll still be cluttered, just a bit less so than before. And if there’s nowhere for things to go, you’ll start making piles again, then adding to them, and before long, you’re back where you began.
That’s where something like easy to build garage shelving can be really useful, especially for items that don’t belong in the main house but don’t actually have anywhere else to go right now. Having proper storage makes it a lot easier to keep things organised without it all creeping back into the house and making you want to scream.
Don’t Aim For Perfection
It’s easy to think everything needs to look neat and tidy and organised immediately when you start to declutter, but that’s not always realistic – some areas are just going to take a lot longer, and some things are going to need you to come back to them later when you’ve worked out where to put the things you want to keep and so on.
And the thing is, that’s completely fine, and it’s not something you need to worry about. The thing you really want to see is progress, and in some cases, progress will be slower than others; it just depends what you’re clearing, how much of it there is, how much time you can spare, and an array of other variables. As long as you’re doing something that’s better than nothing, and it’s the right direction to take.
Take Breaks When You Need Them
Decluttering can be more tiring than you might expect, especially when you’re making a lot of decisions (which is exactly what you will be doing a lot of the time). So it’s good to take short breaks to help you reset rather than trying to push through and getting totally overwhelmed, frustrated, stressed, and eventually giving up on the idea and shutting the door on the mess.
By taking a break when you’re starting to feel it’s getting a bit much and then coming back to it later when you’ve got a clearer head, it’ll all be much easier, and the decisions you make about what to do with the clutter will be better ones.
