“The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don't.”
-Joshua Becker
You’ve been learning about the benefits of a simple life and decided it is something you want. You desire a calmer life, free from unnecessary stress, with more time to enjoy your family, your friends, and what is truly important. You also understand that simplifying your home environment is one of the best places to start, if only because the time used for cleaning and organizing can be freed to be used fulfilling your dreams and reaching new goals. You also know from the previous post what options you have when purging stuff from your home. But you look at your house and wonder: where do I start?
It’s easy to feel motivated and want to get it all done right away, but you didn’t accumulate all your stuff in one day. You won’t get rid of it in one day either. It takes time. The key however, is to start small and start neutral.
If you haven’t heard of financial expert Dave Ramsey, I encourage you to check him out. Your financial live will be transformed! When speaking about debt, he counsels that we pay debt off from smaller to larger. The reasoning behind is that when people see their small loans paid off, they will feel motivated to keep going as they pay off larger debts. The same principle can be applied to decluttering. By starting small and neutral, you will feel motivated to continue as you see the results and benefits of your work.
What do I mean by small and neutral?
START SMALL
Small means that you don’t start by decluttering your shoe collection or your family photographs. These are sentimental items difficult to let go of. Starting your journey with these would be the same as paying off your largest debt first. It will be so difficult that you’ll feel discouraged and possibly give up. Begin by decluttering small areas like a junk drawer, or your car for example where it’s easy to accumulate clutter. Throw away all the trash, take all the toys back inside the house (leave just a few if you have children), get all the papers and junk mail out, and everything else that doesn’t belong in the car. Or maybe start with your sock drawer. You know which socks you use and which ones have been hiding in the back of the drawer for several years without being used. Start small and you'll begin to see results right away which is very encouraging.
BE NEUTRAL
Being neutral means you declutter your own things first without interfering with others’ stuff. We can easily notice how messy our kids or spouse are and have a difficult time realizing how imperfect we, in fact, are. This truth is addressed by Jesus when He explained how easy it is for us to want to remove a little speck from another person’s eye while we have a plank coming out of our own. We must first remove the plank out of our eye. It will help us see more clearly, and perhaps even realize that there is no speck in the other person's eye. You can read this story in the Bible, in Matthew 7:3-5. I love this analogy! If you want to avoid confrontation and a lot of stress, don’t touch anyone else’s stuff. Start with your own.
I started with a collection of mugs that I used to decorate the top of the kitchen cabinets with. They were souvenirs from different places I had visited, but eventually I realized that their only purpose was to collect dust. So off to the donation box they went and I got rid of the dusty visual clutter that adorned the top of the cabinets. And you know what? The kitchen looked so much better without all of those mugs up there. And I felt better too. This to say that there is plenty of decluttering we can do with our own stuff and that’s where we need to start.
With these tips in mind, grab a box or large bags, make a plan, and start removing from your home and your life the things that are keeping you in bondage. It’s time to break free!
Happy decluttering!
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