How to Create Decluttering Habits

Hey! Welcome back! Here is post #2 in my Battle with Stuff Series – I call this one Decluttering for Life. It’s all about creating putting those decluttering habits on autopilot.

I’m excited to show you what I did to make decluttering and straightening my house a daily part of my routine. This process helps me identify the biggest “Clutter Problem Areas” for my house, what I would “ideally” see and what I’m going to do about it.

Read Post #1 Here

I hope that it will help you and help you start thinking about what you can do in your home in small snippets of time rather than waiting for a big chunk of time or feeling like you ‘wasted’ an entire Saturday or weekend just to have it fall back into disarray the moment your kids get home from school.

My Ah-a Moment for Creating Decluttering Habits

In the last post, my aha-moment was that decluttering is not a one-time event, it’s an everyday battle that requires specific decluttering habits to combat the on-going clash between all the things and the ideal view I have in my mind’s eye for each room in my house.

Now here’s the hard question: How can I make a habit of decluttering my life? Because it’s not just one act, it’s an everyday movement to keep stuff from taking over every inch of space. Part of my clutter is the everyday neglected chores. The laundry that piles up, the dirty dishes scattered after cooking a meal. All. the. legos.

I knew I needed to identify specific times and events that helped me take care of the ‘clutter problem areas’.

What To Do First

First, I started with the known – my schedule. And then I will figure out where the problem is and how to tackle it with clearly defined decluttering habits.

You can think about your schedule and the sequence your day follows. Make a list of the things you do every day starting when you wake up to leave the house then what you do when you return home.

My Schedule:

I go to work at 9:30 am every day. I get up with my kids at 6:30 every day, and the oldest two leave at 7:20 when the bus whisks them off to school. We get home at 4:30 after taking one of my friend’s kids home from daycare. From there it’s homework (which drags on forever) dinner prep, dinner, and then it’s time to get the little one to bed followed by the other two with some spare moments in between.

If you saw my Ideally Planned post a while ago – the day is rarely ideal. Maybe I need to declutter my day as well….But that’s a story for another time.

Do you feel like your days are also cluttered with ‘stuff’? Such as stuff to do, stuff to finish?

Here’s the Plan to Create Decluttering Habits:

Declutter Habit Key: Use snippets of time to keep areas organized, and doing specific tasks when other known events take place.

For instance: Dishes in the morning while the kids were making lunches. Sweeping while talking to mom on the phone. (Does anyone else do this? Just me?)

Nightly Decluttering Habit: Just before switching the light off in my office nook – look at my desk before turning out the light at night and taking a minute to put away the markers, throw away the scraps of unused paper, nestle all the pens back in their spot, plug in my iPad, set out my planner for the next morning, dump any dirty watercolor water. Generally, straighten before going to bed. That way, I wake up with a clean area – a place to work in the morning with fresh ideas. Rather than worrying about the mess from the day before.

How to Start

To start ‘decluttering for life’ I collected a list of all the ‘problem’ areas in my house. (Scroll to the bottom of the post, my video walks you through the process.)

Make a list of all the problem areas in your house. If the ‘stuff’ has a place, then it needs to be straightened. If you put something away where it belongs, and it spills over the space, it either needs a different space or there’s too much stuff. So in that case, ask yourself “what can I pare down?”

My big issues in my house:

• Kid’s toys picked up and put away
• Dishes in the dishwasher/sink cleared
• Table cleared
• Too Much Paper (school paperwork)
• Laundry – specifically when laundry has to be re-washed several times or clean laundry piled up in my room
• Master Closet
• Surfaces cleared

You can also make a list of the big issues in your house. We might have some of the same issues. Whatever they are, you can use the worksheet to create a plan.

Second Step: Imagine – Give Yourself a Visual Reward for Your Hard Work

Imagine what you want to see. What is your ‘ideal’ view? What do you want to see when you look at a particular drawer? How do you envision your living area? Where are your kids’ toy’s stored? What feeling do you get when you see a clean space instead of a cluttered mess?

Third Step: Be Specific about Change

Considering that I do not have huge spans of time to dedicate to straightening or decluttering, I need to use triggers or certain times of the day or events to change my everyday actions.

Clutter Problem Area:

Piled Up Clean Laundry

Ideal:

Laundry sorted and put away when it comes out of the dryer instead of stacked against the wall in my bedroom.

Plan – Be Specific

Here’s how I break never-ending, always overwhelming laundry into specific tasks per day:

Do one batch of laundry per day. Start the batch at 6:45 am while the kiddos are eating breakfast. 8:00 am switch the laundry from washer to dryer. 9:15 am just before leaving for work, take the laundry out and put it away.

I’m a fan of anything that doesn’t create too much overwhelm and can be checked off on a day-to-day basis. In other words, laundry is a never-ending task, but telling myself that I’m required to only to do one batch per day gives me the freedom to do something else without the guilt AND bonus – I can check it off my to-do list! So instead of a chore that never ends, I’m done after one!

Set a Specific Time – a Switch in Mindset

Setting a specific time makes a HUGE difference in my mindset. The ideal is no longer arbitrary. There’s a means to accomplish the goal and I know what I must do every day to do it. Decluttering is a life skill and I plan on learning it so well I don’t realize I’m doing it.

Setting a specific time is something that I learned from a Skillshare class taught by Cynthia Koo – “How to Design Your 365 Day Challenge” – she also suggests writing the event you will do before or after your task. Just that simple step makes all the habit-creating difference in the world.

(By the way, look at her Instagram @wontoninamillion) she said she used the 365-day challenge to help build her business and post every day, which made her have to create new content for Instagram, which was a win-win.)

The Power of Habit

As Charles Duhigg suggested in his book “The Power of Habit” – we need to create a simple and obvious cue, implement it in our routine and receive a reward, and create a craving for that reward. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to walk into my room and see no laundry piles. That in and of itself makes me do a little happy dance. Up until I came up with my trigger, doing this happy dance was far and few between, but it’s something I want.

So, let me ask you…when it comes to clutter, what do you want most to see when looking at your own clutter problem areas? What is your ‘dream view’ and subsequently what is your reward for dealing with clutter?