Why Is Routine Decluttering So Important?
When was the last time you decluttered? Last Week? Last month? Last year? As a busy mom myself, it’s easy to let stuff just pile up to deal with later. Before you know it, your car keys are buried under yesterday’s laundry and your cell phone is in the fridge with the groceries. You may not even realize how quickly your home is accumulating more and more things. Keeping up with routine decluttering isn’t just about making sure your home looks neat and presentable, but also about establishing good habits. In this blog post, I’ll dive into why it’s important to make routine decluttering part of your schedule.
Even though you may dread decluttering your stuff, it’s essential to your mental health to maintain a clutter-free and organized environment.
Studies have proven that reducing clutter:
- Helps to reduce stress
- Lets you focus better
- Increases productivity
- Improves your mood
- Saves you time and money
- and Creates more room for the things that truly matter to you.
Doesn’t that give you the motivation you need to start decluttering?
I don’t know about you but anything that can help reduce stress is a win for me.
If that doesn’t, then let me break those down for you a little further.
Imagine waking up to a morning where your kids aren’t yelling “Where’s my backpack?” “Where’s my homework?” “I lost my water bottle again.” Because they know where to look to find the items and there isn’t so much stuff around that makes it even harder to find things. Having less stressful mornings will likely also help to improve your mood.
A study published on PubMed part of the National Library of Medicine found that physical clutter in your environment competes for your attention causing decreased productivity and increased stress.
Clutter provides us with the constant visual reminder that our life isn’t where we want it to be (and neither is our stuff). This can have a significant impact on your mood and even your self-esteem. The more items we have the more anxiety it can provoke.
I understand that giving away or throwing away items that you’ve spent your hard-earned money on is not always easy; however, keeping them even though they don’t get used is not saving you any money either.
More Doesn’t Always Mean Better
Especially in today’s society with all the ads we see on a daily basis, it’s easy for us to believe that more = better. However, more stuff leads to more clutter in our lives.
All, or at least majority of us, have more items than we need and instead of motivating us and giving us joy, they hold us back.
Routine decluttering can help to make sure things never get too out of control. Not only do you need to do routine decluttering, but also to pay more attention to what you are bringing into your home as well.
If you’re like me and have a bit of a shopping addiction, then it may be more beneficial to review and evaluate your shopping habits before you begin your decluttering journey. Otherwise, you may use decluttering as an excuse to buy more stuff, which doesn’t solve the problem of clutter.
A good rule of thumb that I’ve learned is the “one in, one out” method. For example, for every new piece of clothing that you bring into your home, you have to get rid of one item of clothing that you already have in your closet.
Remember that “clutter attracts clutter.”
1
Reduce Your Stress, Improve Your Focus
According to research conducted by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, “Our brains like order, and constant visual reminders of disorganization drain our cognitive resources and reduce our ability to focus.”
Decluttering will also help to reduce your stress, in that it reduces the number of decisions you have to make. Decision fatigue has been proven in multiple studies, so reducing the number of clothes or coffee cups you have (for example) will reduce the number of decisions you have to make in the morning. Therefore, delaying or preventing decision fatigue.
You might not feel or notice the stress or lack of focus that your clutter is causing, but once you remove the clutter you’ll see that there is more room in your mind and space to focus on creative activities.
2
Increases Productivity
When you are able to focus more, you are able to get more done during the day.
Yes, of course, there will always be distractions in life that come up, but having a clearer mind will help to prevent unnecessary distractions.
Imagine having the same amount of time, but getting more done than you’ve been able to before. What will you do with your extra time? Work towards your dreams that you’ve pushed onto the back burner? Spend more time with friends and family? Take up a new hobby?
3
Improves Your Mood
Decluttering helps to improve your mood because you are only surrounded by the things you love and use, which creates a sense of serenity. You are no longer bogged down by all the items that you don’t use and are “caving in” on you.
As Gretchen Rubin put it, in her book Outer Order, Inner Calm, “Our physical experience colors our emotional experience, and when my body is in a place that is orderly, my mind becomes more serene.”
P.S. I highly recommend reading this book.
Decluttering also helps to relieve the burden you carry around every time you see items that you never use or projects that you started but never finished.
It’s time to be honest with yourself and either actually, plan out when you are going to complete those projects or c’est la vie. You don’t need items in your life that bring you down when you look at them. This also includes all those clothes in your closet that don’t fit you but you keep holding onto them with the intention of ‘losing weight’ or ‘getting back into shape’ to fit into them again. I do this too! It’s time to say goodbye!
Another one that I’m guilty of is holding onto books that I plan to read ‘eventually.’ How many of us say, “I wish I read more,” and have books that have sat on our shelves for years and never been touched? If you haven’t read them by now chances are you are not going to, so give yourself some relief and just eliminate the mental drain those books are causing you.
4
More Time and Money
Routine decluttering is so important because it saves us the most valuable thing of all, time! The less clutter we have, the less time we’ll spend just looking for the items we need on a daily basis.
Less stuff also means less time spent cleaning and putting items back where they belong. What if decluttering, even just a little bit, saved you 10 minutes of tidying up every day, that’s 3,650 extra minutes (that’s two and a half extra days!) a year to do what you want to do! Or even if it saves you just 10 minutes a week, that’s still an extra 520 minutes every year to spend with your friends and family.
You will also save money because you’ll be able to easily see everything that you have and won’t buy products that you think you’re out of, simply because you can’t find them.
5
More Room For What Truly Matters
When you declutter you will be able to more clearly see all the things that actually have meaning to you.
I’m going to share another quote from Gretchen Rubin’s book Outer Order, Inner Calm because I feel like she has such great insights, “After you declutter, you know what you have, why you have it, and where it belongs. There’s nothing random, no uncertainty, no default choices. You’re surrounded by meaningful possessions that are ready to use.”
With all that being said, I hope this has ignited a decluttering spark in you and that you’re ready to create a renewed life for yourself and your family.
Decluttering takes time and effort, but the payoffs are well worth ‘the price.’
Remember that decluttering is not a ‘one-and-done’ sort of thing, unfortunately.
Regina Leeds author of One Year to an Organized Life, teaches us that just learning to organize is only a piece of the puzzle. To fully learn to reduce clutter in our lives, we have to understand what causes/influences these behaviors in us.
You need to continue to declutter throughout your life because you will always accumulate more and more things as the months and years go on. Once you create a habit of routine decluttering and you become more aware of what you’re bringing into your home, decluttering will get easier. I promise!
