The life changing effect of decluttering

A funny thing happened as I emptied my house of all the objects that were extraneous to my life and kept only those things that added value to my life.

The house remained tidier.

Items went back into their own spaces.

Junk stopped accumulating.

Things stopped getting lost – I haven’t lost my keys since I started this decluttering process. Not once (every time I think about that I feel like I need to pause just to really appreciate how incredible that is).

Why?

There’s less stuff to start with. Everything has its own spot now so when it goes away it goes where it belongs, not just where a random spot can be found for it. Because it’s so much easier to put things away, I am much more inclined to take those few extra steps and put things away. I am more inclined to ask my son to put his toys away before bed and make sure that he follows through. The various surfaces throughout the house don’t attract miscellaneous clutter like they used to because everything has a place to go.

I have learnt that stuff attracts stuff. Clutter attracts clutter. If I leave a little dish out on the bookcase for keys and wallet to go into, then somehow it will also attracts, bits of paper, screws, pegs and a lot of other random things.

I may not have finished, but already I can see the results.

I feel better.

I am more relaxed.

I am happier.

I am less overwhelmed.

I am no longer trying to escape the messy house and I am no longer constantly tidying a messy house. 

Cutting out the excess stuff in my home has significantly improved my state of mind and sense of wellbeing. It is worth taking a moment to really think about how much impact our environment can have on our mind and our body.

More time to spend with these two

With less stuff and a tidier home, I have more time to spend with my family. I can say yes to that puzzle or that game of Baby Chewbaccas (my son’s current favourite make believe game) because there isn’t 13 entire loads of washing to be folded or a floor that needs to be cleared of flotsam and jetsam before we can play.

With this first step, my life began to change. I started to think what other distractions were preventing me from spending time with my family. Not just time, quality time. With the increased time with my family, I really began to notice how much of that time I was actually spending on my phone and not paying attention to those that are important to me. I started thinking about what lessons I was teaching my children, what lessons I wanted to teach my children.

A tidy house was my first step. That first step lead me down a path I never expected, a path to figuring out how to really engage with my husband and my children and really, with life. All it took was that first step. Everyone can take a first step. Who knows where it will lead. 

My first step - declutter

The book that started everything

Shortly after my mother-in-law’s death I read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. It was all the rage and when I saw the title of the book I immediately thought “that’s for me”.

At the time I read it, I didn’t really connect my desire to read the book with the bigger picture stuff that I had been thinking about.

I just knew that I felt as though I was drowning in an overwhelming mess at home and that I wanted to do something about it.

The book was small and easy to read. I finished it off quickly and immediately got to work.

Marie Kondo’s premise was simple: tidy big, tidy once (over a maximum 6 month period) and never have to tidy again. I was skeptical, but I was ready to give it a go. Her system is this:

• Declutter a single category at a time: clothes, books, paperwork, komono (miscellaneous everything else) and sentimentals.
• Complete each category before moving on to the next
• Hold each belonging in each category in your hand and ask yourself “does this spark joy”? If it does not, discard it in whatever manner is most suitable
• Make a space for everything else and ensure that you always replace the belonging in that space

“Awesome”, I thought. I can do that.

I started with my own clothes and soon I had four bags for donation and two bags for the rubbish.

Slowly slowly I began working my way through the rest of the house and the categories.

Paperwork, which I was dreading, really wasn’t as bad as I was expecting (although two months after completing that category I still haven’t got around to the shredding).

Toys, on the other hand, was not only as bad as I had envisaged, it was worse.

I still have a long way to go. I have completed most of the major categories but I still have some of the miscellaneous category to complete (like DVDs, CD’s, random cables etc) and the sentimental items.

But I immediately began to see the results. I started to feel more relaxed. I had less work to do, more time to myself.

With this first step my life began to change and I began to look for even more ways I could change my life.

My first step was about stuff. Excess possessions. Decluttering.

Yours might be about technology. Less time at work. Doing one thing at a time.

We all have to take a first step to get started and it might just change your life.  

The trigger

Every journey has a trigger and then a first step.

For me the trigger wasn’t about my distractions, my relationship with my family or even about whether I was using my time on earth in the way that I would have liked.

For me, the trigger was twofold – my supremely out of control house and the sad passing of my mother-in-law.  

I’d been aware for a very long time that the state of the house was having a negative impact on my state of mind.

I was becoming sick and tired of always feeling out of control because of the state of the house. It was untidy and unclean. No matter how much I tidied, the house would be messy again within hours. You couldn’t see the kitchen table or the benches for the amount of stuff just lying about on them. There were clothes and detritus all over the place, in every room. I couldn’t see the bed or the bedroom floor under all the clothes everywhere. Who knows if they were clean or dirty. The bedroom had become downright hazardous at night time as I tried to navigate my way out of the room in the dark to the baby’s room. The family room could barely be played in because of the volume of stuff in there. The bookcases and drawers were full of miscellaneous stuff that had no other place to go and just collected. The more stuff there was lying about, the more stuff seemed to accumulate.

One of the most frustrating effects of this excess of stuff was just how often I would lose things. Nothing seemed to have its own space. Everything ended up anywhere it felt and as a result I could never find what I needed and needlessly spent valuable time looking for lost objects like keys and phone and being stressed about it.

I felt unhappy at home and would try to go about to avoid the mess, only to get that sinking feeling again as I walked up the front steps at the thought of the mess that was going to assault my senses as I opened the front door.

I was increasingly aware that we were spending way too much money and I suspected that a lot of that stuff was stuff that I didn’t need. Yet, when I left the house to avoid the stuff, I usually ended up at the shops spending more money on more stuff that we didn’t need.

Here’s the thing. I have always been aware that my environment impacts greatly on my sense of well being. The more stuff I had, the messier my house was. The messier my house, the more stressed I was. The more stressed I was, the more overwhelmed I felt. The more overwhelmed I felt, the more I needed to find an escape. The more escaping I did, the more stuff I seemed to accumulate. It was a vicious cycle.