Having a clutter-free home is the most important step towards creating a space that feels calm and cohesive. Even if you have a carefully curated space with stylish furniture and decor, it will look chaotic if it’s filled with too much stuff. That said, decluttering can be hard for many reasons, but it helps to know what the main challenges are and how to overcome them.
While there are many things that hold us back from decluttering, there are three things that I would say are the biggest obstacles. Once you know what these are and you plan for them, decluttering becomes so much easier. I’ve shared these challenges below and while all three may not apply to you, I’m pretty sure at least one or two will.
3 biggest decluttering challenges and how to overcome them:
1. decision fatigue
This is a biggie and it’s the one that holds me back the most. We all know that we have a finite ability to make decisions daily and trying to make too many will result in decision fatigue. In other words, if you take on a big decluttering task, after a short while you’ll likely find you can’t decide whether to keep certain items or get rid of them. And that usually results in giving up on decluttering.
If decision fatigue is very real for you, be aware of it and accept that you can’t make all your decisions in a day or even a week. Instead, try putting your stuff in short term self storage and if you don’t miss it after 6 months or so, you’ll know you don’t need it. Also, this gives you the comfort of knowing your stuff is still there in case you need it but if you don’t you can confidently get rid of it after 6 months or maybe even less.
2. emotional attachment
We all have stuff that we don’t use or need but feel emotionally attached to. Maybe it’s gifts from loved ones, old photos or inherited items or something that served us in the past and reminds us of that version of us. Whatever it is for you, it’s no surprise that these items are hard to get rid of as we aren’t just looking at “stuff”; we are looking at memories and identities.
The best way to deal with sentimental items is to first accept that the memory lives in you, not in the object. And then start to identify the objects you want to get rid of but are holding on to purely for sentimental reasons. You’ll know exactly what these items are.
Once you’ve identified them you can either take the band-aid approach where you get rid of everything in one go (gift or donate the items), but this can feel hard for some people. Alternatively take baby steps where you get rid of one item a week or even one a month. And once you start with this approach you may just build some momentum as you’ll begin to see that getting rid of the item/s feels freeing.
3. scarcity mindset
Having a scarcity mindset is when you hold on to stuff just in case you need it in the future and/or you feel guilty for having spent money on it. We all have stuff that we no longer use or wear, but we feel fear when we think of getting rid of these things. And we start making excuses for hanging on to these items. Some examples are you convince yourself that you’ll lose the weight and fit into that dress again or you bought an expensive gadget that you’ve used once, and you hang on to it just in case you need it again.
The first step in getting rid of things like this is acknowledging the fear. Yes, it will feel scary and that’s ok. Once you accept this you can start very small. Try getting rid of just one thing and once you let go and realise you don’t miss it, you will feel relief. Then try another thing and another and so on.
You can also consider gifting these things to someone who would genuinely enjoy and use it and that way you can focus on the joy that it will bring them. This is my favourite way to get rid of things that I keep just in case.
image credits: all images via fantastic frank, bolaget and stadshem
Leave a Reply