Five New Habits to Unclutter Your Life

This guest post is from Chris­tine Hegstad whose guide­book, Fresh & Clear: Your Guide to Declut­ter­ing Space, Mind & Life! is a great read if you want to unclut­ter your life. Check out her web­site: Mean­ing and Pur­pose.

“How did I get this way?” In addi­tion to liv­ing with too much stuff, many clut­tered indi­vid­u­als crowd them­selves with blame, judg­ment, and hope­less­ness at how they have let their stuff over­take their lives. We often view an abun­dance of clut­ter as a char­ac­ter flaw, poor per­sonal man­age­ment, or the lack of a spe­cial get-rid-of-it tal­ent with which every­one else seems to have been blessed!

In all hon­esty, most of our clut­ter issues stem from one word: habit. We sim­ply get in the habit of toss­ing our mail on the counter, plac­ing papers on top of the file cab­i­net instead of within it, and pur­chas­ing items because they’re on sale rather than because we truly need them. And thanks to the research of behav­ioral psy­chol­o­gists, we know at least two things about habits:

1) rather than break­ing a bad habit, it’s bet­ter to replace it with a new one; and
2) after twenty-one days, a new activ­ity will become habit for us.

With that in mind, we can begin today to estab­lish pos­i­tive habits that will cure our clut­ter­ing before it becomes a strug­gle. Below, I’ve iden­ti­fied five such habits that can make a con­sid­er­able dent in the amount of clut­ter sur­round­ing you.

1. The habit of com­ple­tion. Do you know the biggest, not to men­tion sneaki­est, clut­ter cre­ator? Unfin­ished busi­ness. Those news­pa­pers we’ll get around to read­ing some­day, the projects we’ve begun but never quite com­pleted, the papers we started fil­ing but then found some­thing more entic­ing to do. When­ever pos­si­ble, fin­ish what you start. If you are unable to com­plete a project, fin­ish at least a mea­sur­able amount; you can then write the next steps on your to-do list and tuck the project away with­out fear of for­get­ting about it.
2. The habit of trial runs. Before buy­ing an item, con­sider request­ing a test period or bor­row­ing from a friend first. This can be done with large or small items and will help you deter­mine whether or not you will actu­ally use them. For exam­ple, sev­eral years ago I pur­chased an apple peeler/corer/slicer after a very con­vinc­ing demon­stra­tion (and a few encour­ag­ing friends). Three years and forty baked apple goods later, I real­ized that I still peeled, cored, and sliced my apples by hand – either because set­ting up the gad­get proved too much of a has­sle or because I for­got about it alto­gether. Need­less to say, I donated my device with­out hes­i­ta­tion and real­ized that bor­row­ing first would have saved me money and cup­board space.
3. The habit of giv­ing. Rather than try­ing to find space to fit all your stuff or, even more costly, rent­ing a sep­a­rate unit to store those ran­dom items, develop the habit of donat­ing, shar­ing, and giv­ing things away. I often ask par­tic­i­pants in my work­shop which legacy they would rather leave: “She was gen­er­ous and phil­an­thropic” or “She sure had a lot of stuff!” Con­sider friends, fam­ily, char­i­ties, silent auc­tions, and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions that may ben­e­fit from your excess.
4. The habit of lim­i­ta­tion. We are bom­barded with oppor­tu­ni­ties to increase the amount of stuff in our lives on a moment-to-moment basis. There­fore, it is up to each of us to set our own guide­lines of how much stuff we will allow to enter our homes and work­spaces. In my home, we have a drawer des­ig­nated for movies and DVDs. Once that drawer reaches full capac­ity, that’s it; if we want to add a new DVD, we donate one of the exist­ing ones to make room. I’ve learned two valu­able lessons from this sim­ple strat­egy: first, when we go through our col­lec­tion to deter­mine which one we will donate, we typ­i­cally find not just one but sev­eral that we are will­ing to part with. Sec­ond, this is a fan­tas­tic way to model proac­tive declut­ter­ing – and shar­ing with those less for­tu­nate – to our chil­dren. Know­ing their no-longer-precious movie might help calm a scared child in the emer­gency room instills a pos­i­tive and lov­ing per­spec­tive of decluttering.
5. The habit of con­scious pur­chas­ing. I love a good bar­gain as much as the next per­son, but buy­ing some­thing sim­ply because it is on sale adds con­sid­er­ably to our excess. In addi­tion to con­sid­er­ing where you will put the item or what you will use it for once you get home, ask your­self – in all hon­esty – will the item truly enhance your life or help you ful­fill your pur­pose? Is there some­thing more mean­ing­ful for which you would rather spend the money? (A vaca­tion, a spa treat­ment, or a per­sonal trainer, per­haps.) Many thrifty peo­ple find it help­ful to ask them­selves how many hours they will have to work to pay for the item in order to deter­mine its worth. What­ever your moti­va­tion, pay close and con­scious atten­tion to the items going into your cart so you can make healthy, life-affirming decisions.

Get­ting rid of clut­ter can turn into a rather hefty task, depend­ing on the amount and the emo­tional attach­ments asso­ci­ated with it. Much eas­ier, then, is pre­vent­ing clut­ter from enter­ing our lives in the first place. By imple­ment­ing even one of these habits, you’ll notice a decrease in the amount of stuff in your life – which will make liv­ing a clear, clutter-free life a nat­ural result.

1) Unclut­ter­ing Your Laun­dry
2) Pock­et­Mod