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Are you looking around your place and thinking to yourself, “Where do I even start?” Are you overwhelmed by the amount of possessions you have? Do you plan to get started eliminating items and then look around and just give up because the project is just too big?
I totally understand how you feel. I was stuck in that place for about 6 months. I kept telling myself, this is the weekend I will start. Then when the weekend came I would look around and say to myself, I don’t have time to tackle such a huge project right now. I need to wait for a weekend when I have nothing planned and dedicate the whole weekend to it. But for 6 months, that weekend never came. I just kept putting it off and the items in my house kept growing.
According to an LA Times article, the average American home contains approximately 300,000 thousand items!!!! (http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/21/health/la-he-keeping-stuff-20140322)
I found the key to taking those first steps is to break it down into small manageable tasks. For me, that meant laying out a list of small spaces I could clean out quickly. My first baby step was to pull everything out of my kitchen utensil drawer and get rid of all the duplicates or the items I didn’t really like using, yet I never threw away. This took me about 15-30 minutes, but it gave me confidence, I saw progress. That drawer was something I used almost daily, so every time I went into it I thought about how much better it was with less stuff and how I needed to do this to the rest of my house. That next weekend I decided to go through my clothes drawers and got rid of everything that was too big for me. I have yet to tackle all my clothes, I know I still have a ton to purge, but it was a beginning step and I got a couple bags of donations that left my house, making me feel good.
Another great tip I received is to always have a couple Sorting Crates* or boxes with you when you are working. I like to keep two crates and a trash bag or box with me. One crate is for donations. The second create is for anything you come across that belongs in another room. Once you are done, go and put everything in your boxes into the rooms they belong, or a larger donations box (as soon as the box is filled, take it in to the donation center, DO NOT wait till you have boxes and boxes piling up in your house, that is counterproductive). DO NOT go and put things in another room or into your donations box while sorting. The more often you walk away from the project you are working on the more likely you are to get distracted and never finish where you started.
Still having trouble getting started? Read my post about how figuring out your WHY is so important!
These two tips were a game changer for me. Slowly but surely, I started to get rid of things. I have made major progress sticking to this plan. Now I write out a couple tasks each Friday that I want to get done the next week. I try to keep these tasks small, i.e. go through hair products, clean out pots and pans, purge books. It is all about creating momentum and just starting!!!
Hope this helped some of you get started! Let me know in the comments what first small task you are going to accomplish this week.
Ready to take the next steps? Read my post about letting go of items you love!
Still having trouble getting started?
*These are the Sorting Crates I use.
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