When most people begin a journey to declutter their home, they initially think about organization. They buy all the organizing boxes, cute wall units, the pretty cloth buckets, and the organization begins. You make sure everything has its place and if it doesn’t, you create a new space for that item. You spend all this time on these projects and when you look around the first time you probably even feel a real sense of accomplishment.
I have done this organization routine, I have gone through that phase and it does feel great when you can look around and see open space on counters and no stuff on the tables or floor of the living room. This is a great feeling when you look around at your cleaner, more organized house, but I am guaranteeing you that it will not be enough to permanently change your home or life.
Usually this organizing will clutter your home more. Instead of getting rid of items, you have gone out and purchased more items to bring into your house to put your stuff into. Now you have two dressers in your bedroom instead of one. You have clothes you don’t wear in that extra closet in the hall. Sure, it is all more tidy and maybe you can find the normal items you use faster, but eventually the system is going to start to fail and you are going to get tired of walking to the hall closet to put your jacket in and it doesn’t fit in the closet in the bedroom, so it ends up sitting on the dresser for weeks if not months. That is when you realized you haven’t decluttered your home at all, you have just organized the clutter.
The best thing about this minimalism journey you are on, is that it is not about organizing, but reducing! Reducing, purging, minimizing, whatever you want to call it, it is the act of getting rid of the clutter, instead of just constantly losing the battle of moving it around each time you organize!
It is usually a harder process, because instead of just finding everything a place, you must realize that not everything needs a place (or at least not a place in your home!). You must decide what you really need in your home and what is just something that you want at this moment but has no true value for your home or life! It might also be a longer process and might make your home look worse to start with as you pull everything out of its place and go through it all. Getting rid of things is hard, but in the end, it is so worth it.
The less you have in your house, the less you must clean weekly, and the easier your life will be. The less you have in your closet, the easier it is to get ready in the morning. It will also be a huge time saver in the long run. Instead of having to organize all the stuff, both new and old, multiple times each year. One thing I like to ask myself, is did organization ever really get you to your goals and your whys? Organization only fixes one issue, the issue of junk being all over your place, instead of being put away in its place. While the hard journey of minimalism is a new way of life. It is really thinking about not only what you have in your house, but your future purchases, the way you spend your free time, and the way you approach goals in the future. It might even change what you thought your goals were!!!!
So, take those hard steps and next time you want to organize something, realize that what you really should be doing is reducing it!!!
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