What a beautiful thought: Less to organize, less to clean, less to take care of… less stress… and in return more time, more satisfaction, more personal strength and a simplified life. No doubt, living an uncluttered and less complicated life sounds appealing in today´s utterly complex world.
Excessive clutter is a burden and often a source of stress. Both at work and at home. Not seldom it makes one feel depressed, demotivated, and distracted. Often it even triggers chaos and frustration.
Still, for many people – although they´re clear in their heads about the necessity of uncluttering their lives – they do not know how best to embark on their mission of realizing a clutter-free life.
This article outlines some proven and highly effective strategies and techniques that will enable you to declutter your work space, your home, and your life. They will help you to tackle the clutter to lead a less stressful and more enjoyable life.
IMPORTANT GROUND RULES
- Decluttering Your Life Starts At Home
To simplify your life, start at home. If your rooms are heavily cluttered, most likely your office or desk are cluttered, your life is cluttered, and in consequence you´re stressed out. - Step By Step
Uncluttering your life does not happen overnight. It takes discipline, patience, and commitment. To get started and to keep the momentum in order to achieve a decluttering routine consider using the following powerful technique: Give away one item each day. What sounds minimalist over multiple months has a tremendous touch. - Knowing And Visualizing The Ultimate Objective
To keep yourself motivated with tidying up your life, house, office or computer be clear about why you´re doing it. To live a simpler, more joyful, and pleasant life. For everyone of us the ideal life and lifestyle we´re dreaming of looks different. Therefore it´s key to picture as concrete as possible how it would be like living in a clutter-free environment. - Questioning Each Item And Action
Hold each item in your hands, or write each action on a piece of paper, and ask yourself if it generates joy and/or value. If not, immediately throw it away and give it up. You will not regret it. Only keep the articles and customs which you truly love or which fulfill an important function. - Every Item Having Its Own Place
And every jar should have its dedicated lit. Every action and task which is part of our life must add value and must be allocated to a specific spot or a specific process step after you have positively confirmed that you either love the object/action or that it adds real value. Test: Close your eyes and know within 5 minutes where your 10 most precious items are.
THE MOST EFFECTIVE DECLUTTERING TECHNIQUES
- Implement a Zero Accumulation Approach
Whenever you get something new or whenever you set up a new process step, abandon an existing one and get rid of it. This prevents clutter. - Live By The “Plus One Minus Two Rule“
This takes the Zero Accumulation Approach a step further, i.e. whenever you get something new or whenever you introduce something new (e.g. a new process component, a new meeting, a new agenda point) take out two existing, similar ones. It´s like following a health diet and working out at the same time. - Get Rid Of “Maybe“ And “Just In Case“ Things
The archived article of some weeks ago, the unread mail of some weeks ago, the not yet read book on the shelf which you bought the other month, the gift you received five years ago which still is not unwrapped… face it, there´s a very low probability you´ll ever look at them or use them. Consequence: put them in the charity box and give it away this Saturday. Neither your house, your office nor your car should serve as storage lockers. - Critically Review Routines
Already Mark Twain noticed that “Nothing so needs reforming as people’s habits.” It´s true that many people have stopped questioning once useful routines and how they approach their life and related tasks. A good exercises is to write down your daily and weekly habits and obligations, review what and how you do it, and come up with a plan to better structure and perform the various tasks. - Downsize Your Life
One of my favorite techniques. At the beginning of this year my wife and I sold our two rather large cars. Now we´re enjoying our Mini Cooper, a smaller Audi, and riding the bikes (besides walking with our two daughters and the dog). Less time to clean, less financial resources needed, healthier lifestyle, etc. Scaling back often supports to be happier with less. - Keep Your Desk Spotless
Have only your PC or laptop, the phone, and possibly one to two personally relevant items on it (e.g. a photo of your family, etc.). Use a maximum of two drawers in which you have assembled the most important and essential things. Avoid working with paper. Clean your desk every day and enjoy how shiny and beautiful it looks. - Set Up An Efficient Filing System
It should be simple and every day in use. Don’t slack off. Make quick and straightforward decisions: (i) take action; (ii) file it (if you need to take action within next 2 weeks); (iii) trash it (aim at a daily trash rate of 80% or more). Take all notes with your laptop or PC. - Organize Information
In a digitized world which is characterized by a crazy abundance of information we are well advised to carefully select information sources by their relevance and value. As a consequence, you might want to unsubscribe from some newsletters, concentrate on consulting only 3-5 news sources, questioning RSS feeds, and limit the consumption of media and news to a maximum of one hour per day. Setting smart boundaries helps to avoid mental clutter. - Unclutter And Structure Your Computer
Clean your computer once a month at a specific and fixed day. Toss old and/or unused files. Get rid of files and programs that you don’t need and don´t use. Try to have no icons on your desktop. Set up a consequent filing system or apply a system based on file search. Either way, you need a system. Also simplify your tech life by leveraging shared drives or cloud services to avoid any potential loss of data. - Love And Celebrate The Uncluttered Life
Once you’ve gotten an area decluttered, you should take the time to enjoy that look. It’s a gigantic feeling which should be memorized. Continue to tidy up with vigilance and it will become your habit. We become what we repeatedly do. Reward yourself for every important declutter achievement.
FINAL THOUGHTS
When thinking about starting a decluttering journey, many feel overwhelmed and intimidated. As we´ve learned there´s no reason for that, since the decluttering adventure does not need to be a sore experience. Instead there exist creative and very impactful strategies and techniques to get started and to live a decluttered and stress-free life.
Just apply various of the presented techniques for a more joyful and satisfied life. Start today!
Best regards,
Andreas von der Heydt