One thing I hear a lot from people is that no matter how hard they work at decluttering and no matter how much time they put in to decluttering, all the clutter simply comes back within a week or more!
I have been guilty of this myself!
I have given this a lot of thought and have come up with two reasons this is happening to you, and I have some suggestions for overcoming it! It still will require effort and time, but at least it can help you think more clearly and get to the bottom of your clutter!
1. Miscalculating your task time!
How many times do you wait to get started on a decluttering project because you’re sure you don’t have enough time! Let me tell you, often you have clutter build up because you think you don’t have time. Decluttering does not need to be a multi-hour job. You can make a difference in just 10 minutes! And you for sure don’t need a whole weekend! Of course, those long focused and dedicated days will certainly make a huge difference, but you can make a difference even if you can’t give it that much time.
Think of some of the surfaces in your home that fill up. Think about how much time you think it will take you to declutter it, then set a stopwatch and work at decluttering the space. Don’t pay attention to the stopwatch. Just work at decluttering. You don’t even have to super rush your efforts. When you’re done, check the time and see if your initial estimate and your actual time to complete the task are comparable. Most of the time, your estimated task time is grossly inflated, which often leads people to not get started on a task. Instead, if you just get started, the task rarely takes as long as you think it will.
To get over miscalculating your task time, work with a stopwatch. Practice estimating your time, then starting your stopwatch and working. You can even set a timer instead and just work for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever amount of time you WANT to put into your decluttering. Eventually, you will start to gain some confidence in your task time estimates, which will lead to you maximizing different small bits of time.
2. Decision delays!
The other problem that contributes to the clutter sticking around the house is delaying your decisions. Putting anything aside for later is basically giving your stuff permission to build up the clutter. Think about how you declutter or sort stuff in a certain space. Do you pile up like items, then deal with some of the things you know where they go or can make easy decisions about? Then, the rest of the stuff gets set aside? What kind of stuff is in that same space the next time you declutter it? That same stuff you set aside before? I bet!!
If you need to delay a decision for any amount of time, you likely don’t need whatever the item is! If it’s truly an important item, you can probably make a quick decision about keeping it and where you want to keep it. It’s the stuff that you don’t really need where decisions are generally delayed. Or it’s stuff that is sentimental or brings out feelings or guilt or shame where decisions become easier to delay rather than face.
Gain some deeper awareness into why you are delaying your decisions. Anytime you are delaying a decision about your stuff, catch yourself and ask yourself why you want to delay the decision. Is it that you don’t have the time to find or create a home for the item? Is it that you have too many similar items and can’t figure out which ones to keep? Is it that you know you love the item but also deep down know you don’t need it, so you place it to the side? Is it that the item technically belongs to someone else, and you don’t want to be responsible for the decision? Think about it and reflect on it! Always ask yourself why you are delaying your decision. Gaining more awareness will lead to better decision making and more confidence in your final decision, whether you are keeping an item or not.
If your clutter is sticking around and you keep fighting with the same cluttered spaces, week after week (or worse, year after year), consider how you are talking to yourself about your stuff. If you are telling yourself that you never have time to deal with the clutter, practice using a stopwatch! If you catch yourself putting stuff aside, ask yourself why!
These little tweaks could mean that by this time next year, you will no longer be struggling with the same clutter zones!
It’s incredible how much control your little inner voice has over the decisions you make (and those that you delay!) Tell that voice to take a break and slowly change your inner monologue so that you can say goodbye to your clutter with confidence!
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